I'm a Substack "Bestseller." Here's why I'm considering leaving the platform.

Why I've lost trust in the platform over the last four months.

UPDATE: I heard from Substack after publishing this post. I’ve included their responses at the end and my reaction.

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Toward the end of last year, I was approached by a business coach. One of her clients had seen my growth on Substack and had heard me singing the platform’s praises. She asked me if I would join her monthly masterclass and give a presentation on the benefits of Substack to her clients.

I gladly obliged.

I loved Substack. I had become a “bestseller”—one of Substack’s highest honors for any publication—the previous fall after only being on the platform for seven months. I wasn’t making a ton of money, but I was reaching new people regularly and was growing. I absolutely loved the platform’s freedoms, innovations, and the community that I had found. I accepted the invitation and gave a pretty convincing presentation as to why creators should join.

Fast forward to today and there is no way in good conscience I could accept a similar invitation to try and convince people to join Substack. Not after what I’ve seen and experienced over the last four months.

In fact, I’m seriously considering leaving the platform all together, and I know I’m not the only one. Why? Because what has happened to me over the last few months (especially the last few weeks) and the trouble the platform has caused has (nearly) completely eroded my trust in Substack, the team running it, and where it’s headed in the future.

Below is my story. I’m going to try and be as fair as possible, but I think each chapter shows that Substack is growing really big, really fast, and the writers that give the platform its life are becoming casualties of that growth.

The First Sign of a Bigger Problem

Let me be clear: Substack is a startup. It’s only been around for about 8 years. Why is that important? Because there are going to be growing pains. I get that. I’ve worked for startups before. So when I joined Substack in March of 2024, I knew what I was signing up for. And for 10 months whenever I encountered an issue, I chalked it up to the cost of doing business. That’s normal.

Then January happened. January 30, to be exact.

I won’t bore you with the details, but there are several ways you can grow your email list/subscriber count on Substack. One of them is “importing” emails that you get elsewhere. Well, I have a form on my website and also run a small Facebook ad telling people abut my newsletter and asking them to sign up. Both consistently produce new subscribers. That means every day I import email addresses.

For 10 months, the process was painless. I’d either paste the emails directly into the subscriber box on Substack, or put the addresses in Excel, go to the “import” section, and then upload the file. The new addresses would show up in minutes.

But on January 30, I noticed that every time I uploaded a file it would could stuck and a message would appear: “under review.” And not just for a couple hours, but for several days.

That concerned me. My livelihood is my email list. I don’t make a lot of money from it, but the goal is to build it up so that when I do have something to offer—like my book coming this fall—I have an engaged audience that will want to buy it. What is one of the best ways to make sure your audience is engaged? By getting them into your list and receiving emails as soon as possible. The sooner you can start talking with them from the moment they say“I want your emails,” the more likely they are to stick around. Having to wait several days for me to be able to make that first touchpoint, then, was problematic.

So I emailed Substack support to ask what was going on. As a “bestseller” I get access to their support inbox. But instead of responding with why my email imports were now being put “under review,” I was told that the addresses I uploaded were now “validated and approved.” No further explanation.

But the problem kept happening. Every. Single. Time. When I inquired several more times asking for an explanation, this is the closest I got to getting one:

I wish to clarify that there's nothing specific to your account that is causing this issue. The challenges you've been observing with imports are part of ongoing optimizations we are making to our overall import model. Our goal is to ensure security, data integrity and improve user experience. While doing so, some changes may result in unexpected behavior, such as certain imports requiring additional review.

OK. “Ongoing optimizations.” I then asked if that meant that every single import would be put “under review” going forward. The response:

That is not typical behavior you should expect with every import. Our current work with the import model aims to streamline the process and reduce instances of unnecessary review. Once our updates are complete, the import process should become much more efficient. We apologize for the inconvenience.

“Not typical.” Great!

Spoiler: To this day, every single one of my imports goes “under review” before the names are eventually added to my list. It’s actually, then, become quite typical. (To be fair, it now takes a few hours instead of a few days.) But one of the most frustrating aspects was how many emails I had to send to even get that response.

