Is Substack a Good Marketing Platform for Business Owners?
If you’re thinking of starting a Substack as a way of marketing your business, getting more visibility, or as a replacement for having a blog or email list – I’m gonna hold your hand when I say this…
Don’t.
Trust me, I get it. Substack right now feels like THE place to be. And jumping on a shiny new platform where the possibilities feel endless is exciting.
But it’s alarming to me to see business owners considering putting faith and energy into a third-party platform. Substack can be worth it, but I really want to caution you from putting all your eggs in the Substack basket if you don’t want to end up disappointed.
Before you do anything, let’s talk about what Substack actually is and clear up some common misconceptions about it.
What is Substack?
Substack is a publishing platform for writing and sending newsletters, publishing longform content, and offering free or paid content subscriptions.
They’ve also added podcasts, video, and a community element and seem to be growing in the direction of being a full media platform rather than just a writing platform.
Substack is interesting because, on paper, it seems to combine the best of both blogging and email marketing WITH built-in discoverability – and that’s why I think so many business owners are drawn to it.
People get frustrated that their blogs aren’t getting traffic or the email list isn’t growing as fast as they’d like, and Substack feels like the magical solution that’s going to help them find an audience quickly.
The reality, though, is that Substack is basically just a longform social media platform dressed up to seem more sophisticated. It has its own algorithm and its own social feed called “Notes” (which is basically just its version Threads or X). And if you’re starting a new Substack publication from scratch, it’s not nearly as easy to get seen and find your people as it may seem.
My Experience With Substack & Results
As someone who’s been on Substack since December of 2024, I’ll be the first to tell ya that for MOST people, growing on Substack is not easy.
Unless you’re a well-known name already, you’re bringing over an existing audience to the platform, or your publication checks off all the right boxes and you somehow get lucky in the algorithm – you’re going to be fighting from day 1 to get eyes on your work.
To be completely transparent with you, I’ve had my Substack publication for over a year and have only grown to 20ish subscribers. (!!!)
From what I’ve seen and experienced myself, you kind of have to leverage Substack Notes to get any real traction. Which kind of defeats the whole point of a longform content platform.
Use Cases for Substack for Business Owners
If you’re considering starting a Substack and thinking about it like an extension of your brand rather than a core part of your marketing, it might be worth it.
In my opinion, Substack has a few smart use cases for business owners specifically:
- Sharing business-adjacent content or deep-diving on an ultra-specific theme – stuff that doesn’t quite fit your existing platforms but still fits into your “brand”
- Offering paid in-depth or behind-the-scenes content – a more intimate layer of your brand that doubles as another income stream
- Treating it like an experimental creative playground – basically, somewhere to just create without the pressure of making it “fit” or needing it to perform
- Archiving your email marketing newsletters – hosting a newsletter archive to repurpose the emails you’re sending through your email marketing platform
Substack for business owners works best when you have a clear idea of what you want to share and how it’ll serve your business goals or creative needs.
When Substack Isn’t Worth It
I’m a big proponent of prioritizing platforms you OWN (like your website and your email list), which is why I’m on team “Substack ISN’T worth it” for the vast majority of business owners.
I definitely don’t think it’s worth investing your energy in if:
You’re looking for a way to get quick, easy visibility
There’s this assumption floating around that Substack’s discoverability is just so great and that if you start a publication there, you’ll easily be found by people who want to read your writing.
My experience tells me this is SO not the case. Not unless you’re already a well-known name or have a decent-sized following.
The more Substack grows in popularity, the harder it is to get noticed and gain traction there. There are some overnight success stories, but for the average person, it takes just as much work to grow on Substack as it does on any other platform (AND for less gain overall).
You want to write on Substack instead of blog on your business website
Substack might seem like a great free alternative to start blogging for business, but your business blog should live on YOUR website.
Blogging on your own website gives you more SEO benefits, it keeps visitors on your site longer where they can easily learn more about you and what you do, and you actually own it.
If you blog on Substack, you’ll technically own the content itself and your subscriber list, but you won’t be able to migrate any of it easily, making it a total pain to leave the platform later.
You don’t want to pay for an email marketing platform
When you’re in the early stages of business, I totally understand wanting to keep your costs down. But using Substack as a replacement for an email marketing platform is a mistake, for two reasons:
- You can send newsletters and create a welcome email with Substack, but that’s it. You can’t create automated workflows or sequences and analytics are extremely limited compared to what you get with actual email marketing software.
- You’re not *technically* allowed to sell and promote your stuff on Substack like you would with a traditional email list. Yes, this is actually in Substack’s content guidelines.
Ethical & Practical Considerations
Substack has faced backlash for its content moderation approach – specifically around allowing extremist content and Nazi rhetoric to remain on the platform. In some cases, Substack is actually profiting off this content since they take a percentage of revenue from paid newsletter subscriptions.
Beyond that, Substack isn’t a platform you own. Which means you’re subject to the whims of whatever algorithm changes or platform decisions the company decides to make.
It also means Substack can ban or remove your account at any time and they can sell and promote other things to your subscribers. So basically, your audience isn’t really “yours.”
For more on this, this post by Lex Roman of Revenue Rulebreakerbreaks down how Substack steals your audience and revenue.
Or a random glitch (which Substack seems to have a lot of) could cause you to lose your content or subscribers. Just one example – Lucy Werner of Hype Yourself deleted her Substack podcast and lost her ENTIRE content archive, with zero help from Substack support to recover it. She’s since left the platform in part due to the poor response from Substack when this all went down.
So, Is Substack Worth It?
✅ Start a Substack IF you go into it thinking of it as an extension of your brand/online presence with zero expectations – a place to go deeper on your beliefs, share more BTS-style content, or simply express yourself without pressure.
❌ DON’T start a Substack if you want it to be a core part of your business marketing, you want to do it instead of blogging or email marketing, or you think it’s going to be the key to discoverability for you (or quick, easy income through subscriptions).
If you read this post and feel like Substack probably isn’t worth it for you, but you’re still caught up in the FOMO of it all, I feel you! But there are plenty of better-suited alternatives depending on what you’re actually after:
- Beehiiv: a newsletter platform similar to Substack without the community aspect, but much more control
- Ghost: great if you want a blog + newsletter combo but don’t want a WordPress/Showit/Squarespace website
- Kit: an email marketing platform that lets you publish newsletters to the web, plus a creator network
- Flodesk: the EASIEST email marketing platform I’ve ever used
Orrrr, a blog on your business website! Blogging is always, always, always the long game worth playing. And doing it ON your business website is where you’ll get the most SEO benefits, have the most control, and 100% own it.
Ready to get started blogging for your business?
→ Read this blog post to skip the overwhelm and learn what you actually need to get started.
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