Everyone Has a Substack. Do You Need One Too?

If you’ve spent any time online lately, you’ve probably noticed a trend. Everyone seems to have a Substack. Writers, journalists, creators, and even business owners are launching newsletters and building audiences there. It’s grown quickly, and because of that, a lot of people are wondering if they’re missing out by not having one.

I get the question quite a bit, especially from small business owners who are trying to figure out where a newsletter fits into their marketing. The answer isn’t a simple yes or no, because it really depends on how you plan to use it and how it fits into your overall strategy.

Before you jump in, it helps to understand what Substack actually is and where it makes sense.

What is Substack and who is it for?

Substack is a platform that combines email newsletters with a simple publishing system. You can write posts, send them out as emails, and host them on a basic website, all in one place. It also includes built-in paid subscription functionality, which is a big part of its appeal.

It’s especially popular with independent writers and journalists who want to publish on their own terms. Instead of relying on traditional media outlets, they can build their own audience and, in some cases, generate income directly from subscriptions. Creators in all kinds of niches have adopted it for the same reason, and more recently, some businesses have started experimenting with it as a communication tool.

That said, it’s important to recognize that Substack was built with writers in mind first. When businesses try to use it as a core marketing tool, some limitations start to show up.

The pros of using Substack

There’s a lot to like about Substack if your main goal is to write and send newsletters without dealing with technical setup. It’s one of the easiest platforms to get started with, and you can go from zero to publishing in a matter of minutes.

Another major benefit is the built-in monetization. If you want to offer paid subscriptions, Substack handles that for you without needing additional tools or integrations. For writers who are focused on content as their product, that’s a strong advantage.

It also takes care of email delivery behind the scenes. You don’t have to worry about servers, deliverability, or configuration, which removes a lot of the friction that comes with traditional email marketing tools. On top of that, there is some built-in discovery within the platform, which can help people find your content early on.

For the right use case, it’s a very streamlined experience.

The downsides of Substack

Where I start to hesitate is when Substack is being considered as a central piece of a business’s marketing strategy. Your website is typically your home base, and you want that to be something you fully control. With Substack, you’re operating inside someone else’s system, which limits how much control you have over design, functionality, and overall user experience.

Branding is one of the first areas where this becomes noticeable. You don’t have the same flexibility to create a unique look and feel that matches the rest of your business. Everything lives within Substack’s framework, and while it’s clean and functional, it’s not particularly customizable. If you subscribe to more than one Substack, you’ll notice the emails look… pretty much the same.

There’s also the issue of separation. Your website and your newsletter end up living in different places, which can make your overall marketing feel disconnected. Instead of everything working together as one system, you’re managing separate platforms that don’t naturally communicate with each other.

The integration problem and why it matters

One of the biggest limitations of Substack, especially for business use, is the lack of integrations. There isn’t much in the way of direct integration with WordPress, so your website and your newsletter don’t share data in a meaningful way. You can link between them or embed forms, but that’s about where it stops.

More importantly, Substack does not have a Zapier integration. That might not sound like a big deal at first, but it has real implications for how your business operates behind the scenes.

Zapier is often the glue that connects different tools in a marketing stack. It allows you to automate tasks like adding subscribers to a CRM, triggering follow-up emails, or syncing data between platforms. Without that connection, you lose a lot of automation potential and end up doing more things manually.

Over time, that adds up. It makes your processes less efficient and limits your ability to scale your marketing efforts in a clean, organized way. For a writer sending occasional newsletters, that might be fine. For a business trying to streamline operations, it can become a bottleneck.

Automation: where Substack falls short

Automation is one of those things that doesn’t seem like a big deal at first, but it becomes incredibly important as your business grows. This is an area where Substack is noticeably limited compared to traditional email marketing platforms.

Substack does have some basic automation, but it’s pretty minimal. You can set up a welcome email for new subscribers, and you can create simple email sequences for paid subscribers. That’s about the extent of it. There’s no real visual automation builder, no branching logic, and no ability to create complex customer journeys based on behavior.

