Substack
Beautiful newsletters in the same place as your website, blog, courses, products, and customers
You can start a blog and build an email newsletter with both Podia and Substack, but Podia gives you more customizations and features to grow your business – like lead magnets, a full website, landing pages, automations, and products – all in one place.
Podia vs. Substack
Substack works well for newsletters, but there’s a 10% transaction fee and you’ll need other tools to sell digital products. With Podia, your products, blog, email, and fans are connected, and you can remove fees as you grow.
Podia
✓ Free plan
✓ Blogging
✓ Email newsletters
✓ Unlimited landing pages
✓ Custom website
✓ Sell digital products
✓ Sell online courses
✓ Online community platform
✓ Email campaigns & automations
✓ Remove transaction fees
Substack
✓ Free plan
✓ Blogging
✓ Email newsletters
x Unlimited landing pages
x Custom website
x Sell digital products
x Sell online courses
x Online community platform
x Email campaigns & automations
x Remove transaction fees
Comparison Table: Podia vs. Substack
Podia
Substack
Free plan
Podia is yes
Substack is yes
Price
Podia isFree, or $4/month - $89/month
Substack isFree with transaction fee
Remove transaction fees
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Full website
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Custom domain
Podia is yes
Substack is yes
Unlimited landing pages
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Blogging
Podia is yes
Substack is yes
Blog comments
Podia is yes
Substack is yes
Community platform
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Online courses
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Digital downloads
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Webinars
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Coaching
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Newsletters
Podia is yes
Substack is yes
Lead magnets
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Grow your email list
Podia is yes
Substack is yes
Automated campaigns
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Subscriptions and memberships
Podia is yes
Substack is yes
Customer chat messaging
Podia is yes
Substack is no
Email automation and personalization
Build beautiful campaigns that automatically connect to your audience and customer data. With Podia, you can tag and filter your subscribers based on purchases, activity, interests, and more so you always send the right message to the right people.
Grow with lead magnets and custom sign-up forms
Create unlimited free lead magnets, design beautiful email opt-in pages, or add custom email forms anywhere on your website – Podia gives you more options for how you attract new followers.
Sell your products alongside your blog and email list
Podia lets you build your blog, email, and digital products in the same place so everything is automatically connected. Sell your courses, or your printables, or your webinars, and easily connect with the people who purchase each.
The Podia blogging tool is super simple, yet you can create a really great looking and personalized design that fits your brand. And cherry on the cake, you have everything in one place, your store, your blog, your website, and even your CRM.
Daniele, Swiss Innovation Academy
Podia vs. Substack: Which one is right for me?
Podia and Substack are both platforms where you can make a living off your writing and creative work. Both offer newsletters and blogging, both have a free plan, and both make it easy to grow an email list without needing a ton of techie know-how.
But while Substack mainly focuses on paid newsletters and members-only content, Podia is an all-in-one platform where you can blog, sell digital products, build online courses, run your own community, set up a full website, and grow your email list.
Let’s take a look at the details of each platform to help you decide which is right for you.
Podia vs. Substack plans and pricing
Substack is a newsletter platform where readers can subscribe to publications and start writing content themselves. It’s free to create a newsletter and share your writing on your blog. You can also choose to make your writing available to the public or exclusive to subscribers, and you can choose how much you want to charge for monthly or annual subscriptions. You’ll pay Substack a flat 10% of your earnings.
With Podia, there’s also a free plan that lets you build a blog and start a newsletter. Podia’s free plan includes your full website, an online community, and the ability to sell a digital download and a coaching product. You also get 100 email subscribers and advanced email automation features for free. Like Substack, Podia charges a 10% transaction fee on any sales you make on the free plan.
But as your business grows, Podia also gives you options to lower or remove transaction fees, which could save you lots of money in the long run. Here’s a look at all of Podia’s plans and features:
- Free, 0$/month and 10% transaction fee: The free plan includes a full website, blog, landing pages, one digital download, one coaching session, and your community.
- Starter: $9/month and 8% transaction fee ($4/month when paid annually): Starter includes all the Free features plus custom domains and chat support.
- Mover: $39/month and 5% transaction fee ($33/month when paid annually): Mover includes all the Starter features plus unlimited digital products, courses, and third-party code.
- Shaker: $89/month and 0% transaction fee ($59/month when paid annually for the first year, then $75/month when paid annually after that): Shaker includes all the Mover features plus affiliates.