“Office Hours”

As the spring went on, my concern deepened. Once again, as a “bestseller” I get access to a weekly chat called “office hours” where the Substack team opens up a thread and allows fellow bestsellers to ask questions. The most popular “questions” are about bugs or issues.

So when I started experiencing subscriber import issues, I brought it up in the chat. Instead of gaining helpful insight, though, the response seemed canned and was actually unrelated to what I was experiencing:

On top of that, I started noticing that the responses from the Substack team were regularly copied and pasted amongst threads. That was a bit of a red flag. Certainly it’s not unheard of to recycle responses. But I started noticing more and more that the responses were becoming so automatic that they weren’t even addressing the issue.

Increasingly, something that is supposed to be helpful (a chat with support among the top tier of users) is actually the opposite. And some of Substack’s most ardent users—their bestsellers—are yelling into the void and only hearing empty echos responding. And if that’s how the “top” producers are treated, I can only imagine what’s happening with “regular” users.

The Big One

All of that, though, pales in comparison to what has happened over the last few weeks. The previous frustrations I determined I could live with. They were annoying, but they were “doable.”

This one? I’m not so sure. And that’s because it deals what I think is a gross breach of trust and the central agreement we’ve all made with Substack when we decided to host our email lists on their platform.

I remember exactly where I was on April 3 when I noticed the drop. I snuck away to a side room of the university where I’m taking masters classes after meeting with a professor for lunch. I pulled up my Substack like I do several times a day and noticed something concerning: a massive drop in subscribers.

I knew I had a bunch of “comp” subscriptions ending, but the charts showed two really odd things. First, while the concluding “comps” accurately led to a dip in paying subscribers (comps are counted as “paying”), the chart showed a corresponding and immediate spike in paying subscribers.

But the biggest issue was another chart showing that I had inexplicably lost 300 subscribers.

Poof. Gone. Vanished.

That’s a lot of people. I get, at that point I had around 8,300 subscribers. So 300 shouldn’t be a big deal.

But it is a big deal. I have fought for every single one of those people. I don’t take it lightly when someone gives me real estate in their inbox. And I treat it with care. So to lose 300 people in an instant is shocking. I’ve never lost that many people or even close.

So, I reached out to support.

Support did get back to me initially. Their suggestion was that maybe I deleted the 300+ names myself and didn’t realize it. I can assure you, and I assured them, that wasn’t the case. This is my livelihood, after all. I’m careful.

So the support staff assured me they would send it to engineering and I’d hear back. In the meantime, I noticed two other anomalies:

1. There’s a massive discrepancy between how many names are on my list when I download a spreadsheet of that list in the “import/export” section of the settings, versus when I download my email list from the three dots below the graph in the “subscribers” section. We’re talking nearly a thousand email addresses! That’s shocking. How many people do I really have on my list???

2. Every night before I go to bed, I’ve been checking how many subscribers I have, and then again when I wake up. When I mysteriously lost my 300 subscribers, I started noticing something odd: I’d go to bed and it would say I have XXXX subscribers for that day. But when I’d wake up, while the number of total subscribers would be the same, the previous day’s number would be revised down much lower. For example, look at the graphs below for April 10. The first screenshot is from the night of April 10. The second is from the morning of April 11:

   

   

Do you see how the total subscriber number is the same at the top of both? And yet, the day’s number in the graph for April 10 is different. This has been happening most every morning for weeks. Statistically, it’s impossible. For example, that would mean that I would have LOST exactly 58 subscribers b/t 10p-6a overnight (April 10-11), and also gained exactly 58 in the same amount of time. However, when I looked at my subscriber dashboard for April 10 and the morning of the 11th, it said I only had six people sign up during that time.

So what’s happening? I don’t know. As it stands, I have not gotten an explanation. I was told the issue was being escalated to “engineering.” When I followed up today about the status of the issue, I received the following response:

In full transparency, this might not be prioritized by our engineers, and there's no specific timeframe for when they'll be able to resolve it. I can assure you that they'll get to it as soon as they can. … I apologize for any inconvenience.

