Email Bump vs Substack
Substack takes a percentage of what you earn and gives you a network. We charge a flat monthly fee and give you automation. Those are different businesses that happen to both send email.
Eight rows below, including the three where Substack is clearly the better choice — for a writer starting out, it isn't close.
Which one you want, in three sentences
Pick Substack if you're a writer starting out. Zero cost, zero setup, and a discovery network that will find you readers. Nothing here can grow a list the way that network does.
Pick Email Bump if the newsletter supports a product rather than being the product — you need onboarding sequences, behavioural segments, receipts and password resets, and a bill that doesn't scale with revenue.
Pick neither if you want publishing plus monetisation without the 10%, which is beehiiv, or if you sell courses and digital products, which is Kit.
8 differences that matter
Substack's column comes from their published pricing and documentation on 2 August 2026.
Three places Substack is the better choice
Discovery. The recommendation network and the reader app put your writing in front of people who have never heard of you. No platform on this page has anything comparable, and for a newsletter that is still finding an audience it's worth more than any feature.
Zero cost while you're small. No monthly fee at any subscriber count. If you're not charging yet, Substack costs nothing and we cost $19/mo past 5,000 contacts.
Payments handled for you. Subscriptions, billing, dunning, the reader's account — all of it. We have none of that; you'd be wiring up Stripe yourself and syncing the result.
Email Bump vs Substack, asked and answered
Is Email Bump cheaper than Substack?
Only once you're earning. Below about $400/month in subscription revenue Substack is cheaper, because it's free. Above that its 10% overtakes a flat fee quickly and never comes back.
If you publish for free, Substack costs nothing and we cost $19/mo past 5,000 contacts — so it wins there too.
Can I take paid subscriptions with Email Bump?
Not natively. There's no billing, paywall or reader checkout. You'd run payments through Stripe or similar and sync paying subscribers in as a segment.
If subscriptions are the business, beehiiv takes 0% and handles it for you — that's a better fit than either Substack or us.
Will I lose readers by leaving Substack?
You keep the list — it exports. What you lose is the recommendation network that was adding to it, and that's a real cost worth weighing rather than waving away.
Most people who move do it once the network's contribution is small relative to the 10% they're paying.
Import a segment and compare
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails free. Run one campaign through both and let the delivery and click numbers decide.