I own e-commerce business and was researching different blog platforms as I wanted to expanse our products into product services and content creation for marketing purposes. I have only been using Substack for less than two months and my followers have almost doubled across all my social platforms, and my weekly revenue has more than doubled consistently! And I’m only using the free version haha thank you so much Substack. What a great app!

This is the epitome of the worst app ever, ranging from how the content is presented to a user to notifications, video playback and the app support. First of all, the app will populate your “personal feed” with all sort of absolutely irrelevant random stuff you are never interested in. Second, if you turn on the “push notifications”, you will actually be notified about random posts from random authors you have never subscribed to. And it is not possible to filter those out by any settings in the app which are alsp very limited and non-intuitive. Third, once you have finished watching a video from the Substack you are subscribed to, the autoplay (which is impossible to switch off) will put on another video from yet another weird rando on the Substack. And on top of everything, if you ever try to reach out to their support to report on those issues, you will be forever stuck in the chat with the useless bot which knows absolutely nothing about the app and never gives you an option to talk to a human.

Substack, if you’re reading this - you need a working contact or complaints page! Huge fan of Substack and the many writers I support there as well as running my own publication - but I’m now locked out due to a ridiculous age verifying system for Australians that requires me to scan my face to access the app, something I’m not at all comfortable with. This seems extreme as under the new Australian law Substack isn’t even required to implement age verification - not to mention that anyone and their dog can view any article without logging in (including adult explicit content which just beggars belief!) I can’t change anything or notify my subscribers that I’ll be moving on and posting elsewhere. This is so wrong and I’d love to see this changed as it’s simply ridiculous. I’m well above the required age and now locked out from managing my own content. Not happy at all 🙁

I would give this app five star if you didn’t have to be subscribed to be able to use the audio function. Many Neurodivergent people & others with varying disability, require audio to better engage, this is a continued issue across various platforms, where we have to work harder to find workarounds just to have access. Also audio options to select the voice reading to you needs to be more accessible. For various reasons, people have trauma response & suddenly going from a female voice to a male voice, without warning, in the same paid subscription of a literal domestic violence feminist article it’s quite the shock.