Moving from Substack

Three things move: your paid readers, your posts, and your free readers. Together they take an afternoon, most of it waiting for Substack's export email.

1. Paid readers, without re-billing anyone

Substack charges your readers through your Stripe account, not theirs. Pub works the same way. So: on your publication's Payments page, connect that same Stripe account. Then press "Look for paying readers". Pub lists the subscriptions it finds, grouped by product, and you pick which ones belong to this publication. Those readers become paid subscribers here at once. Nothing changes on Stripe: they keep paying what they paid, on the same schedule, and Pub never charges its fee on them.

Once they're here, turn off paid subscriptions on Substack so nobody gets emailed twice.

2. Posts

On Substack, open Settings, then Exports, and create a new export. Substack emails you a zip. On your publication's Settings page here, under "Import posts from Substack", upload that zip. Posts come in as Markdown with their titles, subtitles, dates and paid/free setting. Substack's subscribe buttons and widgets are dropped; the paywall becomes a paywall line you can move. Images keep pointing at Substack's servers for now.

3. Free readers

On Substack's Subscribers page, export the list as CSV. On your Subscribers page here, upload it and tick "They're moving with me from another platform". Everyone on it gets one email saying your newsletter has moved, with a button to keep receiving it. People who turned email off on Substack are left out. This step costs you some readers, and it's the honest way to move a list: nobody gets email they didn't ask for again.

Then

Set your look under Settings, point your own domain at it if you have one, and send your first post. Reply to any email from us if something doesn't come across right.