Medium vs Substack
Compare Medium and Substack for your content needs. Find out what actual users are saying about each product and which one is best suited for you!
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What Users Say
See what users who have used Medium and Substack have to say about their overall experience with the product.
Medium's Key Strengths
Read what users love about Medium.
Substack's Key Strengths
Read what users love about Substack.
Medium's Key Issues
Read what issues users have with Medium.
Substack's Key Issues
Read what issues users have with Substack.
What Marketers & Content Creators Say
Hear from the users who uses Medium and Substack daily about their experience with the editors.
Medium's Editorial Experience Highlights
What marketers love about Medium's editor.
Substack's Editorial Experience Highlights
What marketers love about Substack's editor.
Medium's Editorial Experience Issues
What marketers dislike about Medium'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.
Medium does not support mobile editing; editing features were removed to enhance reading experience on mobile.
"Writing is not supported on mobile browsers. To write on the go, you'll need to download the Medium app for iOS or Android."Source
"With our focus on an exceptional reading experience, we’ve made the difficult decision to remove story editing features from our native apps."Source
"Editing had been disabled on the mobile app."Source
"On the publishing tools front, we added mobile editing, but this feature is not currently active."Source
"We’re bringing back the mobile editor, indicating the intention but no active support at the moment."Source
Substack has launched a mobile editor for creating posts directly on iOS and Android devices, offering essential functionalities.
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.
Medium does not support automatic internal linking for related blog posts, focusing instead on manual links.
"Medium lacks features for automatic internal linking between similar content, relying instead on manual linking."Source
"Medium does not have an AI feature to automate the linking of related blog content."Source
"Medium emphasizes simplicity and content creation without the complexity of automating internal links."Source
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.
Some CMSs have limited capabilities for automatic CTA linking, mainly through advanced custom settings.
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.
Medium does not provide an external commenting feature for site visitors. It limits user interaction via internal feedback.
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.
Medium does not support multi-tenancy; each user operates independently.
"Multi-tenancy is just the same, only worse. Instead of threads competing for shared memory, you've got tenants competing for shared infrastructure."Source
"Multi-tenancy is an architecture where a single instance of a software application serves multiple customers, with each customer being referred to as a tenant."Source
Substack does not support multi-tenancy, focusing primarily on individual writers and content monetization.
What Developers Say
Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Medium and Substack about their experiences.
Medium's DX Highlights
What developers love about building with Medium.
Substack's DX Highlights
What developers love about building with Substack.
Medium's DX Issues
What developers dislike about building with Medium.
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.
Medium supports content modeling with custom content types and fields including text, media, and references.
"A content model is a collection of content types and their interrelationships."Source
"A solid content model is the foundation of every great digital project. Your model is the bones of your project."Source
"Kontent.ai is a content management tool (CMS) that allows managing core content types with flexible models."Source
"Contentful has a lot of features and flexibility in content modeling."Source
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.
Medium does not explicitly support custom React components or a component API for dynamic content.
"Web Components can help you decouple the implementation of your component from the framework/library."Source
"Design systems are doing much better in sharing an API across design and dev, due in part to rapid advances in design tools."Source
"Medium frowns on stories containing marketing tactics like affiliate links or aggressive call to actions."Source
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.
Full Text Search is supported across multiple fields including content and metadata.
"Full-Text Search is a powerful feature in MySQL that allows you to search for text within large sets of unstructured data efficiently."Source
"Full-Text Search employs a series of steps to effectively search through complex text-based data."Source
"Using a database with built-in search such as MySQL or MongoDB for full text search."Source
"We now launched a full-text search feature that lets you search across your Firestore collections."Source
"WordPress's core search gets used when you say https://example.com/?s=searchterm."Source
Substack's search functionality is weak, lacking full text search across all content and authors.
Starter Kits
Discover starter kits and templates to help you get started with the platform.
Medium has various templates that help writers format their articles effectively.
(Expand section to see a list of Medium templates and starter kits.)
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 Medium and Substack.