Trying to Choose a New Platform

As I look at various choices for moving from Substack to another blog hosting platform, I am confounded by the focus on monetizing blogs. My interest is in writing and communicating, not monetizing. This is making it more difficult to find a new host.

I notice that while many choices are branded and marketed differently, there is a division based on community: some platforms support the creation of a community of members/subscribers but most do not. Most are simply blogging systems that are positions as newsletters because they send your blog post to your subscribers.

One of the things Substack does very well is provide for commenting on posts. This is a way to engage with subscribers inside the Substack system. Without that feature, subscribers have to go to some other platform (social media) to engage with the author, and that is only if the author provides that means of communication. In Substack, commenters can engage with each other, advancing the conversation even without the author's participation.

I'm not finding many options that include a community feature like Substack provides. WordPress is one such system. Memberful is another. But services like Ghost, Write.As, Mailerlite, ConvertKit, Buttondown, Beehiiv, and Omnisend are missing community features. Even this service -- listed.to -- lacks commenting.

For me, the ability to have meaningful interactions with subscribers is the key discriminator. I simply do not want to write as if I'm broadcasting my words onto a billboard as the world whizzes by. It is the reactions and interactions that interest me, perhaps more than the content I write about!

It looks like my choices are boiling down to Substack and WordPress...and at the suggestion of one subscriber, maybe both!