I think “inconvenience” is the least of my worries.

Possible Explanations

I told you I wanted to be fair in this post. First of all, I don’t want to disparage the customer service representatives. I’m sure their hands are tied. (Although I have admittedly been frustrated with them at times since January.) In that spirit of fairness, then, here are some possible explanations for what’s going on:

1. Substack recently updated how they display graphs. What I’m seeing could simply be an issue with how subscribers are being displayed and nothing more. I pray it’s this.

2. Substack is not immune from having fake bot accounts on the platform. Could it be that on April 3 Substack did a massive purge of bot accounts? It could. But then how does that explain the ongoing issues I’m experiencing with the previous day’s subscriber numbers being revised every morning?

3. In publishing a code update to the platform, subscribers to my list were accidentally erased by Substack. Yikes!

4. 300 people did actually unsubscribe at the same time. And people continue to unsubscribe at levels never previously seen. I think this is unlikely given the exponential growth of my list over the previous year, however. See the trajectory below. (The big spike was from a massive push I did with fellow writers to get our audiences to subscribe to each others’ lists.)

5. Something else?

Here’s the problem: I have no idea why this happened. But neither, apparently, does Substack! And that is what’s so worrisome. I cannot get an answer. Could there be a simple explanation? Absolutely. But up until now I have not been given one.

And that’s a problem. Why? Because when anyone signs up for Substack, there is an understanding: Substack will steward your list. That’s the agreement. That’s the foundational aspect of trust that this whole platform is built on. In essence, every single writer on this platform enters into a “contract” of sorts regarding their subscribers that is built on trust.

But with every day that goes by that I don’t get an explanation, more of that trust erodes. And if there is no trust, what do I or any writer/publisher really have here?

That, my friends, is why I’m considering leaving. If I can’t trust that people who sign up for my list will actually get my emails, what’s the point of being here? And if I can’t even get an explanation that could restore that trust, how can I stay?

I do love it here. But sometimes you have to let go of the things you love.

I’m not the only one who feels this way, by the way. I take part in a monthly Zoom gathering of writers I’ve met right here on Substack. I brought up my ongoing issues last Friday, and almost immediately the groans started.

“I was hosting my podcast with them last year and I had to stop,” one writer—who is also a bestseller—said. “There was an issue with sending my feed out that they never could figure out. Their customer service is the worst!”

“Yeah, I’ve decided to start hosting my email list in two places, Substack and ConvertKit. I have less and less trust in Substack these days.”

There it is: the issue of trust. And it seems to be evaporating.

The Explanation Behind the Explanations?

I gave some possible explanations for the specific problems above, but I want to end with something a little bigger. It’s what I think is the explanation behind the explanations.

First, let me say: I’m not anti-capitalism like some I read on here. In fact, I think capitalism is pretty great. However, I think part of the explanation for what’s going on lies in a pretty obvious side effect of what nearly all startups are trying to do. It comes down to this: They’re racing to sell and get their payday.

I’ve been around companies that were in the process of raising Series A and Series B funding (those are rounds of fundraising from investors, if you’re unfamiliar). Here’s the dirty little secret that’s not necessarily dirty and not necessarily a secret: the point is to grow as big and as fast as possible to make your little company attractive to investors and eventually bigger companies so you can be bought. That’s when the founders and early employees can get their big pay days.

In fact, the goal is not even to be profitable. Seriously. Way more startups than you realize are bought not because they’re profitable (and are in fact losing money) but because a bigger company sees the potential and says, “We can do something with that.” Heck, sometimes big companies actually need a division to be losing money so they can write off their profits for tax purposes.

That’s just the game.

I could be wrong (shocker), but I think what’s happening at/with Substack is that the company is moving as fast as possible to build up their numbers (subscribers, users, paying members, app downloads, etc) to make themselves attractive to big time investors and/or bigger companies so that Substack will be purchased sooner rather than later. Then, everyone who has put so much work into building it can get their reward.

