"Substack Is Too Expensive" — And Other Things People Say When They Don't Understand Business

What a $1,600 monthly Substack "bill" actually tells you

Yesterday I went onto YouTube to find a super beginner Substack video for my daughter. But then, a YouTube short showed up in my feed where the creator — someone who makes content about email marketing and monetizing newsletters — was calling people dumb for using Substack.

The short — which was clipped from a podcast episode and only about 8 seconds long, shared a story of someone who was paying $1,600 “up-front” on Substack, and she was talking about how stupid that is because Ghost only costs $160 per month to have 23,000 subscribers.

I was actually shocked that this post that was so obviously leaving out a huge piece of the puzzle: if someone is paying $1,600 a month to Substack, they’re earning $16,000 a month. Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue. There is no “up-front cost” or monthly fee. You pay nothing until readers pay you when you turn on your paid tier.

So I commented exactly that. This morning I looked at my notifications and there was a response from her: “Substack charges 10% so you’re paying way more for them than any upfront cost you would pay for software. People who don’t get that don’t get business.”

I commented back that sure, it’s a charge on what you’re making and that you can totally post for free if you want, but then a few seconds later I decided to go back and delete my comment. Because is there a point arguing in the comments on a YouTube short about this? Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Better to use this as content fuel. 😂

So this post is inspired by that exchange, because new Substack users might come across this kind of messaging out there on other platforms, and I want to break down the pros (and the cons!) of the 10% Substack fee and everything she’s leaving out of this argument.

First: I wouldn’t call the 10% fee a “bill” — it’s more like a “success fee”.

I think everyone here knows, Substack charges nothing to use it. You can publish, grow, build an audience, write Notes, get recommended by other writers, show up in the app — all for free, for as long as you like.

The 10% only kicks in when someone pays you. If you charge $10/month for a paid subscription and 100 people sign up, you earn $1,000. Substack takes $100. Stripe takes its processing fee, and you keep the rest.

Being upset about that is like being upset about a real estate agent’s commission selling your house. You don’t pay it unless the house sells. And if your house sells for $500K, complaining about the commission while you deposit the other $470K is a strange hill to die on.

So her example of someone paying $1,600/month to Substack, what that actually means is they’ve built something that generates $16,000 a month in recurring revenue. They’re keeping $14,400 of it. The platform handled the payments, delivery, infrastructure, and — most importantly — helped them find many of those subscribers in the first place.

OK, but what if she leaves Substack to save that money? Let’s do the math.

The creator boldly stated that for the same email list at 23,000 subscribers, she could be paying just $160 on Ghost. Here’s where the “just move to Ghost” argument gets interesting. Because sure — you could export your subscriber list and set up shop on a platform that charges a flat monthly fee. Ghost Pro runs about $140/month for a large list.

So you’d save roughly $15,000-16,000 a year. That’s real money, right?

But here’s what you’d lose: all of your subscription revenue. Every dollar of that $16,000/month came through Substack’s payment system. Your paid subscribers signed up on Substack. When you leave, those subscriptions don’t automatically follow you to a new platform to continue to pay you for a paid newsletter. Some subscribers might, some won’t.

And now, instead of readers paying by upgrading to paid on your publication, you need to sell them something different if you’re trying to replace your income from your Substack paid tier you just turned off. So now you’d need to create other products or services.

What would it actually take to replace $14,400/month?

Here are some ways you could make that money without a paid tier on Substack.

A digital course at $197. You’d need about 73 sales per month. With a 23K list, even at a solid 35% open rate, you’re looking at maybe 8,000 people opening your emails. A 3% click-through gets you 240 clicks. A 2% conversion rate on your sales page gives you roughly 5 sales per email. You’d need to send 12-15 dedicated sales emails a month to hit your number — and that’s with generous assumptions at every stage of the funnel.

A membership at $49/month. You’d need 294 active paying members. That’s 1.3% of your total list converting and staying. Factor in monthly churn of 5-10%, and you’re constantly replacing 15-30 members just to hold steady.

Coaching at $1,500/client. You’d need about 10 clients per month. The per-sale math works, but now you’re running a services business. Your calendar is full. Your income is directly tied to your time. This is a fundamentally different life than writing a newsletter.

Sponsorships. At 23K subscribers with strong engagement, you might pull $500-2,000 a month. Nowhere close to $14,400 on its own.

Any one of these could be part of a solid business model. But none of them is the simple swap that the oversimplified “just leave Substack and save the money” implies. Each one requires a distinct skill set, dedicated infrastructure, sales pages, email sequences, customer support systems, and — perhaps most importantly — a willingness to completely change your marketing strategy.

The part she completely ignored: where did those 23,000 subscribers come from?

This is what made me want to write this post in the first place.

That 23,000-subscriber list? The person in question most likely built it on Substack, using Substack’s discovery tools (like Notes!) and recommendation network that surfaces your publication to readers of similar writers.

Without that infrastructure, where do 23,000 subscribers come from?

If you’re starting from scratch on any email marketing software, you don’t have the discovery part that Substack has. So you’ll have to work your tail off to get people to sign up.

It takes a long time to grow to 23,000 subscribers without a platform like Substack that helps with discovery. It even takes a long time on Substack! The variables are enormous and depend on your niche, your content quality, your consistency, your marketing chops, whether you’re running ads, lots of things. But for most people building organically through social media and content? We’re talking years. Potentially a decade of consistent output before you see a number like that.

