[pier25]

> To use custom domains, you’ll be charged a one-time $50 fee per publication.

I wonder why they're doing this. Substack is already taking 10% of revenue which is huge.

I think a better model would have been to offer it for free to paid newsletters so it's considered a premium feature and it can't be abused by their users not generating any revenue.

[bpodgursky]

But then it's not available on free newsletters, even if the author would prefer to pay for it. Not sure what the problem is with this model. $50 isn't really meaningful hit -- it's not a recurring cost or anything.

I also disagree that 10% of revenue is a "huge" chunk. Running your own mail list and custom domain isn't trivial (not to mention acquiring readers in the first place).

[pier25]

$50 is a lot for a feature that most SaaS are offering for free.

> Running your own mail list and custom domain isn't trivial

Regardless of whether this is trivial or not, Substack is a service, not a partner.

If one day you decide to increase your prices and work your ass off to produce more valuable content to your readers, why should Substack get more money?

If instead of sending newsletters we were talking about ecommerce (which is way less trivial) would you be ok with Shopify charging 10% of revenue?

What about AWS charging you 10% of your revenue?

[bpodgursky]

What?? Most SaaS are absolutely not offering custom domains for free. What services are you looking at?

[pier25]

From the top of my mind here are some SaaS that don't charge you extra for a custom domain or even give it for free in their free tier:

- Shopify

- Sendgrid

- Mailchimp

- Wordpress.com

- Firebase

- Vercel

- Netlify

- Surge

Even free blog platforms give you customs domains with HTTPS for free: https://hashnode.com/

[redm]

My guess is that they have a manual pipeline where it requires some effort from a physical person to setup SSL. This $50 is to offset their cost of setup.

[mattmanser]

It takes a programmer like half a day to automate a let's encrypt process, maybe a couple if you want to make it really robust.

For example, these days most wordpress hosts do this for you for free.

Not that I think it's unreasonable to charge for this, just saying it's probably not the reason.

[tylerwince]

I think it is probably just another revenue grab. Most people who care enough are willing to pay $50 (I have a free newsletter about product management and willingly paid the $50).

The alternative is a self-hosted or SaaS subscription to something like Ghost or Mailchimp. $50 seems like a better deal to me.

[hawkoy]

I suspect they are gauging general interest on whether people are willing to pay for custom domain or if they could pivot to a SaaS enterprise model on the side.