SubstackReviews of substack.com

I tried Substack for its free newsletter feature, but the monetization prompts are incredibly aggressive and intrusive. It pushes readers to pledge money almost immediately by opening a new tab and capturing your audience, which is a horrible way to approach potential subscribers. Not recommended.

The Substack platform provides very good content and is advertisement free. There are many very good content makers and a very good selection of people to subscribe and follow. You can sign up as a free subscriber and follow those who make comments on related topics. I signed up as a free subscriber and became active in engaging with others making comments but never created an account or posted content to the platform. I simply surfed the platform and added my comments to issues posted by content providers. I enjoyed the interaction with followers and content providers and learned an immense amount from experts in many subjects. However, this comes at a huge cost if you use phone data. From February this year to now Substact has chewed up all my accumulated data of 2000GB. The same activity before joining Substact would have used around 10GB - 15GB maximum if I surfed YouTube everyday. To give you an idea of how much data Substack will use, today it used 500mb just by scrolling through content, making six likes and restacting them. I used no other app, viewed no video or read any articles. I can watch 90 minutes of YouTube and use 100mbs. Watch 3 minute video on Substact and you will use 500mb. The other problem is that Substact also collects a huge amount of data for content providers. Another issue is that subscribers cannot become paid subscribers to support all those they follow. My other concerns are that the founder of Substact is a Heritage Foundation Billionaire a supporter of Project 2025 and Trump may take control of this platform as it becomes very popular for independent content makers particularly with those who have been forced to resign from major news networks he has attacked.

Why have a mobile version if you cannot even delete a post using the app. I’m travelling so downloaded the app, turns out useless.

I cannot post, make comments or like on Substack now for about 2 or 3 months on my Chromebook! I can read some posts but not all! My buttons do not work or they have disappeared! So, I started another Substack on my desktop with my other email address! But why can't I do anything on my Chromebook? I tried emailing customer service but that didn't work! (Email address does not work!) No matter what I have tried to do, I'm still having problems with Substack and I have problems with my Chromebook too! Oh, but I do get hundreds of emails from others who post on Substack! I might have to start unsubscribing from these emails! At first I thought Substack blocked me! Then I thought it was my Chromebook! And then I thought it was my Comcast lines on a damaged pole! But the damaged pole is connected to a new pole and I didn't get anywhere with Comcast! They were supposed to come check the lines but my appointment was cancelled! So, I'm ready to leave Substack unless someone can fix this problem! I have also been writing on Medium and I'm having problems with Medium! After I hit publish or hit another button, my words have disappeared! I give up!

No customer service. There is a bug on the podcast page that is limiting my reach to listeners (it is not showing 3rd party links). I have reported it more than 4 times to support and have been told by the AI bot that someone will look into it and get back to me but no response after weeks. I even wrote people on Linkedin but nobody seems to care. I am moving away from Substack now.

For such a great platform it's a shame their customer services are by email only with no guarantees of reply and no means to contact them by telephone for urgent matters. Response rate to my emails has been around 60%-70% since I joined them.