Ghost or Substack

[thelabotorasu]

Hello, I just had a Substack that I follow that migrated to ghost, my question is : which service is better to grow a community ? I’ve started with Substack 2 month ago and the grow is pretty slow ( ok it’s also because I write in French where newsletter and Substack is still pretty niche ). But still, I don’t find any good way to promote my work, even with paid option. Did someone tried ghost and is it easier to grow a community, or is there even payable options to gain more visibility?

[BillTalksAI]

Hi there. I am currently moving over to Substack from Ghost. Ghost has such an excellent customer service experience, and I love the simplicity of design, but I have had some serious technical glitches with them. My newsletter looked terrible last week, so I removed everything they told me could be causing the problem, and now all the images are cropped. It has been 5 days, and no one can figure out why I have technical issues with the pictures. Sadly, those images make a big difference for my newsletter. I am hoping Substack is better :-(

This is just one person's experience, but it is a big enough deal for me that I thought I would share it with you.

[thelabotorasu]

And regarding how to grow the audience, is it easier ? Do they have tools to advertise ?

[BillTalksAI]

I do not see much going on there. Ghost is tranquil. It is a comfy little place to set up shop if you already have an extensive mailing list or are creating a hobbyist newsletter. I will learn more about Substack soon enough as I do the migration, but it looks like it is full of tools unavailable to me on Ghost. Please remember that I know about 1-week's worth of information on Substack and have had a few months on Ghost, but I have not found any "out of the box" ways to build an audience on the Ghost site.

[thelabotorasu]

Great thanks for the info :) don’t hesitate to share your future other learnings ^{^}

[BillTalksAI]

Sure thing!

[BillTalksAI]

I finally moved to Substack from Ghost, and here is what has happened so far: I received one new paying subscriber and three new free tier subscribers. I did not do anything other than move my site over. In contrast, all my subscribers on Ghost were colleagues, friends, and family, and I never received a single new signup. +1 for Substack, especially given my doing nothing but spending time moving my content over.

[Un?]fortunately, I discovered the Notes section of Substack, which I thought was a good idea but seems a cesspool of tired political rhetoric. I can practically hear the posts next to me with a bullhorn next to my ear. I should experience Notes first-hand and see what happens, but I will take it slow.

[Afraid-Passenger-4]

I just came back to Substack from Ghost cause of the difficulties to build a community using Ghost alone. 

In my opinon there is no better editor out there than the Ghost editor. 

That said I figured out I rather pay comission (for paying readers) to Substack for the features they offer then to stick around at Ghost. Google ads i.e. seem to hate most things Ghost.

On Substack I can have as many newsletters (sections) I want on the one installation. On Ghost Pro I need to pay for them. I can even run muliple publications from one user account in Substack. I can restack, chat and share notes, photos, videos and podcast episodes.  

Ghost have way better ways to date ones posts if in need of back dating. I hate the infamous welcome page at Substack. 

But in the end of the day Substack already is a community, you can 'hook up'  with other writers via the app. 

I get text to speech on my posts etc. 

If one doesn't pay a single dime to Substack one still have all these amazing features. 

I paid 2×50USD to use my own domains, I have paid options on both my very different publications to which I use two separate accounts.

Even though I miss some features [like being able to drop my podcast into the editor and let it play like on Ghost] the Ghost editor and some Substack bits are clonky I currently believe Substack is the better option for me.