Content Collections vs Substack

Compare Content Collections and Substack for your content needs. Find out what actual users are saying about each product and which one is best suited for you!

Content Collections
Content Collections
Transform your content into type-safe data collections with seamless integration and powerful validation, ensuring accuracy and a delightful developer experience.
Substack
Substack
Substack is a user-friendly publishing platform for writers, enabling them to create newsletters and build a subscriber base while retaining full ownership of their content and mailing lists.

At a Glance

Quick overview of key features differences between Content Collections and Substack. Click on any feature to read more details.

FeatureContent CollectionsSubstack
Basic Features
Hosting Option
Cloud & Self-hosted
Cloud & Self-hosted
Content Modeling
Blog on Subdomain
Blog on Subdirectory
Marketer Experience
Mobile-first Experience
Automatic Content Linking
Automatic CTA Linking
Engage with Comments
Multi-tenancy
Limited
Read all reviews from marketers
Developer Experience
Ease of Integration
Medium
Medium
Custom React Components
Full Text Search
Starter Kits
(3 kits)
(5 kits)
Read all reviews from developers
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What Users Say

See what users who have used Content Collections and Substack have to say about their overall experience with the product.

Content Collections's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Content Collections.

Substack's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Substack.

Content Collections's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Content Collections.

Substack's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Substack.

What Marketers & Content Creators Say

Hear from the users who uses Content Collections and Substack daily about their experience with the editors.

Content Collections's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Content Collections's editor.

Substack's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Substack's editor.

Content Collections's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Content Collections's editor.

Substack's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Substack's editor.

Mobile Editing

Find out how the platforms handle the mobile-first experience for the new generation of workforce on the move.

Content Collections:
Mobile-First Experience

Wisp and Contentful support mobile-first experiences for content creation on mobile devices.

"Wisp was built from the ground up with mobile users in mind."
Source
"Contentful delivers content through a well-documented RESTful JSON-based API, which makes it fairly simple to get content from the backend."
Source
Substack:
Mobile-First Experience

Substack has launched a mobile editor for creating posts directly on iOS and Android devices, offering essential functionalities.

"Today we’re launching a new mobile editor, which allows you to write and publish posts directly from the Substack app for iOS."
Source
"Publishing a new post is available on the Substack iOS and Android apps."
Source

Automatic Content Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic linking of related content to help user discover more content without additional manual effort from the marketer. This automatically create topical clusters of content and is essential for SEO.

Content Collections:
No Automatic Content Linking

The CMS does not support automated internal linking of related blog posts based on content similarity.

"You can define a collection from a set of data that is structurally similar."
Source
"We can manually add blogs one by one into the section and include a button that directs to the relevant URL."
Source
"Webflow Collections allow you to create groups of content but do not automate related content linking."
Source
Substack:
No Automatic Content Linking

Substack does not support automatic related blog linking features; manual linking is required.

"If you'd like to share certain parts of a post or allow readers to jump to a specific section of a long post, try adding anchor links."
Source
"Recommendations are a Substack super ... However, I couldn't find evidence of automatic related content linking."
Source
"I was wondering if it is a good idea to create a substack and post my content on there as well and even link the substack post back to my main blog."
Source

Automatic CTA Linking

Find out if the platform supports automatic display of Call-to-Actions using AI to help users take actions that are relevant to the content they are reading.

Content Collections:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Content Collections does not support automated linking for CTAs; this feature is generally missing in most CMS products.

"Content Collections is all about delivering a delightful developer experience, lacking automatic CTA linking."
Source
"Standard CMS features include manually linking CTAs without automation."
Source
"Explained auto interlinking in Magento but does not mention CTA linking features."
Source
Substack:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Substack lacks built-in automatic CTA linking; users rely on external tools for automation features.

"Substack provides no automation tools at all; the author notes this is a primary reason users leave for competitors."
Source
"Substack lacks several critical features needed for effective email marketing, including automated email sequences."
Source
"Users discuss the absence of integrated automation features in Substack, noting their reliance on external tools."
Source

Comments

Find out if the platform supports comments from your users to improve user engagement. This is often a great way to collect feedback and user emails.

Content Collections:
Comments Supported

Webflow CMS supports commenting via a paid add-on with built-in moderation features.

"Supercharge your Webflow CMS with comments that let people interact with your Collection content."
Source
"However, this permission does not allow visitors to update existing items or their field values."
Source
"When you create Collections in the Webflow CMS, you can add Collection items manually."
Source
Substack:
Comments Supported

Substack supports commenting on posts from both subscribers and non-subscribers, with moderation options available.

"Navigate to your publication's Settings and click on Community. Slide the toggle to enable comments."
Source
"You can now enable comments on your posts for anyone on your mailing list, even if they’re not a paid subscriber."
Source
"Writers can choose whether to allow comments from everyone or only paid subscribers."
Source

Multi-tenancy

Find out if the platform supports managing multiple clients or projects within a single account. This is useful for agencies, multi-client or multi-project scenarios.

Content Collections:
Limited Multi-tenancy

Statamic supports multiple sites but is not intended for multi-tenant applications.

