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!

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.
Contentful
Contentful
Contentful is a leading headless content management platform that allows users to create, manage, and distribute content across various platforms seamlessly, providing complete freedom in designing their content models.

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.

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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:
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
Contentful:
Not Suitable for Mobile

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:
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
Contentful:
AI-Powered Related Content

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:
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
Contentful:
No Automatic CTA Linking

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:
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
Contentful:
No Comments Supported

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:
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
Contentful:
Multi-tenancy Supported

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.

Ease of Integrating Substack:
Medium
Integration with Substack is feasible but lacks robust features and direct integrations, leading to some workarounds.
Ease of Integrating Contentful:
Medium
Contentful integration is manageable but involves a learning curve and can become costly for larger projects.

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:
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
Contentful:
Customisable Content Types

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:
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
Contentful:
Custom React Components Supported

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:
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
Contentful:
Full Text Search Supported

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:
Available

Substack offers various starter kits and templates for creators.

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

Contentful:
Available

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.

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
Contentful's Pricing
Free
$0 / forever
- 5 users
- 2 locales
- 1M API calls/month
- Community support
- 1 Intro Space
- Structured content
- Developer tools
Lite
$300 / month
- 20 users
- 4 locales
- 2M API calls/month
- 0.75TB/month CDN
- Technical support
- Extended editorial tools
- Optional Medium Spaces
Premium
$81000 / year
- Custom users
- Unlimited API calls
- Custom CDN
- Dedicated support
- Enhanced governance and security
- Contentful Studio compatibility

Compare with other technologies

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