Substack sucks: see Yanyi's 2021 post about it and a recent Maia Kobabe post about it.
When I left X, I wanted to have a lowkey newsletter and had originally wanted to use TinyLetter before discovering that it no longer exists. Substack felt like the only platform that existed for this anymore and I felt like I had to cave to using it if I wanted a newsletter. But that, of course, is what these profit-driven, monopoly-hungry, fascist-enabling corporations want you to believe.
Eventually, simply googling 'substack alternatives' led me to Mataroa, which fits my aims in the best way. I really like how simple everything is. Their ethics and policies are laid out very clearly on this page.
The admin is really responsive and very kind: I emailed asking about how to migrate my existing Substack subscriber list to Mataroa because I couldn't see a button for it, and I was told there wasn't one because of spam concerns, but that I could either manually add the emails myself, or send the list to admin and he would upload it on my behalf. Because I have under 50 subscribers, I just did it myself by pasting the emails one by one into the newsletter subscription page (yoursubdomain.mataroa.blog/newsletter). Mataroa doesn't send a confirmation email for this, so you won't be spamming your subscribers.
The newsletter works like this:
When: Every day at 10:00 UTC all posts published the day before are emailed to subscribers.
What: Newsletter emails are delivered in raw plain text (markdown source) as seen in the editor. Images are included as links only.
I haven't tried the newsletter yet so I'm not sure what it's going to look like (I do hope it's not spammy and somewhat readable).
Of course, if Mataroa isn't your style, the Reddit thread where I found out about it does a good comparison of all the other existing alternatives.
I really implore anyone who is blogging on Substack to seek out alternatives and actively think about how we can promote our own infrastructures instead of letting the like 3 evil companies that currently exist to control everything about our lives, about how we relate to ourselves and to each other.
I've created a little links/about page on Mataroa where I want to start adding recommendations to people's cool non-Substack personal blogs, so let me know if you have any recommendations!
You can also (I think) submit comments to posts.
I have a new little project that I will be hosting on here soon in addition to my random posts. It's a kind of interviews / oral history / conversations kind of vibe... more about this later when I have time!!!
In the meantime, I wrote a Co-sine (Sine Theta's biweekly Patreon newsletter) about Alison's nail art raising funds for Mahmoud's and Hossam's families in Gaza, which you can read for free here.
You can unsubscribe from me by pasting your email address into the box on this page.
Free Palestine!!
Jiaqi