substack.com

August 18, 2025

What Substack.com is today

Substack is a publishing platform built around subscriptions. At the simplest level, it lets a creator publish posts that can be delivered by email, read on the web, and consumed in the Substack app. Readers can subscribe for free or pay for access to member-only posts, podcasts, or videos, depending on how the creator sets it up.

This matters because Substack is trying to be more than “email newsletters.” The company describes itself as a media platform for writing, video, podcasts, and creator-centered communities, with subscriptions as the default business model.

The core workflow for writers and creators

A Substack “publication” is essentially the home for your work. You create a publication, choose a name and basic settings, and then publish posts from a dashboard. Posts can be public (free) or gated (paid), and Substack handles both the website hosting and the email sending so a writer doesn’t need separate tools to do each part.

Two details are easy to miss if you haven’t used the platform:

Substack is built for ongoing delivery. Your subscribers receive posts in their inbox by default, which is still the main retention mechanic for newsletters.
Substack also behaves like a social reading app. People can follow creators, discover posts in the app, and interact through features like Notes and Chat, which shifts it closer to a network rather than a standalone email tool.

Monetization, fees, and where the money goes

Publishing on Substack is free until you turn on paid subscriptions. Once you do, Substack takes a cut of each paid transaction, and payment processing fees apply as well. Substack’s own help docs summarize it plainly: Substack charges 10% of each transaction, and Stripe charges credit card processing fees plus an extra billing fee for recurring subscriptions (with the Stripe billing fee called out as 0.7% as of July 2024).

There’s also a practical wrinkle for creators who enable in-app payments on iOS: Apple’s in-app purchase fee can apply, and Substack notes that this can be deducted alongside Substack’s fee from take-home revenue (the exact Apple percentage depends on Apple’s rules and the creator’s circumstances).

The upside is convenience: a creator can launch paid subscriptions quickly and let Substack handle the subscription plumbing. The downside is that a percentage-of-revenue fee scales up with success, so high-earning publications sometimes compare Substack’s long-term cost to alternatives where you pay a flat monthly software fee.

Formats: not just newsletters anymore

Substack started as a newsletter-first tool, but it has expanded into multiple content formats:

Podcasts: Creators can publish audio posts and distribute them, including supporting private feeds for paid subscribers (so paid audio can work in normal podcast apps).
Video posts: Substack supports recording or uploading video, generating transcripts, and even sharing audio from the video into a podcast RSS feed.
Live video: Live streaming is available through Substack, positioned as an integrated way to reach subscribers.
Short-form posts (Notes): Notes is Substack’s short-form feed where creators and readers share quick updates, links, images, and comments, visible across the broader Substack network depending on settings.
Chat: A creator can start chat threads with subscribers, including media and multiple images, as a more direct community channel.

If you’re evaluating Substack, the real question is whether you want a single place where long posts, email delivery, audio, video, and lightweight community live together, or whether you prefer a modular stack (website on one tool, email on another, community somewhere else).

Discovery: recommendations, network effects, and “Sections”

Substack has built several mechanisms to help creators grow without relying entirely on search engines or external social platforms.

Recommendations are a big one: creators can recommend other publications, and the system encourages reciprocal recommendations. This creates a network-driven discovery loop where readers who subscribe to one publication are nudged toward others.

Substack also supports Sections, which let one publication run multiple newsletters or podcasts under the same umbrella and send posts to subsets of the audience. That’s useful if you want, for example, a general newsletter plus a niche paid feed, without spinning up separate brands and billing systems.

Ownership and portability: what you can take with you

A major selling point Substack emphasizes is that creators control their audience list, including the ability to export subscriber data. Substack’s help center shows how to export your email list as a CSV, and it also provides publication exports (posts, subscriber list, and related statistics) as a downloadable package.

Substack also provides an RSS feed for publications (useful for readers and some external tools), and podcast workflows rely heavily on RSS distribution as well.

That portability reduces lock-in compared to platforms where you can’t easily take your audience elsewhere, but it doesn’t remove dependence completely. If your growth depends heavily on Substack’s internal discovery (Notes, Recommendations, app feed), moving away might still mean rebuilding those network-driven acquisition channels.

Trust, safety, and ongoing controversy

Substack’s moderation posture has been one of its most debated topics. The platform has Content Guidelines that prohibit, among other things, using Substack to incite violence based on protected classes, and it provides reporting pathways for content violations through a Standards & Enforcement process.

At the same time, Substack has faced repeated public criticism for hosting extremist or hateful publications. Major outlets and reference sources have documented backlash related to misinformation and Nazi-affiliated content, along with the company’s approach to enforcement and demonetization.

If you’re a creator, this is not an abstract debate. It can affect brand perception, whether other writers want to cross-promote with you, and how comfortable readers feel paying through the platform.

Business context: investment and ambition

Substack has continued to raise capital as it expands beyond newsletters into a broader creator platform. In July 2025, TechCrunch reported that Substack raised $100 million in Series C funding, describing it as part of the company’s continued growth and ambitions.

That funding story fits with the product direction: more formats, more social features, more tools to keep readers inside the Substack ecosystem.

Key takeaways

Substack combines publishing, email delivery, hosting, and subscriptions into one platform.
Monetization is straightforward, but fees add up: Substack takes 10% of paid transactions, with additional Stripe (and sometimes Apple) fees.
The platform now supports podcasts, video, live video, short-form Notes, and subscriber Chat, not just newsletters.
Discovery is increasingly network-driven through Recommendations and app-based consumption.
You can export subscriber lists and publication data, which helps with portability, but network-based growth can still create practical lock-in.
Content moderation and extremist-content controversies remain a real reputational factor around the platform.

FAQ

Is Substack mainly a newsletter tool or a social platform?

It’s both now. Email delivery is still central, but Substack explicitly positions itself as a multi-format media platform, and features like Notes and Chat add social-network dynamics.

How much does Substack charge creators?

Substack’s help center states it charges 10% of each paid transaction, and Stripe charges additional processing and recurring billing fees (with the recurring billing fee noted as 0.7% as of July 2024).

Can I move off Substack later without losing my audience?

You can export your email list as a CSV and export your publication’s data (posts and related stats) via Substack’s export tools. That makes migration possible, though you may lose Substack-native discovery channels.

Does Substack support podcasts in regular podcast apps?

Yes. Substack supports podcast distribution workflows, and it can provide subscribers with private RSS feeds so paid audio can work in podcast players.

What is Substack Notes?

Notes is Substack’s short-form posting feature for sharing quick updates, links, images, quotes, and comments with subscribers and the broader network through the app and web experience.