Substack Alternative
Run a paid newsletter on the open web. Own your list, keep 100% of subscriber revenue, never wake up to a platform pivot. WordPress + MailPoet + Stripe on managed Nova Grid hosting, from $14/mo.
Substack takes 10% of every paid subscription. Ghost(Pro) starts at $9/mo and scales to $199+. Both control your domain story, your subscriber relationship, and what content can stay live. WordPress on Nova Grid is the same idea on infrastructure you actually own, and it costs less.
Substack
10% of revenue + Stripe fees
On $5K/mo of subscriptions, you give up $500/mo, forever. Domain, design, and email list all live in their database, on their terms.
Ghost(Pro)
$9 to $199+/mo, scales by member count
Flat fee structure, but tiers jump fast as your list grows. No platform fee on revenue, but you don't own the stack and themes/plugins are intentionally limited.
WordPress on Nova Grid
$14 to $45/mo flat, 0% revenue cut
You own the site, the list, the domain, the theme, and every byte of subscriber data. Stripe takes its standard processing fee; nobody else.
All plans include WordPress one-click install, free SSL, daily backups, free professional email, and Support, Mon to Fri 9 to 5 ET. Add MailPoet, MemberPress, and Stripe Connect from the wp-admin plugin directory once you're up. We'll walk you through it in our knowledge base.
Your first paid newsletter, launched in an afternoon.
For a growing list and a side income that's starting to look like a business.
Multi-publication portfolios and high-volume sender lists.
Want help picking? Take the 30-second plan quiz on our homepage.
Substack and Ghost bundle newsletter delivery, paywalls, and Stripe checkout into one app. WordPress doesn't. You compose those pieces yourself, and each one is best-in-class.
Compose, schedule, and send newsletters from inside wp-admin. Free up to 1,000 subscribers, paid tiers above that. Native subscriber forms, post-to-newsletter automation, and clean unsubscribe handling. Pairs with the cPanel-side mailbox at your domain so the From address matches your brand.
Restrict posts and archives to paying members, with rules per tag, category, or specific post. MemberPress handles full membership sites; Newsletter Glue is lighter-weight if you're newsletter-only. Both integrate cleanly with Stripe Connect for the actual subscription billing.
Accept monthly or annual subscriptions in your own Stripe account, on your own domain. Standard Stripe fees only, no 10% Substack cut, no platform commission. Recurring billing, customer portal, dunning emails, and refund handling all flow through Stripe's hosted infrastructure.
The post database, the subscriber list, the Stripe customer IDs, the design, the domain, all sit in your hosting account. Daily off-server backups mean any of it can be restored on request. If you ever decide to leave Nova Grid, you take the entire site with you in a single export.
One-click WordPress on signup. Install MailPoet + your paywall plugin + Stripe Connect from wp-admin. Connect Stripe via OAuth. Import your existing list (CSV from Substack, JSON from Ghost). Done. Step-by-step in our knowledge base.
Substack changes content moderation policy. Ghost(Pro) raises tier prices. Both have happened. WordPress on your own domain doesn't have a "company pivot" risk. The software is open source, the hosting is portable, and your subscriber list is a CSV you can export at 3 AM if you ever need to.
Substack's export gives you a ZIP of posts (HTML) and a subscribers CSV. WordPress's built-in importer reads the post HTML directly; MailPoet imports the subscriber CSV in one click. Paid subscribers transfer over via Stripe customer ID matching once you reconnect the same Stripe account.
Ghost exports a JSON of posts + members. The free Ghost to WordPress migrator plugin reads that JSON and recreates posts and members in WordPress + MemberPress. Stripe subscriptions reattach to existing customers when both Ghost and WordPress connect to the same Stripe account.
Our Concierge Migration add-on ($49) covers Substack and Ghost migrations end-to-end: posts, subscribers, paid members, Stripe reconnection, DNS cutover. Same-day turnaround in most cases.
MailPoet is free up to 1,000 subscribers, then ~$10/mo for sending. MemberPress starts at ~$179/yr. Newsletter Glue starts at ~$99/yr. Stripe Connect for WP is free; Stripe takes only its standard processing fee (2.9% + 30¢). The hosting cost ($14 to $45/mo from us) is separate, but the all-in still beats Substack's 10% revenue cut once you're past about $200/mo in subscriptions.
For lists under ~5,000 subscribers, MailPoet sending through your hosting mail server works cleanly. As you grow, route MailPoet through SendGrid, Amazon SES, Mailgun, or Postmark. All SMTP providers integrate via a settings panel, no code. SES costs ~$0.10 per 1,000 emails, so even a 50K-subscriber send is about $5. We document the SES setup in our knowledge base.
Yes. If you're already on a custom domain at Substack or Ghost, you point its DNS to Nova Grid's servers and the URL stays the same. Existing subscribers click their normal links and land on your new WordPress site. We can handle the DNS cutover as part of Concierge Migration if you'd rather not touch it yourself.
WordPress scales further than most paid newsletters ever need to. Past 100K active subscribers you'd typically move to a managed-WordPress host with dedicated infrastructure (WP Engine, Kinsta, Pressable), but the same WordPress + MailPoet + MemberPress stack runs there too. Migration off Nova Grid would be a one-time export/import; nothing about the stack itself becomes the bottleneck.
Because the same hosting stack does both. WordPress is WordPress; "newsletter hosting" is a use-case, not a different server. We didn't want to invent a marketing tier you'd pay extra for. The Lite plan at $14/mo runs a paid newsletter just fine. Pick the tier that matches your list size, install three plugins, and you're done.
Pick a tier, check out, and we'll have WordPress installed and your wp-admin credentials in your inbox within an hour. From there it's three plugins, a Stripe connect, and a list import, usually under an afternoon.