> Blogging, Newsletter & Co.: Well, as you can see, I’m writing on Substack. There are no alternatives except to host it entirely yourself, but that doesn’t make sense to me right now.

This is wrong. There are loads of alternatives, which I can't remember at the moment. AlternativeTo.net lists Hyvor Blogs (https://blogs.hyvor.com/), which isn't one of the ones I was familiar with and cannot vouch for, but serves as an existence proof. Does anyone know any better ones?

while a blog is like the simplest thing you can self-host apart from static sites

https://ghost.org — Open-source run by a non-profit headquartered in Singapore.

Keila: https://www.keila.io/

Open-source, managed service, based in Germany, and integrates with Proton. Authoring in a block editor or Markdown. Optional built-in analytics with a focus on preserving privacy. Web-hosted posts added about two weeks ago.

Substack is both a blogging platform and a micro-social network with a feed and a subscriptions SaaS so really depends on what parts you want from it the most

You probably know but Substacks’ free speech thing is a huge turn off.

That’s how you end up sending push notifications for your latest Nazi content.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/substacks-nazi-p...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/11/substack-e...

From what I've heard from people who insist on using Substack even though it's American, VC-funded and full of dark patterns, they are trying to make money from their writing and are actively hoping to capitalize on its social network features. Basically they want Instagram or YouTube for text, they want "the algorithm", they want the recommendations, they want the analytics, they want the money or the fame more than they want to uphold their indie values. There is no non-US alternative that provides an equal-sized network effect, but if there was it would anyway be problematic because that whole model of monetization where the platform refuses to take any editorial responsibility incentivizes the production of clickbait, ragebait, misinformation/disinformation, scams, slop etc.

Of course for ordinary people there has always been an alternative to Substack, and it's the Bcc field in their email client. For folks looking to self-publish on the web, Wordpress has been around for decades now - there is no excuse for any serious writer or journalist not to know about it and the multitude of managed hosting options. Even for a newsletter-first option, there is Ghost. But if you discuss this with writers who move to Substack the answer is always the same - they want to try access the money or the fame that may come from being on the most popular social network for writing. I think the only fix for this broken ecosystem is for governments to dismantle these sorts of companies, but the US will never kill their golden geese - they are gladly taking a cut from every other country's content creators.

https://www.beehiiv.com/ is another one.

boosty.to is a Substack alternative, outside of both the US and the EU.