Substack is unusually good about letting you leave. It will give you your posts and your subscriber list, and it does not make you ask twice. What it can’t give you is a plan for what happens next, and an export sitting in a downloads folder isn’t one.
This guide covers getting the export, what is in it, and how to turn it into a site of your own without losing the things that matter.
Get the export
In your publication’s Settings, find Import/Export, then Export your data, and start a New export. Substack’s older help pages call the same section Exports, so look for either name. Substack prepares a zip file and emails you when it is ready to download from that same page.
Unzip it and you will find, roughly:
| In the export | What it is |
|---|---|
A posts spreadsheet (posts.csv) | One row for each post: its title, date, whether it was published, and who could read it. |
A posts folder | Each post’s content as an HTML file. |
| An email list file | Your subscribers’ email addresses. |
Substack doesn’t document the file names, and they have changed before, so treat that table as a description and not a promise.
Know what is in it, and what isn’t
Your posts are all there, drafts and paid posts included. That is the good news, and also the first thing to be careful with. Anything that imports the export has to know which posts were for paying subscribers, or you will publish your paid archive to the world by accident. The spreadsheet records it. Make sure the tool you use reads it.
Images are not in the zip. The HTML files point at pictures on Substack’s servers. They load for now. If you want to own them, they have to be downloaded and published with your site.
Your subscriber list is there, and you can also export it on its own from the Subscribers page. Substack does not export subscribers’ names, only their addresses.
What can’t come with you: comments, likes, the recommendations network, and your place in the Substack app. Those belong to the platform.
Treat the subscriber list with care
That file is the most valuable thing in the export and the most sensitive. It is a list of real people who gave their address to you for one purpose.
- Keep a recent copy even if you never plan to leave.
- Don’t put it anywhere public, including a repository or a synced folder you share.
- Only import it into an email tool to keep sending those people what they signed up for.
Decide what you are building
A Substack publication is two things stitched together: a website with an archive of your posts, and an email list that delivers them. When you leave, they come apart, and you get to choose each half separately.
- The site is where your writing lives permanently, at your own domain.
- The list goes to an email tool. Several can watch your site’s RSS feed and send each new post as an email, so publishing on the site triggers the send.
Substack alternatives that you actually own compares the options for both halves.
What happens to your links
It depends on which address your readers have been using.
If your publication is at yourname.substack.com, you can’t redirect those addresses. You don’t control that domain. Every existing link keeps pointing at Substack for as long as the publication is there. Leave it up, and write one last post telling readers where you have gone.
If you connected your own domain, you control it and can point it at your new host. Substack charges a one-time fee to connect a custom domain, US$50 at the time of writing, which is one more reason to own the domain whatever you publish with. Once the domain points at the new site, set up redirects from each old address to the matching new one, so links from search results and other sites keep working.
Do the move in this order
- Export, unzip and look inside. Check the post count against what you expect.
- Build the new site somewhere that isn’t public yet, and read through it.
- Check that paid posts are not public, and that pictures load from your own site.
- Import the subscriber list into your email tool, and connect the tool to your new feed.
- Publish, then point your domain at the new site if you have one.
- Tell your readers, by email and with a final post on Substack.
Where Selfish fits
Selfish is a native app for iPhone, iPad and Mac that builds a static site from your writing and publishes it to hosting you control. It is the site half of the move.
It imports a Substack export directly. Unzip it and give Selfish the folder.
- Posts come across with their dates, subtitles and photos. The photos are fetched at full size and published with your site, so they no longer depend on Substack.
- Posts for paying subscribers arrive as drafts, so nothing private becomes public unless you decide it should.
- Footnotes are kept, subscribe boxes are removed, and podcast audio comes in with its post.
- Links between your own posts keep working, and each post remembers its old address.
- The subscriber file is never opened. Selfish doesn’t send email and has no use for it. Take it to your email tool yourself.
Nothing is published until you choose. Selfish can also put a “Subscribe by email” link to your email tool at the foot of every page. It is on the App Store as a one-time purchase, at a £3.99 introductory price, rising to £9.99 in December. Import a site has the steps, and Selfish vs Substack says plainly when Substack is the better tool.