Why Popular Newsletter Writers Are Leaving Substack
Over the past two years, several well-known newsletter writers have moved their work away from Substack to other platforms. The main reason is money. Publishers say they can save significant costs by switching, and that Substack's fee structure becomes increasingly expensive as their audience grows.
The money question is straightforward. Sean Highkin, who publishes The Rose Garden Report, moved from Substack to Ghost in April 2024. His annual costs dropped from $4,968 on Substack to $2,052 on Ghost. Matt Brown runs a newsletter called Extra Points with 71,000 subscribers. On Substack, he would pay over $25,000 per year. Instead, he switched to Beehiiv and now pays around $3,000 annually.
Other notable publishers have left too. The Ankler moved to Passport. Anne Helen Petersen shifted Culture Study to Patreon in October 2024. Mehdi Hasan's Zeteo and Emily Sundberg's Feed Me have looked into alternatives. These departures span different types of newsletters and different political viewpoints, suggesting the problem is broader than one disagreement.
How Substack's Pricing Works
When Substack launched in 2017, the deal was simple. Writers could build an audience and keep 90 percent of what subscribers paid. Substack took 10 percent for handling the technology and payment processing. This worked well for new writers starting from scratch. But as a newsletter grows, that 10 percent fee becomes larger in absolute dollars.
Think of it this way: if your newsletter makes $300,000 a year, Substack takes $30,000. That's a meaningful amount of money.
Other platforms, like Ghost and Beehiiv, charge a flat annual fee instead. That fee stays the same whether you have 1,000 subscribers or 100,000 subscribers. For large newsletters, this model is far cheaper than giving away 10 percent of every dollar.
Writers who reach meaningful size face a difficult choice. They can stay on Substack and pay more as they succeed. Or they can move to a different platform and keep more of their revenue. But moving is complicated and risky.
Why Some Publishers Leave for Political Reasons
Beyond economics, some writers have left Substack over disagreements about content. Sharon Hurley Hall and Sam from Roots of Change Media said they did not want their subscription revenue supporting what they saw as extremist content elsewhere on the platform. Both objected to how Substack moderates content and sent a letter to the company about it.
This tension appears elsewhere in the media business. Platforms must choose between allowing open speech and maintaining an environment advertisers like. That choice affects how creators feel about being on the platform. When creators rely entirely on a platform for income, those disagreements hit their wallet directly.
Moving Is Hard but Getting Easier
When a newsletter moves platforms, several things need to happen. The subscriber list must transfer over. Payment processing must switch. The archive of past newsletters must move. Readers sometimes get lost in the shuffle.
Success rates are improving. Publishers who move properly typically keep 85 to 90 percent of their paying subscribers. Ghost offers a tool that imports Substack newsletters automatically. Beehiiv provides similar options but requires more hands-on work for complex setups.
The technical barriers that once made platform switching difficult have largely disappeared. Competing platforms can now do what Substack does. Some even offer features Substack doesn't have, like better analytics or the ability to test different subject lines to see which ones people open more.
Writers planning a move often run both platforms at the same time for one to two months. This slows things down and requires extra work, but it keeps readers and revenue steady while testing the new platform.
The Bigger Picture
What we are seeing is a shift in how newsletter platforms compete. When Substack started, no one else was doing this kind of publishing platform. That gave Substack an advantage. Now other companies have built competing services. Those competitors can target the exact frustrations successful writers have — specifically, the way Substack's fee structure gets more expensive as you succeed.
This pattern has happened before in media technology. YouTube grew successful for video creators, but TikTok took away users by offering a different approach. Twitter had dominance in social media until newer platforms appeared.
The core tension is this: platforms that take a percentage of creator earnings have strong incentives to help creators grow at first. But once creators are large and successful, the platform benefits from every dollar they make, which can feel like a punishment for success. Flat-fee platforms avoid this problem, but they lose something else — the built-in motivation to help creators grow.
The newsletter exodus also shows how quickly it becomes possible to move between platforms once the necessary tools exist. Import features, standardized data formats, and competing platforms that welcome newcomers all add up. Over time, these tools reduce what used to be a significant cost of switching. That forces platforms to earn loyalty through genuine value rather than simply making it hard to leave.
