What it is

Substack hosts newsletters and their web archive, handles paid subscriptions and payouts, and runs a social layer — Notes, recommendations, an app feed and video — that redistributes posts to other Substack readers. There is no monthly fee; it takes a cut of paid subscriptions only.

Why it earns a slot

The network is the product: recommendations from established writers are a subscriber source no self-hosted newsletter can replicate. Zero fixed cost lets a content site run free for years and pay only when readers do.

Know before you commit

That 10% is permanent and compounds — at $10k/mo in subscriptions you pay $1,000/mo where beehiiv or Ghost charges a flat fee. Design, SEO control and layout are limited, and the archive lives on their domain unless you map your own.

Field notes

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Pricing snapshot

Free to publish — no monthly platform fee at any list size. Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, plus Stripe processing of roughly 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

Snapshots move fast — verify at checkout, and post a field note if it changed.

Drop into your Lovable chat

Evaluate Substack (https://substack.com) for this project, then use it only if it fits what we are already building.
Context: Newsletter network, revenue share. Substack hosts newsletters and their web archive, handles paid subscriptions and payouts, and runs a social layer — Notes, recommendations, an app feed and video — that redistributes posts to other Substack readers. There is no monthly fee; it takes a cut of paid subscriptions only.
Reviewer notes (general, not written for this codebase): The network is the product: recommendations from established writers are a subscriber source no self-hosted newsletter can replicate. Zero fixed cost lets a content site run free for years and pay only when readers do.
Watch out for: That 10% is permanent and compounds — at $10k/mo in subscriptions you pay $1,000/mo where beehiiv or Ghost charges a flat fee. Design, SEO control and layout are limited, and the archive lives on their domain unless you map your own.
Pricing: Free to publish — no monthly platform fee at any list size. Substack takes 10% of paid subscription revenue, plus Stripe processing of roughly 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Rules: treat the notes above as background only. Do not assume a theme, style, layout or feature that is not already in this project — inspect the existing code first and ask me before changing visual direction.

/api/public/tools/substack

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