Substack Reviews

by Pseudotsuga

Update: as a writer using this app, I would not recommend that writers jump onto the this app platform until things get worked out. Stripe, the company that processes payments, charges 15%. That is outrageous and unacceptable, and they don’t tell you that up front. As stated before, there is NO way to contact any customer service. While there are some things I like about this app, I really regret having jumped into it at this point. Now that I have subscribers, there is no easy way to just stop. I think that’s what this app is counting on.

Currently, Substack is not working. There is NO customer service. You cannot talk to a human being if you encounter a problem. The thing I like about this app is it’s simplicity. It’s a newsletter only, without extra nonsense. It’s great when it works. When it doesn’t work, I guess you just have to hope it does work again, eventually, somehow.

I got the impression that this app was all about connecting readers and writers, and the whole concept seemed clean and honest. So far, it is not turning out that way.

by Cg593

I downloaded Substack yesterday and have tried five times to enter in my email address to get started. I get the email, click the link, and get an error on my iPhone saying “The network connection has been lost”, and then Substack asks me for my email address again. I do not want to leave a one-star review without having seen Substack (I’m actually very excited for it!) but apparently you can’t contact this app’s tech support without logging in, and I cannot log in, so…here’s hoping someone sees this and addresses the bug. I’m on an iPhone 7, iOS 15.3.1, if that helps.

by Catpondrain

For a reading app, it’s disappointing you cannot adjust font size or have a dark mode.

However, the biggest issue for me is that you cannot sort comments. The main newsletter I spend time with is VERY comment heavy, and that is a big part of the experience. On the website I can sort comments on various way (by new, chronologically, etc). Without that feature it makes Substack useless for my purposes.

Im deleting Substack and will come back in a couple months hoping for a fix on these features.

by Bmc Atx

Substack is a mixed bag but has promise.

On the “needs improvement” side: Substack only uses a random serif font that appears to be 10 points in size (maybe 9), with text in single space. Neither the font size nor the type are adjustable.

It’s a poor reading experience. And … this is a reading app! It’s job is to produce a great reading experience. Which it decidedly does not do.

Hopefully future improvements will include letting the reader adjust the font size, have greater line spacing and let the reader choose from fonts. These are all pretty common for reader apps.

On the good side: Substack ’s business logic and organization work flawlessly. It’s nice to be able to see articles from my various this app subscriptions organized in chronological order. This works well.

So, the apps does the hard things well (management and presentation of content from various subscriptions) and does a quite mediocre job on the garden variety UI stuff that most reading apps already do. Hopefully they will improve that in future updates.

by Rkdvh

For the most part I’m really enjoying the this app app. The UI is great, it’s easy to navigate between specific substacks or just look at your combined chronological feed, etc. I’m only giving three stars for now because there are a few features missing (or not working on my device? iPhone X, so not that old):

- minimize comment thread! This exists on the main site, so hopefully it was just a small oversight (or it wasn’t considered a priority for release) that it’s not on Substack

… - minimizing a comment thread should send you to the next comment, rather that keeping your distance scrolled constant. This matters because oftentimes I’ll spend some time reading replies and then want to close the parent comment and move on to the next one, but the way minimizing works on the desktop site if you do that you’ll be in the middle of the replies to a later comment

- if you tap the top of the screen and are sent back to the top of the article, it would be nice to be able to tap it again to return to where you were. As someone with aggressive thumbs this feature is a lifesaver elsewhere that it exists

Again, Substack is mostly great, but these three issues are huge for my enjoyment, so I’ll be leaving my review at 3/5 until they’re added.

by ChadAHall

I was really excited to see there was finally a this app app and I was really pleased with the experience of Substack until I realized I wasn’t receiving all my posts into my inbox. I’m baffled by this but it turns out that rather than including your whole feed inside Substack it only shows posts that were sent as emails. making this a essentially a sandboxed email app rather that a this app specific feed reader. This means that you will be completely aware of any posts your subscriptions post to the web only. And in turn this means that if you want to read ALL of your feed Substack (what a crazy idea!) you need to go to each subscription individually to check for any posts not sent as email. Nobody is going to do that. Nobody sane. The funniest part is that the “beta” version of Reader on the web DOES show all post in your feed. So until this is resolved I will be deleting Substack and sticking with the web.

by Justindametz

Loving this new app, so much more convenient than digging through inboxes to find my
Subscriptions. I’d make one suggestion to make this a five star review: let me sort my unread items oldest to newest! I want to read in order I receive, so I don’t want the newest ones at the top. Keep up the great work!

by Lara5

I got excited about this app after a podcast I listened to described it as a great alternative to top-down CEO-driven mass media. There’s a lot of great content here that you won’t see in a newspaper. Comments also tend to be civilized discussions rather than the dumpster fires you see in social media.

