Substack vs Content Collections
Compare Substack and Content Collections 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 Substack and Content Collections have to say about their overall experience with the product.
Substack's Key Strengths
Read what users love about Substack.
Content Collections's Key Strengths
Read what users love about Content Collections.
Substack's Key Issues
Read what issues users have with Substack.
Content Collections's Key Issues
Read what issues users have with Content Collections.
What Marketers & Content Creators Say
Hear from the users who uses Substack and Content Collections daily about their experience with the editors.
Substack's Editorial Experience Highlights
What marketers love about Substack's editor.
Content Collections's Editorial Experience Highlights
What marketers love about Content Collections's editor.
Substack's Editorial Experience Issues
What marketers dislike about Substack's editor.
Content Collections's Editorial Experience Issues
What marketers dislike about Content Collections's editor.
Mobile Editing
Find out how the platforms handle the mobile-first experience for the new generation of workforce on the move.
Substack has launched a mobile editor for creating posts directly on iOS and Android devices, offering essential functionalities.
Wisp and Contentful support mobile-first experiences for content creation on mobile devices.
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.
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
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
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.
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
Content Collections does not support automated linking for CTAs; this feature is generally missing in most CMS products.
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.
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
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
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.
Substack does not support multi-tenancy, focusing primarily on individual writers and content monetization.
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
What Developers Say
Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Substack and Content Collections about their experiences.
Substack's DX Highlights
What developers love about building with Substack.
Content Collections's DX Highlights
What developers love about building with Content Collections.
Substack's DX Issues
What developers dislike about building with Substack.
Content Collections's DX Issues
What developers dislike about building with Content Collections.
Content Modelling
Find out how developers model and manage their content with the platform with key highlights and limitations.
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
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
Custom React Components
Find out if the platform supports custom React components to go beyond the basic HTML components for content.
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
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
Full Text Search
Find out if the platform supports full text search across multiple fields to help users find content quickly.
Substack's search functionality is weak, lacking full text search across all content and authors.
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
Starter Kits
Discover starter kits and templates to help you get started with the platform.
Substack offers various starter kits and templates for creators.
(Expand section to see a list of Substack templates and starter kits.)
Content Collections offers starter kits and templates through Acquia and Astro.
(Expand section to see a list of Content Collections templates and starter kits.)
Pricing & Plans
Compare the prices of Substack and Content Collections.