Memberful vs SubstackAs your audience grows, what newsletter platform grows with you?
Should creators publish their newsletters on Memberful or Substack?
Memberful and Substack: A quick overview
Memberful and Substack support creators and writers publishing paid newsletters. Here’s what you need to know about each platform.
What is Memberful?
Memberful is built for creators who've already grown an audience and are ready to build a sustainable business around it.
With Memberful, you can grow beyond newsletters to a fully-owned membership experience for your subscribers. From content formats to branding and membership models, everything is customizable. And when your subscriber base grows, it’s easy to scale with new features and membership tiers.
What is Substack?
User-friendly and quick to set up, Substack is one of the best-known platforms for publishing long-form content. It gives creators and writers an easy way to start posting and make money from newsletters and posts.
The Recommendations feature helps you bring in more subscribers, too, promoting your newsletter for readers who are interested in similar content.
Memberful & Substack Features
| Feature | Memberful | Substack |
|---|---|---|
Type of Platform | Newsletter platform | |
Cost & fees | $49 USD/month + 4.9% transaction fee Memberful is free until your membership goes live; there is no cost for setup Stripe fee: 2.9% + $0.30/transaction | 10% fee for all subscriptions When subscribers sign up via Substack’s iOS app, Apple takes a 30% commission during the first year of a subscription and 15% commission every year afterwards. Stripe fee: 2.9% + $0.30/transaction + 0.7% billing fee |
Payment processing & ownership | All payments processed by Stripe You own your payments | All payments processed by Stripe You own your payments for subscriptions made from email or a web browser; you don’t own payments for subscriptions via iOS app |
Membership structures | Monthly and yearly subscriptions, one-time payments, free trials, coupons and discounts, pay what you can, group subscriptions | Monthly and yearly subscriptions, one-time payments, free trials, coupons and discounts, flexible pricing, group subscriptions |
Customization | Custom colors, layouts, and branding for every customer-facing page | Simple customizations (logo, fonts, page layout) available |
Website | Build a fully-owned membership website in the platform or use the WordPress plugin to add membership features to your existing website Custom domain available | Webpage with limited customizations included, hosted on the Substack app/site Custom domain available – one-time $50 USD fee applies |
Types of content | Newsletters, membership sites, blogs and publications, private podcasts, communities, digital downloads | Newsletters, posts, podcasts, video livestreams |
Integrations | 18 integrations included, including email tools like MailChimp and Kit | Limited integrations to distribute content – auto-post on LinkedIn or YouTube, share podcasts to Spotify or Apple Podcasts |
Content discovery | You own your relationships - there is no discovery algorithm | Recommendations feature promotes your content to other Substack users |
Ease of setup | Setup is simple, but it can take some time to customize your memberships. | Quick and simple setup |
Customer support | Human support 9 AM - 6 PM ET Monday to Friday. Chatbot support and in-depth documentation are available. | Chatbot support available |
Why creators switch from Substack to Memberful
As your audience grows, Substack becomes more pricey, without any extra features. Memberful makes it easy to add new content types and membership tiers as you grow, at a lower cost.
Scalability
As your audience grows, Substack becomes more pricey, without any extra features. Memberful makes it easy to add new content types and membership tiers as you grow, at a lower cost.
Ownership
With Memberful, you control every element of your memberships, from your domain and subscriber data to your branding and membership models. Plus, you control all your payments, no matter how your subscribers sign up.
Content beyond newsletters
Memberful gives you the flexibility to experiment with new content types, like communities, membership sites, and digital downloads, so you can offer your audience more.
Customer support
Creators and writers have expressed dissatisfaction with Substack's customer support and appreciate Memberful's human support team.
“Memberful helps me run a subscription business on my own terms.
Jared at
Advisorator
Creators host paid newsletters and build community in Memberful
Read more customer storiesFarnham Street
Shane Parrish shares a newsletter that helps people make sense of our world. See his site
The Club
Molly Baz serves up exclusive recipes with a side of community. Read her story.
Benedict Evans
Technology analyst and advisor Benedict Evans built a newsletter with 175K+ subscribers. See his site
Brands trust Memberful to power fully-owned subscriptions & newsletters
How to migrate from Substack to Memberful
The Memberful team is here to support your migration from Substack. Book your migration 3-5 business days before you want to make the switch.
Start with the Memberful team
The Memberful team is here to support your migration from Substack. Book your migration 3-5 business days before you want to make the switch.
Use your Stripe account
Since Substack and Memberful both use Stripe, we’ll migrate your subscriber and payment info using your Stripe account.
Check in with your subscribers
Email your subscribers and let them know that you’ve changed platforms. They’ll need to sign up for your new platform, and we’ll send them a link they can use to sign in.
Import your free subscribers
We can also move your free subscribers over to Memberful through one of our email integrations, like MailChimp and Kit.
We'll help you migrate
Migration support is included for everyone who uses Memberful, at no extra cost. Our team is happy to answer any questions you have as you’re getting started with Memberful (and beyond).
Frequently Asked Questions
Memberful is free to try for as long as you like, so you can get into the details.
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