My only complaint is the user experience. I wish there was a news feed that displayed all the popular articles from a variety of sources. Instead I have to pick through categories and individual newsletters one-by-one to find something interesting and I feel like I’m missing a lot, especially from categories I don’t usually read. It would also be nice if podcasts were separated from articles. Finally, the email spam after subscribing fo each newsletter is really annoying. All of that should be handled in Substack .

by WatchmenFan91

My inbox is overly stuffed all the time, so to have all my new Substacks grouped together and separated is a good thing. Substack is well organized and it’s right there when I’m in the mood to read, almost like a newsstand. I wish there was a trash button (or should I be archiving everything?), because I like to toss things when I’m done.

by Ryan In Seattle

Right now it seems the only way to not get notifications for a newsletter I’m paying for to is either to stop paying or disable all notifications. Both are bad options.

by Ebodera

This is honestly the only place worth spending time to read the news.

Corporate journalism simply cannot be trusted. You can’t ever believe that a reporter working for a corporation is telling you what they really want to be telling.

On this app you can directly support world class journalists like Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi and trust that they’re being 100% forthright with you.

by Surfkevin

I subscribe to a dozen or more this app newsletters. I’m also one of those people who has a fraught relationship with their e-mail inbox. I don’t want to spend more time in my inbox(es)! Substack is delicious nectar from heaven. It just works. My newsletters show up. The reading experience is smooth. Substack is quick. And I don’t have to be distracted by the wayward work email or wild email promo when trying to catch up on reading. The inbox reminds me of the good old days of social media. I subscribe to certain creators and what they published is served up to me in chronological order!!! Thanks for building this. Excited to see what comes next.

by Ahmedbright

I am really excited about Substack, thanks to Glenn Greenwald who first introduced me to this app with his great articles and today notified us about the release of this long awaited app, I almost dependent on this app for deep political and cultural analysis of our crazy world, Substack interface is cool and easy, love it,I am a big fan from Egypt 🇪🇬

by Looking For Rules

So far this is my first day being a paid customer, and IMO that’s probably the best $5:99 I’ve paid for Boxing info!! So much that I joined this morning and here it is Almost 8 O’clock and I don’t think I’ve picked up my head except to go to the bathroom…lol when Dan says you get more he’s definitely being Honest! I highly recommend Substack

by JayMacVA

I am thrilled to have the this app app now. I write at Goose and Gander, so it is great to have fingertip access to all my columns. But even better is to have notifications and quick access to all the great columns that others write. Substack works great and is easy to use. Way to go this app!

by Rahagar

I really enjoy this app. So many great journalists and writers sharing a lot of what they do on a variety of subjects. So far Substack has been great. It’s really nice having all the new articles come to Substack instead of my email in box.

Well done!

by Ayal18

It was very exciting to discover Substack and clean out my inbox from all the this app emails! I would only suggest to add a filter to Substack 's inbox screen so that users can filter and view unread/unarchived by a single source. Thanks!

by Silverblaze11

I’m very grateful for this app and thank you for Substack . I have struggled to access content though I subscribe to at least 5 separate authors/ content providers
You also gave me a good idea about checking my spam

by Southron John

In a remarkably short period of time sub stack has become the last bastion of honest unedited (and unexpurgated) writing. The collection of writers from Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald to Andrew Sullivan, David French, and Lyons seems to have become the last great hope for free thought against a rising tide of KantAnd groupthink. It is well worth picking some writers and funding them as if you may not have a choice in the future. Because that is a possibility.

by PrestonGently

My request is there is a way to pick up where I left off when listening to audio. When I leave an article that has audio, there doesn’t seem to be a standalone audio player that will allow me to continue to browse while listening to an audio from a different creator within Substack .

by Phuqit

I’m a devoted this app subscriber for one simple reason: with the exception of some content from “The Wall Street Journal,” and “The Spectator,” newspapers (the UK edition is a weekly newspaper—published as what is a glossy-paged magazine, in American vernacular) I don’t trust the legacy media, nor the Twitter/Meta-world/Google triumvirate to give me straight journalism. I get to choose to read whom I trust, not be force fed Pravda-esque propaganda because that’s all there is. I occasionally read stories in the NY Post, because I trust the integrity of Miranda Divine and the editorial staff in general. However, this app is my oasis in the desert of modern journalism.

by J Johannes K

Everything is super clean and it’s not mixed together with all my other email. Comments are right there. Hard to imagine going back to reading newsletters in my email inbox.