Substack vs Contentful
Compare Substack and Contentful 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 Contentful have to say about their overall experience with the product.
Substack's Key Strengths
Read what users love about Substack.
Contentful's Key Strengths
Read what users love about Contentful.
Substack's Key Issues
Read what issues users have with Substack.
Contentful's Key Issues
Read what issues users have with Contentful.
What Marketers & Content Creators Say
Hear from the users who uses Substack and Contentful daily about their experience with the editors.
Substack's Editorial Experience Highlights
What marketers love about Substack's editor.
Contentful's Editorial Experience Highlights
What marketers love about Contentful's editor.
Substack's Editorial Experience Issues
What marketers dislike about Substack's editor.
Contentful's Editorial Experience Issues
What marketers dislike about Contentful'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.
Contentful does not explicitly support mobile-first content creation for marketers; mainly desktop-centric.
"Contentful is mainly an API-based headless CMS, emphasizing structured content delivery rather than a mobile-first editing experience."Source
"Contentful focuses on optimizing web performance metrics but does not emphasize mobile content creation."Source
"No significant discussions regarding mobile-first content creation features for Contentful."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.
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
Contentful supports automatic related blog linking with Content Source Maps, linking content fields automatically.
"With Content Source Maps, this setup is now fully automated. Our APIs now return source maps for fields that link directly to the corresponding field in Contentful."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
Contentful does not support automatic call-to-action linking features.
"Links are a powerful way to model relationships between content."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.
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
While Contentful has a comments feature, it's primarily for internal collaboration. It does not support external visitor commenting out of the box.
"The Comments tab allows you to communicate with collaborators in your space by creating comments, replying, and tagging members."Source
"Entry comments. Users can add comments to an entry. This allows for teams to collaborate and have conversations."Source
"Contentful's flexible content modeling goes far beyond blog posts. Here’s how you can leverage Contentful and Netlify to create a nested commenting system."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.
Contentful supports multi-tenancy, allowing users to manage multiple client accounts from a single interface.
"Multi-tenancy architecture means that all our customers and applications share a single, common infrastructure and code base that is centrally maintained by us."Source
"Our solution? A single, unified content platform."Source
"Contentful's multi-tenancy concept is extensible on all levels and continuously delivers new features."Source
What Developers Say
Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Substack and Contentful about their experiences.
Substack's DX Highlights
What developers love about building with Substack.
Contentful's DX Highlights
What developers love about building with Contentful.
Substack's DX Issues
What developers dislike about building with Substack.
Contentful's DX Issues
What developers dislike about building with Contentful.
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
Contentful supports content modeling with flexible structure and customizable content types, including various field types and validations.
"A solid content model is the foundation of every great digital project. Your model is the bones of your project; it tells our APIs what kind of content to send to your end application."Source
"You can set up your content model with the following tools: Visual modeler — Visually build your content model, view the content types and references."Source
"This guide will lay out a set of best practices that are considered good content modeling patterns."Source
"Currently, editor interfaces are fully supported in templates. These include all configurations for content type fields."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
Contentful supports custom React components, allowing developers to enhance content editing with interactive components.
"To use custom components in Experiences, you need to register them."Source
"You can import your own design system components into Experiences to create on-brand digital experiences."Source
"The Forma 36 Design System and React component library provides a comprehensive collection of UI components."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, allowing users to search content effectively.
"In Contentful, full-text search terms are left anchored...full-text search is built into the standard entry listing endpoint."Source
"Contentful's full-text search capabilities allow searching across all fields."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.)
Contentful offers various starter templates including Next.js and Gatsby options.
(Expand section to see a list of Contentful templates and starter kits.)
Pricing & Plans
Compare the prices of Substack and Contentful.