Leaving Substack

First of all, there are alternatives to Substack.

  • If you have less than 2500 subscribers and think there’s at least six months till you hit that number, just move to Beehiiv. It’ll free. It’s made by newsletter people who are good at newsletters. They will do everything that you want them to do.
  • If you have less than 1000 subscribers, it’ll be free to be to Buttondown which is the only company that I know that has explicitly said it will boot any nazis. Also, from reviews, has great customer service.
  • If you have more than 2500 subscribers, then its WordPress if you’re not tech savvy.
  • If you feel up for a more technically complex solution (i.e. being a software engineer would probably help), you can use Sendy which is recommended by Allen Varney of Bundle of Holding. One-time license fee and then you pay basically nothing to actually send the emails. You have to host it yourself or use a managed host.
  • If you want a comparison of newsletter services, this one is pretty great.

Okay, if you’d like to move to WordPress, it’s main advantages are that it is pretty cheap, allows for unlimited emails, and is open source. The main disadvantage is that it can be really annoying to use the “build your website” parts of the service because they are just clunky and fiddly.

To move to WordPress from Substack, you need to export your subscribers and all your posts.

  • To export your Subscribers, go to your Dashboard, click Subscribers at the top, and then find the Export button.
  • To export your posts, go to Dashboard, then Settings, then scroll all the way down to Exports.

Once you’re in WordPress, look for Tools on the left-side menu and click Import. It’ll have a Substack option and will ask you to first submit the export of all the posts and your substack url. Then it’ll ask you to submit the export of all your subscribers. And that’s it. It’ll grab everything and you now only have to fiddle with the design of your website.

I’m currently using the Lettre theme which looks a bit like Substack. You’ll find it if you go to Appearance in the left side menu and then click Themes.

If you’re thinking about which plan to use, if Creator seems perfectly affordable, go for that as you can then use third-party plugins that will allow you to overcome any frustrating part of WordPress’ software. Otherwise, Explorer is probably perfect. I don’t recommend free because they’ll put ads on your site (that you don’t make any money from). But if you’re okay with that, then free is fine.