Substack

Substack
Summary
Email and web publishing with a focus on monetization.

Type of organisation: Privately-owned company (or group)
Market share: One of the leading products (#3-7)

Pricing: Free-10% cut of subscription revenue
Factors driving pricing: More audience (e.g. more subscribers, traffic)
Skills needed to set-up: Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
Skills needed to use: Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
Requires audience sign-in to use: Yes, sign-in compulsory
Pros
Transparent pricing model
Releases new features regularly
Clear data policies
Cons
Lacks accessibility statement
Does not share diversity data

Full Product Data Collection

Data collected January-February 2020

Product nameSubstack
Product URLhttps://substack.com/
Parent organisationN/A
Workflow categoryPublishing & distribution
Date product founded2017
Product descriptionEmail and web publishing with a focus on monetization.
What type of company or organisation is the product owned by?Privately-owned company (or group)
Is the company profit-making?Cannot determine
How is this product funded?Subscriptions, VC investment
What market share does the tool have?One of the leading products (#3-7)
Is there an Open Source alternative in this product space?No, not with the same combination of publishing tools and monetization.
When did the company last release new features?Feb-2020. New commenting functionality
Have they shared details of the product roadmap?No
Is there talk of the product raising further investment?No
Is there talk of the product being acquired?No
Have there been any newsworthy business issues or challenges in the last 12 months?No
Is there a pricing model listed on the website?Yes
How clear & transparent is this pricing model?Very: full pricing listed
What is the range of prices offered?Free publications can use Substack for free. For paid publications, Substack charges a 10% cut of subscription revenue. In addition, there is a credit card fee of 2.9% plus 30 US cents per transaction charged by payments provider Stripe.
What factors drive higher pricing?More audience (e.g. more subscribers, traffic)
What skills are needed to get this tool set up & usable?Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
What skills are needed to USE this tool day-to-day?Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
Does this tool use proprietary file formats for saving documents & outputs?Defaults to common open standard file formats
Is the product reliant on 3rd-party APIs or interoperability to function?No
Have there been any newsworthy technical issues in the last 3 years?No
How clear is the Terms of Service for users (i.e. publishing customers)?Technical, legalistic TOS
Does the product have a data collection & usage policy on its website? (Can be a GDPR statement)?Yes, comprehensive.
Is their data policy “GDPR everywhere”?No GDPR policy information available
Does the product require your audience to sign-in to use it?Yes, sign-in compulsory
IF SIGN IN REQUIRED: Does audience sign-in use 3rd party platforms?No 3rd party auth, just a user account
Does the public product website mention how to export or transfer your data to another service?Only partial exports available
Does the public product website mention how to delete your data?Only limited deletion available
Have there been any newsworthy security breaches with this product in the last 3 years?No
Does the company have an accessibility statement on its website?No / cannot find
Does the company release information on the diversity of the workforce?No

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