Hygraph vs Substack

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

Hygraph
Hygraph
Hygraph is a headless CMS that simplifies content management and accelerates content delivery, helping teams manage and distribute content globally with speed and ease.
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.

What Users Say

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

Hygraph's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Hygraph.

Substack's Key Strengths

Read what users love about Substack.

Hygraph's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Hygraph.

Substack's Key Issues

Read what issues users have with Substack.

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What Marketers & Content Creators Say

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

Hygraph's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Hygraph's editor.

Substack's Editorial Experience Highlights

What marketers love about Substack's editor.

Hygraph's Editorial Experience Issues

What marketers dislike about Hygraph'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.

Hygraph:
Limited Mobile Experience

Hygraph supports mobile content management but lacks a fully dedicated mobile-first editing experience.

"A true mobile CMS gives you all the features of a mobile BaaS and editorial workflows for non-technical users."
Source
"Hygraph offers features for both developers and content creators."
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.

Hygraph:
No Automatic Content Linking

Hygraph does not automatically link related blog posts; manual linking is required.

"This new feature will automatically be available in your Hygraph project."
Source
"Hygraph offers a comprehensive suite of advanced editorial functionalities that cater to the diverse needs of content teams."
Source
"You can expand Hygraph’s management features to create a custom field."
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.

Hygraph:
No Automatic CTA Linking

Hygraph does not support automatic CTA linking directly through AI features.

"The platform allows for modular components, but does not mention automatic linking of CTAs to content."
Source
"Hygraph CMS focuses on headless content management, lacking automatic content-to-CTA associations."
Source
"Hygraph enables flexible content structuring but does not include automated CTA linking functionality."
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.

Hygraph:
Comments Supported

Hygraph supports commenting on content entries with features for notifications and assigning comments.

"Commenting is a functionality designed with larger teams containing multiple content editors in mind, to promote work collaboration."
Source
"We launched our commenting feature that allows users to add comments to content entries, assign and notify other users, and resolve them upon completion."
Source
"It allows us to publish or delete the comment in our Hygraph dashboard."
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.

Hygraph:
Multi-tenancy Supported

Hygraph supports multi-tenancy, allowing agencies to manage multiple client accounts with separate access.

"Multi-tenancy is an architecture in which a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers."
Source
"A multi-tenant CMS is a content management system with a single software instance that can serve multiple web properties or tenants."
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 Hygraph and Substack about their experiences.

Ease of Integrating Hygraph:
Medium
Users report some ease in integration but experience API call limitations and hydration issues.
Ease of Integrating Substack:
Medium
Integration with Substack is feasible but lacks robust features and direct integrations, leading to some workarounds.

Hygraph's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Hygraph.

Substack's DX Highlights

What developers love about building with Substack.

Hygraph's DX Issues

What developers dislike about building with Hygraph.

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.

Hygraph:
Customisable Content Types

Hygraph supports built-in content modeling with customizable content types, sortable relations, and various field types.

"Hygraph has several unique features in the headless CMS space. This is by no means an extensive list... sortable relations, remote fields, and a high-powered permission system."
Source
"Hygraph enables both developers and non-developers to create and edit schemas directly within its interface."
Source
"The contents of the form to create an entry depend on the schema configuration for that model."
Source
"All default and custom content types come with some managed system fields. Field types, Contains information about the field types you can use in your project."
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.

Hygraph:
No Custom React Components Supported

Hygraph does not support custom React components in its content editor.

"A component is a predefined set of fields that can be reused across models and content entries."
Source
"Hygraph automatically generates queries for fetching single, and multiple entries for each defined content type belonging to your project."
Source
"These should show how to extend the Hygraph UI with your own custom components."
Source
"Neither Directus or Strapi seem to offer this. Hygraph has a..."
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

Full Text Search

Find out if the platform supports full text search across multiple fields to help users find content quickly.

Hygraph:
No Full Text Search

Hygraph does not support full-text search. Users can only search by specific fields like Author and Title.

"Hygraph does not support Full Text Search currently. Rich Text or JSON is currently not supported. It's also not possible to filter or search for multi-value fields, colors, and coordinates."
Source
"Note that Hygraph does not support full text search at the moment, which means searching through Rich Text or JSON is currently not possible."
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.

Hygraph:
Available

Hygraph provides several starter kits for projects.

(Expand section to see a list of Hygraph 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 Hygraph and Substack.

Hygraph's Pricing
Hobby
$0 / month
- 2 locales
- 3 seats
- 2 standard roles
- 10 components
- Unlimited asset storage
- 50MB per asset upload size (maximum)
- Live preview
- Commenting and assignment workflow
Growth
$199 / month
- Everything in Hobby
- 3 locales
- 10 seats
- 4 standard roles
- 200MB per asset upload size (maximum)
- Connect your remote source
- 14-day version retention
- Email support desk
- Expand seats, entries, API calls and more with billable add-ons
Enterprise
$0 / custom
- Everything in Growth
- Custom limits on users, roles, entries, locales, API calls, components
- Custom number of remote sources
- Version retention for a whole year
- Scheduled publishing
- Dedicated infrastructures, global CDN coverage, and 24/7 monitoring
- Security & governance controls, fine-grained permissions, and audit logs
- Single Sign-on (SSO)
- Multitenancy
- Instant one-click backup recovery
- Dedicated support in onboarding, architecture, training, and success
- Custom uptime and support SLAs
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 Hygraph & Substack? Try Wisp.
Wisp is the best solution for blogging. Try it free today!