Seems quite involved but not beyond the capabilities of anyone familiar with self-hosting. The email stuff seems like the most difficult thing to sort out. I can see why many would just pay for...
Seems quite involved but not beyond the capabilities of anyone familiar with self-hosting. The email stuff seems like the most difficult thing to sort out. I can see why many would just pay for Ghost to host their newsletter.
I can't imagine her panic when Substack replied saying they couldn't disconnect her Stripe account from Substack without canceling all existing paid subscriptions. Really putting Substack's promises about writer control to the test.
Interesting write up from a technical perspective. I couldn't shake the thought of "everything old is new again" as writing blogs and sending out newsletters also started out with people self...
Interesting write up from a technical perspective. I couldn't shake the thought of "everything old is new again" as writing blogs and sending out newsletters also started out with people self hosting. I mean, it is what made WordPress what it is today.
The biggest difference here to me seems to be the paying subscribers bit. Blog writers of decades past could have only hoped for such a potential income stream. But it does indeed come with extra administrative challenges when moving platforms.
I suppose sending out mail newsletters also has gotten more challenging over the years due to all anti-spam measures in place.
Which also brings me to my last thoughts on this. Managing the tech stack to do this isn't straightforward for everyone. In fact, I sometimes feel that it has gotten more complex over the years. Going back a decade or two self hosting of most things meant it was written in php and you could realistically do so on most shared webhosting offerings as they all come with php.
Some of the challenges for this author are also the result of them working around substack limitations with "hacks". So, I wonder if there are still more accessible migration paths to self hosting for other people who might not have the skills to code custom migration scripts.
In the section about migrating payments, I could palpably feel her fear. One could save a lot of time and headache by starting with this setup. That said, $103 per month is pretty steep for...
In the section about migrating payments, I could palpably feel her fear.
One could save a lot of time and headache by starting with this setup. That said, $103 per month is pretty steep for someone just starting out.
Seems quite involved but not beyond the capabilities of anyone familiar with self-hosting. The email stuff seems like the most difficult thing to sort out. I can see why many would just pay for Ghost to host their newsletter.
I can't imagine her panic when Substack replied saying they couldn't disconnect her Stripe account from Substack without canceling all existing paid subscriptions. Really putting Substack's promises about writer control to the test.
Interesting write up from a technical perspective. I couldn't shake the thought of "everything old is new again" as writing blogs and sending out newsletters also started out with people self hosting. I mean, it is what made WordPress what it is today.
The biggest difference here to me seems to be the paying subscribers bit. Blog writers of decades past could have only hoped for such a potential income stream. But it does indeed come with extra administrative challenges when moving platforms.
I suppose sending out mail newsletters also has gotten more challenging over the years due to all anti-spam measures in place.
Which also brings me to my last thoughts on this. Managing the tech stack to do this isn't straightforward for everyone. In fact, I sometimes feel that it has gotten more complex over the years. Going back a decade or two self hosting of most things meant it was written in php and you could realistically do so on most shared webhosting offerings as they all come with php.
Some of the challenges for this author are also the result of them working around substack limitations with "hacks". So, I wonder if there are still more accessible migration paths to self hosting for other people who might not have the skills to code custom migration scripts.
In the section about migrating payments, I could palpably feel her fear.
One could save a lot of time and headache by starting with this setup. That said, $103 per month is pretty steep for someone just starting out.