Newsletters & publishing · verified 2026-07
2alternatives we've actually put through a scorecard — with verified pricing, honest trade-offs and a direct head-to-head where we have one. No 20-item listicles of tools nobody's tried.
paid from $18/mo
Open-source publishing with memberships and a 0% platform fee
Free tier: No free hosted tier (14-day trial). Self-hosting the open-source software is free if you can run Node + MySQL.
paid from $4.17/mo
Write into a paying audience pool — no list-building required
Free tier: Free to publish and to join the Partner Program (application-based: 6+ stories, 3+ months active). Readers pay $5/mo for membership.
How we make money: some outbound links on this page may be affiliate links, meaning we may earn a commission if you sign up — at no cost to you. Commissions never decide a round or a verdict; our scoring method is documented in the methodology.
The most common reasons in our testing: the 10% cut scales painfully: at $5,000/month revenue you hand over ~$500/month, forever; weak email tooling: no automation sequences, limited segmentation, no A/B testing; platform lock-in: growth depends increasingly on Substack's algorithm, with limited design and SEO control. Whether those matter depends entirely on your use case — each alternative below fixes some of them and trades away something else.
Among the alternatives we've verified, Medium has the lowest paid entry at $4.17/month billed annually. For free options, Medium offer genuinely usable free tiers.
Medium: Free to publish and to join the Partner Program (application-based: 6+ stories, 3+ months active). Readers pay $5/mo for membership.
We only list tools we've actually verified: every price checked against the vendor's own pricing page (stamped 2026-07), every claim sourced. That means fewer alternatives than the 20-item listicles — and none we haven't scored in a head-to-head. Our methodology and revenue model are public.