Again, that’s just the game.

Why is that important? Because when you’re in that mindset, you're not concerned with 300 subscribers evaporating with no explanation. You’re not concerned with email imports all the sudden taking days. You’re not concerned with reliable customer service. No, you’re concerned with the flashy things that investors see and that get you downloads and sign ups.

The company mantra isn’t about the “customer,” the mantra is something like, “Move fast and break things.” That’s not an Elon Musk-ism. Sure, he’s embodied it recently. But it’s the unofficial motto of Silicon Valley, where startups live and breathe and have their being. The idea is that if you’re not breaking things, you’re not moving fast enough. And if you’re not moving fast, you’re not going to grow and get bought. The more you break the better an indicator of your meteoric rise. The goal, then, isn’t to get it right right away. It’s to grow and get it right eventually. Maybe.

I think that’s where Substack is at. They’re moving fast. And they’re definitely breaking things. And they don’t really care, because that’s not what startups looking to sell care about. I don’t mean that in a, “these people are awful” way. I mean it in the, “that’s just the facts” way. Their goal is not to make sure that you or I don’t mysteriously lose 300 subscribers overnight without any explanation. Their goal is to grow and to make a platform worth selling.

That’s the game.

The question that I’m asking myself and that you need to ask yourself is this: Are you willing to be a casualty in that quest? For over a year I have been willing. There have been little things here and there that I’ve said, “Those are growing pains. Oh well. They’re not really affecting me.”

But now?

Well, now I have subscribers disappearing. Now I have answers I need to literally be able to get good sleep at night. My future livelihood depends on it.

And the response? “In full transparency, this might not be prioritized.”

Guess what: That’s absolutely the truth. Because I’m not the priority. Neither are you. The priority is to “move fast and break things.”

And you might want to consider whether you’re willing to be one of those broken things.

UPDATE:

After publishing my post, Substack responded to me. That set off a series of emails back and forth over the last two days. In short, Substack has responded to my specific concerns with information on why I’m experiencing what I’m experiencing.

And it makes some sense. That doesn’t mean I’m elated, but in the end I think one of my biggest frustrations was just not having information and cogent communication. A lot of frustration can be avoided if your questions are being answered, even if the answer is, “We’re working on this and here’s why.”

I want to share the full communication the representative from Substack shared.

Hi Jon,
My name is XXXX, and I’m on the Standards and Enforcement team here at Substack. I saw your post and wanted to reach out to provide some much-needed clarity on your two main concerns, which we clearly failed to address effectively earlier.

First, imports:
Your frustration with our import process is completely valid and reflects some recent changes we’ve made. Since the election and subsequent inauguration, many new writers and creators have moved to Substack, which has significantly increased the volume of imported lists requiring review. During this surge, our old infrastructure couldn’t keep up, resulting in emails being delayed by several days. That situation was understandably unacceptable.

We are still working to find the right balance between allowing writers to bring their lists over freely and protecting the platform from spam and abuse. At this point, we are back to reviewing most imports in under 24 hours, but we know there is more work to be done to reduce that further. In the meantime, I have manually flagged your publication to our import evaluation model, which should reduce the number of imports that require manual review. I can see that today’s import went through without being held up.

Now, regarding the disappearing subscribers:
It makes sense that seeing nearly 5 percent of your audience drop off without a clear explanation would be unsettling. What happened here is the result of a gap in product behavior and communication, and we are looking into improving this to avoid similar confusion in the future.

Between March 2nd and 3rd, you imported a larger list of about 1,700 subscribers with complimentary subscriptions. Over the following 30 days, approximately 300 of those users unsubscribed. Because we do not remove paid subscribers from lists until the end of their subscription term (unlike free users, who are removed immediately upon unsubscribing), the drop only became visible in your dashboard once the complimentary period ended.

I’ve attached a CSV file of these users for your records. Please note that they cannot be re-added to your newsletter, as their unsubscribe intent is recorded in our system.

