Most “Substack alternatives” lists compare features. That misses the reason people leave. They leave because they want to own the thing they have built, and “own” is a slippery word. Every platform will tell you that you own your content. Fewer will tell you what happens to your readers, your links and your income on the day you walk away.
So before the alternatives, a working definition.
What “own” actually means
Ownership is not a feeling. It is four things you can check.
The domain. If your writing lives at yourname.substack.com, every link anyone has ever shared points at someone else’s address. If it lives at yourname.com, the links are yours, and you can point that domain anywhere you like. This is the single most important item on the list, and it is the cheapest: a domain costs a few pounds a year.
The content export. Can you get every post out, in a format something else can read, without asking permission? HTML or Markdown is good. A PDF of each post is not an export.
The subscriber list. A CSV of email addresses you can take to another tool. Paid subscribers are harder: the billing relationship usually lives in Stripe, and whether it can move depends on the platform.
The URLs. When you move, do the old links keep working? That needs a domain you control and a host that lets you set redirects. Without both, every inbound link you have earned eventually breaks.
Substack, to be fair, does better on this than its reputation suggests. At the time of writing it is free to start and takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, on top of Stripe’s processing fees. It lets you connect your own domain for a one-off $50 fee, and its export gives you your posts (as HTML, with a CSV index) and your subscriber list. What you cannot take with you is the network: recommendations, app followers and the discovery that Substack itself provides. That network is the genuine reason to stay, and it is worth being honest with yourself about how much of your readership came from it.
Ghost
Ghost is the closest like-for-like replacement: a publishing platform with memberships, paid subscriptions and newsletters built in. It is open source under the MIT licence, which gives you two ways to run it.
Ghost(Pro) is the hosted service run by the Ghost Foundation. At the time of writing, plans start at $18 a month billed yearly for the Starter tier, which does not include paid subscriptions; the Publisher tier, which does, is $29 a month billed yearly for up to 1,000 members. Ghost takes 0% of your subscription revenue on the tiers that support it; you pay Stripe’s fees and nothing else. Custom domains are included.
Self-hosted Ghost costs nothing in licence fees, but it is a real server to run: Ubuntu, Node.js, MySQL and a reverse proxy, plus a Mailgun account, because Mailgun is the only bulk email service Ghost supports for sending newsletters. If you already run servers, this is the most complete form of ownership on this list. If you don’t, the maintenance is a job you are signing up for.
Ghost scores well on all four tests: your domain, a JSON content export, a members CSV export, and a redirects file you control.
Buttondown
Buttondown is a small, independent newsletter tool that writes in Markdown and stays out of the way. At the time of writing it is free for up to 100 subscribers, then priced by the number of subscribers you actually send to, with optional features sold as add-ons. Paid subscriptions are one of those add-ons, and Buttondown takes no cut of the revenue.
It hosts a web archive of your issues, and serving that archive from your own domain is an add-on too. That makes Buttondown a very good fit for the “own site plus separate newsletter” pattern described below: let Buttondown do the email, and keep your canonical writing on your own site.
beehiiv
beehiiv is built for growth: referral programmes, a recommendation network, ad placements and detailed analytics. At the time of writing its free Launch plan covers up to 2,500 subscribers and includes a custom domain. Paid subscriptions require a paid plan (Scale, at $43 a month, is the entry point), and on those plans beehiiv advertises a 0% take rate on subscription revenue.
It is a strong choice if growing a list is the point. It is less of a choice if the point is a quiet place to write, because much of what you are paying for is growth machinery.
Kit
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is email marketing software for creators: automations, sequences, landing pages and digital product sales. At the time of writing its free plan covers up to 10,000 subscribers, with paid plans adding automations and paid newsletters. Kit charges a transaction fee on sales and subscriptions (3.5% plus 30 cents at the time of writing), so it is not a 0% platform.
Kit is the most “business” option here. It is excellent if your newsletter feeds a course or a product. It is heavy if all you want is to send your latest post to people who asked for it.
A static site plus a separate newsletter tool
This is the unfashionable answer, and for many writers the best one.
Split the job in two. Your writing lives on a plain static website at your own domain: HTML files, an RSS feed, nothing to patch. Your email list lives in a newsletter tool – Buttondown, beehiiv, Kit, even self-hosted Ghost used purely for email. The site is the canonical home of every post. The newsletter points readers to it, or carries the full text with a link back.
What you get:
- Every URL is yours, on a domain you control, served by whichever host you pick this year.
- The archive outlives the newsletter. If you change email tools, the posts do not move. Only the subscriber CSV does.
- Your site costs little or nothing to host. Static hosting on Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, GitHub Pages or an ordinary web server is cheap and very hard to break.
- Your RSS feed can drive the email. Several newsletter tools can turn a new item in your feed into an email – Buttondown offers RSS-to-email as an add-on, for example – so publishing on the site can trigger the send.
What you give up is integration. Paywalled posts, member-only pages and “subscribe to read the rest” need a platform that controls both the site and the list. A static site cannot gate content by itself. If paid, members-only writing is your model, Ghost or Substack will serve you better, and that is fine.
A quick comparison
| Own domain | Free to start | Platform’s cut of paid subs (at the time of writing) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Substack | Yes ($50 one-off) | Yes | 10%, plus Stripe fees |
| Ghost(Pro) | Yes | No | 0% on Publisher and above, plus Stripe fees |
| Self-hosted Ghost | Yes | Software is free; server and Mailgun are not | 0%, plus Stripe fees |
| Buttondown | Archive on your domain is an add-on | Up to 100 subscribers | 0% (paid subscriptions are an add-on) |
| beehiiv | Yes | Up to 2,500 subscribers | 0% on paid plans |
| Kit | For landing pages | Up to 10,000 subscribers | 3.5% + 30c per transaction |
| Static site + newsletter tool | Yes | Hosting can be free | Depends on the newsletter tool |
Check each provider’s current terms before you commit. Pricing in this market changes often.
How to choose
If you need paid subscriptions and do not want to run a server, Ghost(Pro) is the cleanest move away from Substack. If you want the most control and don’t mind administration, self-host Ghost. If you mostly write in public and want email as a delivery channel, put the writing on your own static site and pair it with Buttondown or a similar tool. If growth is the whole game, beehiiv is built for it.
Whatever you pick, buy the domain first. It is the one decision that keeps every other decision reversible. We go into the hosting side in more detail in the best way to self-host a personal blog.
Where Selfish fits
Selfish does not send email and has no subscriber list. It is the site half of “own site plus separate newsletter”: a native app for iPhone, iPad and Mac – £3.99 once – that turns your posts into a complete static site with an RSS feed and publishes it to your own server or host. It is out now on the App Store, at a £3.99 introductory price, rising to £9.99 in December; the publishing guide shows the hosts it supports, and there is a head-to-head in Selfish vs Substack.