Investment of time, etc. and the accumulation of followers, that leads to an inertia b/c moving to a new platform is a rather large project if you're prolific.

February 07, 2026 - 17:48 UTC

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Since Substack uses Stripe, you can migrate even paid subscribers to another platform that uses Stripe, such as Ghost, without even having to have them set up payments again. You just have to get Substack to unlike themselves from your existing Stripe account so they stop taking their 10% cut.
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My reply was just a basic answer to the question: Why do people stay on the platform?

TY for the overview, tho. I hope other folks read it and learn that tho setting up a new account and migrating one's content takes time, Substack alts do what they can to mitigate the pain.
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Doing this with a self-hosted Ghost is a lot of work, but for the business version of Ghost, their customer support team will handle migration. The monthly charge for that is absolutely gonna be less than the 10% cut that Substack is taking from the most successful newsletters.
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if you’re prolific and have a devoted platform, a statistically significant number of your readers will migrate with you. it happens all the time. this is not an excuse to not do the right thing
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see, it says right here, bsky.app/profile/lollardfish.bsky.social/post/3mebxbfqmj22s
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My reply only covered why many folks --esp academics & journalists who should know better-- likely remain there.

As for the behavior of followers of popular / useful accounts, yes, they do tend to migrate to follow the blog.
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You will also gain new followers who are specifically looking for non-Substack projects!
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There are competitors that have automated migration pathways, even for paid subscribers (by migrating the linked Stripe account). Some of them will charge far less than the 10% cut Substack is taking from them, so even this excuse does not work.
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