If you have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out. I’d be happy to help.

My response:

XXX,

I want to first thank you for reaching out. I think one of the most frustrating parts during the last four months has been the inability to get a clear answer. Your email is extremely helpful. A few things.

1. Your explanation on the imports makes sense. I appreciate that. And you are right, I was surprised at how fast today’s import went through!

2. Regarding the unsubscribes, that is EXTREMELY helpful information. I was hoping it was something like that, and I am pleased to know it is. Thank you.

3. There are still two ongoing issues that have me really confused.

The first issue is that when I download my list from the import/export section under “settings,” the CSV file I get shows 7,159 emails. HOWEVER, if I download my subscriber list from the “subscriptions” tab by the three dots right under the graph, it says I have about 1,000 MORE addresses (which would seem to be the correct number). In some ways, that worries me that my subscribers are not being properly stored.

The second issue, and this has become really frustrating, is that every night before I go to be I look at my subscriber count. I’m going to use round numbers here as an example, but it will say something like I have 8,100 subscribers for the day. However, when I wake up in the morning and check the subscriber number again, it will say that I still have 8,100 current subscribers, but the number for the previous day (when it said I had 8,100 subscribers as well) has been revised down. You can see the discrepancy in the screenshots attached below for Apr 10-11. (Note that the first screenshot was taken on the night of the 10th and the second was taken on the morning of the 11th.) Another SS bestseller reached out to me today saying he’s having the same issue. Here’s how he explained it:

"In the last weeks, I took a screenshot of the graph every morning. If I now go to the graph on my iphone and I put the cursor on a recent date, it shows a lower number of followers than I actually had on that day. The result is that that graph still looks as if numbers go up, but instead the total remains the same and the data of previous days are going down: still a (mostly) strait line but less steep. This is weird stuff!"

Is this simply an issue with the graph? Is there something going on with bot accounts? I ask because I was experiencing such great growth up until the “big purge” of Apr 3 (which you have explained). And now it seems that with this weird anomaly my growth has stalled.

Thanks again for your help here. I really do love this platform, and I want to stay and I want to help make it better. I appreciate you taking the time to thoroughly address my questions.

The follow-up:

Hi Jon,

Thank you for the reply and for your understanding.

To address the additional concerns, I spoke with an engineer who was able to shed some light.

The discrepancy between the subscriber dashboard and the publication export appears to be related to an ongoing issue we’re experiencing (and actively working to resolve) with publication “sections.” The publication settings export was designed before we began supporting other media types like podcasts, which are handled a bit differently internally. Essentially, the 7,159 refers to the group of users who read the newsletter portion (the “top level”) of your publication, while the ~900 are those who unsubscribed from the newsletter “section” but are still subscribed to the podcast. The subscriber dashboard number should be used as the source of truth until we get everything aligned internally.

The second issue stems from a database syncing bug that causes discrepancies between the “live” database, which provides up-to-the-minute information, and the “historic” one, which runs once daily and monitors metrics like unsubscribes. The engineer informed me that your publication has been reset, and the discrepancy should resolve itself within the next day or so after the next daily sync.

We greatly appreciate your patience and trust as we work through these frustrating issues. If there’s anything else I can help with, I’m here.

Happy Easter!

So, what does that mean for my future at Substack? Well, for now I’m staying. I really do love this platform. And I get there are growing pains. If Substack is willing to engage in open communication about what’s going on, that builds trust. Over the last two days, that trust is being rebuilt.

I hope it continues.

But I also hope this is a motivation for Substack to evaluate how fast they are moving and how they handle customer service. As a bestseller, I have more access and I don’t take that for granted. It pains me to think that there are smaller publications and writers who have likely experienced similar issues, but haven’t gotten help. And maybe they’ve given up. Hopefully, this whole saga gives you a little hope if that’s you.

P.S. If

Hamish McKenzie

,

Matt Klein

,

Zach @ Substack

,

Chris Best

or any of the other Substack brass want to chat, I’m more than willing.