You can also add Podia Email to any Podia base plan, including the free plan. Podia Email is free for your first 100 subscribers, and after that, the price goes up as your list grows. All plans come with Podia’s full suite of advanced email marketing features, so you can send beautiful newsletters, run automations, build campaigns, and segment/filter your audience no matter your list size.
Podia lets you sell digital products, build a website, and run a community in addition to blogging and newsletters
One of the biggest differences between Podia and Substack is the ability to sell digital products. Substack lets you make money one way – selling paid newsletter subscriptions.
With Podia, you can sell digital downloads, webinars, online courses, coaching sessions, and community memberships which can function like a private paid newsletter for your members. You can also make product bundles, add upsells, create coupons, and set up unlimited free and paid community tiers.
While Substack lets you share newsletters and blog posts, Podia gives you a full website with unlimited landing pages, a link in bio, and a dedicated blogging feature. You can customize the look of your pages and add videos, audio clips, embeds, quizzes, and other interactive features anywhere you like.
Podia also gives you several ways to communicate with your followers. You can enable comments on your blog posts, add live chat messaging on your website, make lead magnets and email opt-in forms, or encourage visitors to join your community.
Within your community, followers can turn on email notifications when you share a new post, which functions similarly to Substack’s newsletter feature but with more interactive options for your members.
Blogging and website features on Podia and Substack
Substack is primarily known for newsletters, but you can also set up a blog and basic home page. Your home page lets you show featured blog articles and recent posts, but the personalization options are limited. You get some basic customizations like font and accent colors, but otherwise, your layouts are pretty much set. Plus, Substack shows related newsletters on your homepage, which could distract people from your work.
With Podia, you have full control over the look of your website and blog. You can choose from dozens of professionally designed layouts that can be customized depending on the needs of your business, you can change details like fonts and colors, and you can adjust the margins and spacing of your whole site or just specific sections.
You can also add unlimited landing pages with Podia, including email opt-in landers, product sales pages, about pages, and any other pages that you need.
Email marketing features of Podia and Substack
Substack is pretty basic when it comes to email marketing. You can send a message to all your subscribers or just paying members, and you can schedule emails to go out at a later time. You can also see stats about your messages like open rate and click rate.
To get new subscribers on your list, Substack frequently shows an opt-in form to your audience as a pop-up and within your content. This can be a downside if you prefer a more subtle approach since visitors will have to actively click away from your newsletter CTA to continue reading your articles.
With Podia, you decide when and where you promote your newsletter. You can use a lead magnet, free product, opt-in form, full email landing page, or add CTA banners throughout your website.
Podia also has advanced email marketing features that allow you to get more nuanced in your email sending. You can:
- Add tags and segment your audience members based on the products they buy, the forms they subscribe to, and the actions they take with your business
- Build campaigns with unique entrance and exit conditions
- Send sequences and automations like welcome emails, sales promos, and drip courses
- Create custom audience segments so you make sure your message always goes to the right people
- Automatically send someone an email when they join your affiliate program, sign up for your community, or interact with your business in some way
- Trigger campaigns when someone clicks a link in a previous email
- Choose from a library of beautiful email templates, or use your past emails as a starting point
Best of all, Podia handles a lot of this behind the scenes so you don’t have to build it yourself. When someone buys a product, for instance, that information is automatically saved so you don’t have to create complicated webs of tags.
Simply put, Substack is a good choice if you only need a basic email and blogging platform, and don’t mind paying 10% in transaction fees forever.
Podia is a better fit if you want advanced email and blogging in the same place as the rest of your business, with the ability to upgrade and add even more features like courses and affiliates as your business grows.
The best way to know for sure is to try Podia for yourself! You can start blogging and sending email newsletters right now, without paying a dime.
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Absolutely! You can check out our Podia demo site, which we’ve built to show you what the Podia experience will look like for both you and your customers.
There are also dozens of creator example sites on our Examples page, so you can see what other creators just like you have built using Podia.
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Yes! We offer free (and hassle-free) migrations on all annual Mover and Shaker plans. Get started here.
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Yes! Podia has a free forever plan that includes your full website, blogging, one digital download, one coaching product, customer chat messaging, and your online community. Sign up for free today to see for yourself!
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Absolutely! You can see how Podia stacks up to many of our competitors right here.
We also have some head-to-head comparisons of other leading platforms in case you’re choosing between those, including:
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We’d love to. Podia’s customer support is here for you, seven days a week. Just reach out to us on chat and a real, friendly person will be delighted to help you out.