The alternative is paid acquisition. Running Meta ads for newsletter subscribers can cost anywhere from under a dollar to over $5 per subscriber — and the cheap ones often aren’t worth having because they never open your emails. For warm, engaged subscribers who actually stick around, $2-5 per lead is a realistic range, and in competitive niches it can run much higher. At $3 per subscriber, building a 23,000-person list through ads would cost $69,000. At $5, that’s $115,000. And those numbers assume every subscriber stays — which they won’t.

Suddenly the 10% revenue share — which you only pay when you’re already earning — starts looking like the deal of the century.

Where the “leave Substack” argument actually makes sense

I didn’t want to write this as a one-sided argument just because I’m personally a Substack fan. I’ve been in the online biz game for long enough to consider a lot of angles and variables, and that’s why I felt like the info on the post I saw deserved a lot more context.

Here goes:

At scale — once you have the audience, the revenue, the business maturity — the percentage model does get expensive relative to flat-rate tools. Saving $15K a year is meaningful. And the critique about building on “rented land” is legitimate. Substack controls the algorithm, the discovery features, the app experience. If they change how things work, your growth could stall. And let’s be honest: one thing we can depend on with any of these platforms (Meta, X, YouTube) — they always change. So it truly isn’t wise to have your entire business set up and running on only one platform.

There’s also a real ceiling on what Substack’s monetization model can do. If you want to sell courses, coaching bundles, tiered memberships with different access levels, one-time digital products — Substack isn’t built for that. Someone with 23K engaged subscribers and a diversified product suite might actually earn more off-platform.

But you don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This isn’t an “either or” question, in my opinion.

My point of view is this: all businesses need some sort of discovery platform (aka social media). Email lists are where the best attention happens, so that’s key… and Substack is a sorta hybrid: yes, you have an email list, but it’s on-platform. Nothing is stopping you from also growing an email list off-platform, and I actually think it’s wise. That’s what I’m doing (maybe that’s the topic of another post!?)

Bottom line: My reaction to this whole conversation is — there’s a lot more nuance to “should you pay 10% of your income to Substack or not?”

Everyone has their own reasons for using it or not using it, and for sure it doesn’t make sense for everyone. That’s fine.

But to say that “you don’t get business” if you’re using it is flat-out wrong.

If you’re just getting started, here’s what actually matters

If you’re new to online business, starting over, don’t have an email list at all:

The entire debate about Substack’s 10% is irrelevant to you right now.

Because you are not paying that 10% yet. You won’t pay it until people start paying you, and by the time they do, you will be very happy to share a cut with the platform that helped make it happen.

There are fees for every platform, from email marketing to course hosting to cart platforms. Someone landing on that YouTube short and deciding not to use Substack because of it? Is someone who actually doesn’t get business.

Instead, what matters right now is finding your audience and learning to write in a way that resonates. Building the muscle of showing up consistently to develop your point of view, as well as getting feedback on your writing in the form of comments, restacks and views. Strengthening your chops, getting awesome at writing Notes, and getting in the reps in public.

Substack lets you do all of that at zero cost while simultaneously putting you inside a discovery network that can accelerate your growth.

And here’s the part that gets lost in every “which platform is best” debate: Substack doesn’t have to be a forever decision. Your subscriber list is yours. You can export it anytime. You can build here, grow here, learn what your audience wants, figure out what products make sense — and then make an informed decision about whether and when it makes sense to move.

But that YouTube short drops you smack-dab in the middle of a problem you are actually not facing yet.

Business is full of problems to solve. And personally? I’d LOVE to have the “problem” of making $14,400 dollars a month from my Substack paid subscribers. 😂 Because I know “straight math”, but I also know the “cost” of energy spent on creating posts for other social media platforms, the confusion, cost and complete ridiculousness of Meta ads, and in general the WHOLE PICTURE.

The real problem with “Substack is dumb” content

What bothered me about that YouTube Short wasn’t the disagreement. Smart people can disagree about platform strategy, and I learn from those conversations all the time.

What bothered me was the oversimplification. Reducing a complex business decision to a single number — $1,600 versus $160 — and then calling anyone who sees it differently stupid. Stripping away every variable that actually matters: how the audience was built, what it would cost to replace the revenue, what skills and infrastructure the alternative requires, what stage of business you’re in, what your actual goals are.

When you’re creating content that influences how people make decisions about their livelihoods, you owe them more than a hot take and a punchline. You owe them the full picture, with all its inconvenient complexity.

The people watching that Short and nodding along? Some of them are just starting out. They’re trying to decide where to build. And “Substack is dumb because it’s expensive” might steer them toward a platform that’s technically cheaper but demands skills, time, and infrastructure they don’t have yet — setting them up to struggle in ways that were entirely avoidable.

So yeah, that’s not education on business — it’s a slanted view and an attempt to go viral with a dollar-for-dollar comparison trying to turn into a viral post.

Stay tuned, because I think this is a valid conversation, considering people are out there creating content about it. Yes, it’s wise to diversify your audience, your offers and your platforms. It’s wise to back up your email list and have something you’re creating off-platform. There’s a lot to discuss on this topic… but it’s definitely not cut-and-dried like that YouTube short made it out to be.

If you’re just starting out? Take a deep breath. You’re in exactly the right place.

P.S. Know someone just starting out or wondering if Substack is “worth it”? Restack or share this post with them!