Is Substack worth it for small business owners? (2026)

This is an updated version of my 2023 post, “Should you move your newsletter to Substack?”

Almost all advice about Substack is written by and for people whose Substack is their business. Their newsletter is the product, the paid subscriptions are the income, growth is the goal, and every tactic follows from that. It’s good advice, for them. But is Substack worth it for small business owners too?

If you’re reading this, Substack is probably a tool for you. You already have a business, freelance practice or art. Your newsletter is how people find it, and get to know you well enough to buy.

In this post, I’ll focus on Substack for those of us using it as a tool. The small business owners, freelancers and creatives who have a business or practice, and want to use Substack for marketing. Is Substack worth it for you? Should you start a newsletter there, or move your existing newsletter to Substack?

The short answer is, it depends. If you move to Substack purely because you’re expecting quick growth, the move isn’t worth it. If you have others reasons, however, it might be worth to give it a try.

Why I moved to Substack—and how it’s holding up

I first wrote an iteration of this post in 2023—when my answer to the “should you”-question was also “it depends”.

I moved to Substack from Flodesk in October 2022, and in 2026, I’m still on the platform. It made setting up my occasional podcast easy, and I love how I’m building up an easily linkable archive of posts.

The two reasons that I moved to Substack were:

1. Building more community around my newsletter;
2. Making money with my writing.

Building community

The most important reason for me to move to Substack was that I wanted to have more connections with my readers. Previously, a subscriber would sometimes reply to a newsletter, but that was sporadic. I wanted to invite questions and opinions, use discussion threads and have more interaction.

That has definitely worked. While the number of my paid subscribers is fluctuating wildly (more on that later), there’s a group of subscribers that tends to nearly always comment on the monthly Accountability Club for paid subscribers. People leave a comment much easier, it seems, than reply to an email, and it’s been lovely having conversations in the comment section of my free and paid posts.

One caveat if community is an important reason to move to Substack: just because it might be easier to have a community-feel on the platform, doesn’t mean that Substack equals community. Community needs to be built, through post formats, questions and volume. For any newsletter, the vast majority of readers will not comment—every time you see a really lively comment-thread on someone’s post is a sign that their entire list is quite large.

→ If you’d like more on this, read my post “How I grew my newsletter without chasing the Substack algorithm”, or watch the video.

Making money

I never envisioned Substack as my primary source of income, but it’s been a nice side-income. At the same time, I’ve noticed a real dip in paid subscribers since early 2025—a dip that I’ve heard other people with bigger newsletters talk about too.

Substack doesn’t release any data about this, nor is it very transparent about the number of paid subscribers on the platform. Several sources name at least 5 million as the number of paid subscribers in the late spring of 2026 (see “Substack user and revenue statistics (2026)” and “Is Substack’s subscription growth slowing down?”). In November 2024, that number was 4 million and in May 2025 5 million. The number of publications that offer paid subscriptions has doubled, to 100,000, up from 50,000 in May 2025 (see “Substack by the numbers” and “How much are we paying for newsletters?”). That means that the money that is being spent on paid subscriptions is spread over many more publications in 2026 than it was on 2025. Increased volume means more competition means that it’s harder to grow.

Since I use Substack primarily as a way of marketing my business, decreasing paid subscriptions isn’t a huge problem for me. And this will be the case for many of you as well, if you’re a small business owner, freelancer or creative on Substack. It’s a good thing to keep in mind however, that Substack isn’t a financial goldmine for the vast, vast, vast majority of us.

What works on Substack

Substack isn’t a magic growth engine, as much as the hype might suggest. The promise of Substack—a contained platform on which growth just happens, and all you have to do is write your posts—isn’t true.

The advice that is shared most frequently about Substack success is not aimed at you and me—if you too want to use Substack as a tool, not make it your business. That advice tells us to post several posts a week, in a variety of formats; write interesting and relevant content; use features such as Notes aggressively to grow your subscribers.

And it’s worth to keep in mind that often, those people who do really well on Substack are—understandably and unsurprisingly—the ones who write and teach about Substack. These are the people who like the Instagram-experts-on-Instagram of old, draw in the people that are naturally on the platform: people that are writing through Substack. For them, it’s relatively easy to sell workshops and community spots, because they answer the number one question new and experienced writers have: how do I grow on Substack?

That’s not to say that people like you and me can’t grow on Substack, of course.

How to grow if you’re using Substack as a marketing tool:

1. Be clear about the role of Substack in your business and your marketing ecosystem: if you’re using Substack to market your business, it will be a tool, not the goal or primary destination you want people to go to. Your website, your products or services will be the goal;
2. Remember that most newsletter growth, Substack included, is a long game. Keep going, keep going, keep going;
3. If you’re offering paid subscriptions, be clear why you’re offering them both for yourself and your audience. Be intentional with how much time you spend on them and what you’re willing to offer. Make sure that you have a clear sense of how paid subscriptions fit into your offers and products suite or ecosystem;
4. Don’t rely on Substack alone for growth: as I wrote in “How I grew my newsletter without chasing the Substack algorithm”, the majority of new newsletter subscribers does not come through the platform for me;
5. Recommendations can be a lovely way of growing, but are no longer the growth engine they were a few years ago. Instead of chasing recommendations, look for collaborations: which fellow small business owner, freelancer or creative would you like to collaborate with, interview or feature? Whose audience might be a nice addition to your own?
6. Don’t fall for all the tactics and quick-growth tools: they mostly rely on making Substack your full-time job (and if you’re running a business, working freelance or as an artist, you already have one).

Is Substack worth it?

In my 2023 post on this topic I listed reasons to move your newsletter to Substack—or to start one there—and reasons not to. Some of those have changed, and some of those haven’t:

Reasons to move your newsletter to Substack

• You want to use the community features;
• You want to be able to narrate (part of) your posts;
• You want to be able to add a podcast to your newsletter (like I did);
• You like the idea of building an online archive that is easily linkable, sortable and visible.

Reasons not to move your newsletter to Substack

• The community features don’t have much of a priority for you;
• You’re attached to the current layout of your newsletter (Substack has fairly limited layout features);
• You use a lot of sequences for your newsletter and want to keep them;
• You don’t like the idea of your newsletter becoming a kind of blog that can be read by non-subscribers too;
• The emphasis on Notes and the platform’s mimicking of social media turns you off;
• Ethics and moderation: criticism of Substack giving a platform to Nazis and extremist far-right groups began in 2023. The platform has not changed its policies about such content, nor does it offer proactive moderation.

Currently (July 2026), the list of reasons not to be on Substack doesn’t weigh heavy enough for me to leave. But I’m not tied to Substack in any way: I’ve explored Ghost as an option, and like the look of Beehiiv as well.

At the end of the day, a platform has to work for you first and foremost, and what weighs the most for each of us will differ from person to person.

If you want your newsletter to be findable, easy to link to and a bit more conversational, Substack is probably worth trying. If you’re moving because you’ve been promised growth, you’ll likely be disappointed, unless you make it your full-time job. 

---

Curious about setting up your own Substack publication? My self-paced, lifetime access course is specifically aimed at small business owners, freelancers and creatives. It’s non-overwhelm, and calmly walks you through setting up your Substack, sending and growing.

Share this pin on Pinterest 📌