"I'm currently thinking of having a content collection called Organization, with a relation to an Admin User (User type, admin role)."
Source
"Strapi (which you can trick into multitenancy but it's not out of the box and, unfortunately, I can't get it to work)"
Source
"Payload has a multi-tenancy feature but requires significant setup."
Source
"The multi-tenancy feature lets you segregate content in CRX based on organization."
Source
"Statamic's multi-site capabilities are designed to manage a single site or site network with multiple localizations."
Source
Substack:
No Multi-tenancy

Substack does not support multi-tenancy, focusing primarily on individual writers and content monetization.

"Substack is designed for independent writers and does not offer multi-tenancy features."
Source
"Substack emphasizes individual monetization and audience ownership, lacking multi-tenant capabilities."
Source

What Developers Say

Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Content Collections and Substack about their experiences.

Ease of Integrating Content Collections:
Medium
Integration can be complex due to documentation issues and managing assets alongside content.
Ease of Integrating Substack:
Medium
Integration with Substack is feasible but lacks robust features and direct integrations, leading to some workarounds.

Content Collections's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Content Collections.

Substack's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Substack.

Content Collections's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Content Collections.

Substack's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Substack.

Content Modelling

Find out how developers model and manage their content with the platform with key highlights and limitations.

Content Collections:
Customisable Content Types

Content Collections supports content modelling with customizable schemas and validation via Zod.

"Transform your content into type-safe data collections, providing useful utilities for data fetching and parsing."
Source
"Content Collections uses a schema to define the fields of a collection. Computed fields can be added with the transform function."
Source
"The schema will validate the title and summary fields, ensuring data integrity."
Source
Substack:
No Customisable Content Types

Substack does not offer built-in content modelling features or custom content types.

"Substack offers limited customization, focusing more on content rather than design."
Source
"Directus allows you to create custom schemas, manage data, define roles & permissions for your organization."
Source
"Substack doesn’t allow customization for its newsletter formats, thus limiting content modelling."
Source

Custom React Components

Find out if the platform supports custom React components to go beyond the basic HTML components for content.

Content Collections:
Custom React Components Supported

Payload CMS supports custom React components in collections, enabling rich content integration.

"Swap in your own React components to be used within this Collection."
Source
"Decap CMS exposes two constructs globally to allow you to create components inline."
Source
"The same object is also the default export if you import Decap CMS as an npm module."
Source
"Learn how to embed HubSpot forms in ButterCMS using a custom React component."
Source
Substack:
No Custom React Components Supported

Substack does not support custom React components directly in the content editor.

"Over the years, I’ve written and reviewed hundreds of React components for a $1.7B GenAI startup."
Source
"I wanted to display my Substack posts on my website instead of a subscribe link, so I created my own Substack feed component!"
Source
"A customizable React component renders the login page based on the user's UI settings."
Source
"The new components are both fully customizable AND robust."
Source
"I have used substackapi to achieve this Custom Embed Substack Signup Form."
Source
Content Collections:
Full Text Search Supported

Contentful supports full-text search across multiple fields, enhancing search capabilities.

"Full-text search is case insensitive and might return more results than expected. A query will ignore search tokens with less than 2 characters."
Source
"In Contentful, full-text search terms are left anchored. This means that when you, for example, search for 'house,' we will convert it into the."
Source
"In Contentful's GraphQL API you can do searching within different fields with collection filters. Equivalent to full-text searching."
Source
"Contentful does include some intriguing full-text search capabilities out-of-the-box that searches across all fields."
Source
Substack:
No Full Text Search

Substack's search functionality is weak, lacking full text search across all content and authors.

"From the Substack web inbox, readers can search keywords to find posts, publications, and people."
Source
"Substack search can’t find posts even when I know the exact title or URL. Search often can’t find people."
Source

Starter Kits

Discover starter kits and templates to help you get started with the platform.

Content Collections:
Available

Content Collections offers starter kits and templates through Acquia and Astro.

(Expand section to see a list of Content Collections templates and starter kits.)

Substack:
Available

Substack offers various starter kits and templates for creators.

(Expand section to see a list of Substack templates and starter kits.)

Pricing & Plans

Compare the prices of Content Collections and Substack.

Content Collections's Pricing
Standard
$5 / month
- Content import
- Type-safe data validation
- Access to API
Pro
$15 / month
- All Standard features
- Advanced validation options
- Support for custom transformations
Enterprise
$30 / month
- All Pro features
- Dedicated support
- Custom pricing options
Substack's Pricing
Monthly Subscription
$5 / month
- Includes all posts for paid subscribers only
- Recurring payments processed via Stripe
- 10% platform fee
- 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fees on Stripe
Annual Subscription
$50 / year
- Includes all posts for paid subscribers only
- Recurring payments processed via Stripe
- 10% platform fee
- 2.9% + $0.30 transaction fees on Stripe
Founding Member Plan
$20 / month
- Optional tier for additional support
- All posts for paid subscribers

Compare with other technologies

Looking for a better alternative to Content Collections & Substack? Try Wisp.
Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!