Substack lets you subscribe as an in-app purchase – but you shouldn’t

Indie content platform Substack now lets you subscribe to newsletters, podcasts, and video channels via an in-app purchase.

However, while this removes friction from the subscription sign-up process, you definitely shouldn’t use it, for two reasons …

The last few years have seen growth in subscriber-funded independent newsletters, with Ben Thompson’s Stratechery one of the earlier successful examples.

Substack was created to handle the business aspects of this, leaving independent creators free to focus all their efforts on the content itself. The platform is now home to well over a million subscriptions.

When the judge in the Epic Games lawsuit forced Apple to allow links to external payment systems, Substack was one of the companies which welcomed this development. However, Engadget reports that it is also now supporting in-app purchases.

Substack now lets users subscribe to any paid publication via an in-app purchase from the official iOS app. The news comes after the company tested the feature with 30,000 creators. This makes subscribing to something a much speedier affair, with the entire process taking just a few taps on the old smartphone screen.

While it’s easier to sign up this way than the multiple steps required to use an external payment platform, be warned that it is more expensive. Substack is ensuring that creators continue to receive the same net payment, and Apple’s commission means that the only way it can achieve this is by charging a higher rate for in-app subscriptions.

Creators do have the option of taking a smaller cut in order to keep the subscription the same, but this obviously hurts them. Even when the cost is the same, it’s kinder to use the external payment options.

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Photo by Joshua Lawrence on Unsplash

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