In 2025, around 3,000 creators left Substack. Most cited the 10% fee. Switching to beehiiv or Ghost brought fees down to 0%. Problem solved. But creators who switched still say "making a newsletter is hard." Because a bigger problem remained untouched: the weekly sourcing grind.
Substack takes 10% of all paid subscription revenue. Add Stripe's ~3% processing fee, and the real cost is 13-16%.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
At $10K/month, you're paying the price of a used car in fees every year. The percentage model means the more you earn, the more it stings. It actively punishes growth.
In Q1 2025 alone, roughly 1,000 creators moved to beehiiv. GRIT Capital migrated 360,000 subscribers in one go. beehiiv charges 0% platform fees. Ghost charges 0%. Same newsletter, same subscribers, minus the fee. No reason not to switch.
So far, it sounds like changing platforms fixes everything.
Creators who switched platforms still say the same thing: "Making a newsletter is hard."
Break down how a single newsletter edition gets made, and you'll see why.
| Step | Time | Platform-dependent? |
|---|---|---|
| Sourcing (finding, reading, filtering articles) | 1.5-2 hours | No |
| Summarizing and organizing | 20-30 min | No |
| Writing and editing | 30-45 min | No |
| Publishing (sending the email) | 5 min | Yes |
The platform handles the last 5 minutes. Everything else happens outside the platform.
Substack has no sourcing tools. Neither does beehiiv. Neither does Ghost. Newsletter platforms send emails. They don't find your content for you.
Some creators spend 15 hours a week on sourcing alone. Switching platforms doesn't touch those 15 hours.
Creators have tried to solve this themselves by stitching tools together:
Four tools. Four accounts. Four interfaces. Four pricing plans.
One developer built a Make.com pipeline that "automatically organizes Substack feeds into Notion every morning at 6 AM." Costs under $5/month. But how many newsletter creators can build that themselves?
73% of marketers say they can't maintain a consistent newsletter because they don't have time. Not because tools don't exist. Because they don't have the time or energy to stitch them together.
Let's do the math.
Take a creator earning $10,000/month on Substack.
At $50/hour, that sourcing time costs $26,000/year in opportunity cost. Time that could go toward growing subscribers, landing sponsorships, or building community.
That's more than the fees.
Switching to beehiiv saves $15,600. But the $26,000 stays.
Here's what creators who automated their sourcing actually saw:
Instead of manually scanning hundreds of articles, AI monitors your chosen sources and delivers a summary. Check it for 5 minutes each morning and your content is lined up. No more Feedly-Notion-ChatGPT-Make.com juggling.
And this works regardless of your platform. Substack, beehiiv, Ghost, ConvertKit. Sourcing is a problem that lives outside the platform.
Side by side:
| Switching platforms | Automating sourcing | |
|---|---|---|
| Fee reduction | Yes | - |
| Sourcing time reduction | No | Yes |
| Burnout reduction | No | Yes |
| Content quality improvement | No | Yes |
| Publishing frequency increase | No | Yes |
Switching platforms solves the fee problem. Fair enough.
But the hours spent sourcing every week, the hundreds of "should I include this?" decisions draining your energy, the skipped editions because you ran out of steam. That doesn't change with a new platform.
Before you switch platforms, try fixing your sourcing first.
Curious how newsletter sourcing automation works? Create your first feed. It takes 5 minutes.
A: No. Substack's editor, community features, and network effects are still strong. If the fee isn't a dealbreaker, staying makes sense. The point is that platform choice and sourcing are separate problems. Whichever platform you use, sourcing needs its own solution.
A: No. beehiiv has AI writing assistance and Ghost excels at publishing, but no platform has built-in tools to automatically find newsletter content. Sourcing is not a problem platforms solve.
A: RSS is a good starting point but has limits. It only covers blogs and news sites. Reddit, YouTube, and GitHub are left out. And when feeds pile up to hundreds of unread items, you're back to manual scanning. Multi-source collection paired with AI filtering is what makes it practical.
A: Usually the opposite. When sourcing takes less energy, you can spend more on writing and editing. AI finds the material, you make the final picks and add your perspective. What gets automated is scanning, not judgment.
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