For example, you can’t easily say, “If someone downloads this guide, send them a follow-up series over the next two weeks, and if they click a specific link, move them into a different sequence.” That kind of logic just isn’t part of how Substack is built. It’s designed more for publishing than for marketing automation.

Now compare that to something like Mailchimp or MailerLite, and it’s a completely different story.

With those platforms, automation is a core feature. You can build out entire workflows that respond to user behavior. Someone fills out a form on your WordPress site, they get added to a list, tagged based on their interest, and dropped into a sequence that nurtures them over time. If they click a link, visit a page, or make a purchase, you can trigger different actions automatically.

You can also segment your audience in much more meaningful ways. Instead of sending the same email to everyone, you can tailor your messaging based on what people have done, what they’re interested in, or where they are in your sales process. That level of targeting can make a big difference in engagement and conversions.

Another big advantage is how these tools integrate with everything else. When you pair something like MailerLite or Mailchimp with WordPress, your forms, landing pages, and content all feed into the same system. Add in tools like Zapier, and you can connect your email platform to your CRM, your booking system, or just about anything else you use in your business.

Substack doesn’t really play in that space. Without deeper automation and without integrations like Zapier, you’re mostly limited to sending broadcasts and very simple sequences. That’s fine if your goal is just to write and send newsletters, but it becomes a limitation if you’re trying to build a more sophisticated marketing system.

So when you’re evaluating whether Substack makes sense, think about where you are now and where you want to go. If you expect to rely on automation to save time, nurture leads, and create a more personalized experience, a traditional email platform paired with WordPress is going to give you far more flexibility.

The SEO implications of Substack vs. WordPress

This is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle, and it’s often overlooked.

When you publish content on your own WordPress website, you are building SEO value directly on your domain. Every blog post, every keyword you target, and every internal link contributes to your site’s authority over time. That’s how you create long-term, compounding traffic from search engines.

WordPress also gives you full control over how your content is optimized. You can manage page titles, meta descriptions, URLs, image alt text, and internal linking strategies in a very intentional way . That level of control makes a big difference when you’re trying to rank in search results.

With Substack, things work differently. By default, your content lives on a Substack subdomain, which means the SEO value you’re building is tied to their platform rather than your own website. While your posts can still appear in search results, you’re not strengthening your main business domain in the process.

Now, Substack does allow you to use a custom domain, and that can improve things from an SEO standpoint. If you connect your own domain, your content is no longer sitting on a subdomain you don’t control, which helps keep your branding consistent and allows some SEO value to accrue to your domain.

However, even with a custom domain, you’re still limited by the platform. You don’t have the same level of control over technical SEO, site structure, or advanced optimization options that you would have with WordPress. You’re also separating your content from the rest of your website unless you fully commit to using Substack as your primary site, which most businesses shouldn’t do.

The bigger issue is fragmentation. If part of your content lives on your WordPress site and part lives on Substack, you’re splitting your SEO efforts. Instead of building one strong domain, you’re spreading that value across multiple platforms, which weakens your overall strategy.

Pros and cons at a glance

Here’s a quick breakdown to bring it all together.

So, do you actually need a Substack?

For most small businesses, the answer is no. That doesn’t mean Substack is a bad tool, it just means it’s not designed to be the foundation of a business website and marketing strategy.

If your goal is to build your brand, generate leads, and grow your business, you’re usually better off keeping everything centered around your own website. A WordPress site gives you control, flexibility, and the ability to create a system where your content, SEO, and email marketing all work together.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a newsletter. In fact, I think most businesses should. The key is where and how you build it.

If you’re primarily a writer and your content is the product, Substack can make a lot of sense. If you’re running a service-based business, it’s better used as a secondary channel, if at all.

At the end of the day, the goal isn’t to follow a trend. The goal is to build something that supports your business long term, and in most cases, that starts with a website you fully own and control.