Substack vs Keystone
Compare Substack and Keystone for your content needs. Find out what actual users are saying about each product and which one is best suited for you!
At a Glance
Quick overview of key features differences between Substack and Keystone. Click on any feature to read more details.
| Feature | Substack | Keystone |
|---|---|---|
| Basic Features | ||
| Hosting Option | Cloud & Self-hosted | Cloud & Self-hosted |
| Content Modeling | ||
| Blog on Subdomain | ||
| Blog on Subdirectory | ||
| Marketer Experience | ||
| Mobile-first Experience | ||
| Automatic Content Linking | ||
| Automatic CTA Linking | ||
| Engage with Comments | ||
| Multi-tenancy | ||
| Read all reviews from marketers → | ||
| Developer Experience | ||
| Ease of Integration | Medium | Medium |
| Custom React Components | ||
| Full Text Search | ||
| Starter Kits | (5 kits) | (1 kits) |
| Read all reviews from developers → | ||
What Users Say
See what users who have used Substack and Keystone have to say about their overall experience with the product.
Substack's Key Strengths
Read what users love about Substack.
Keystone's Key Strengths
Read what users love about Keystone.
Substack's Key Issues
Read what issues users have with Substack.
Keystone's Key Issues
Read what issues users have with Keystone.
What Marketers & Content Creators Say
Hear from the users who uses Substack and Keystone daily about their experience with the editors.
Substack's Editorial Experience Highlights
What marketers love about Substack's editor.
Keystone's Editorial Experience Highlights
What marketers love about Keystone's editor.
Substack's Editorial Experience Issues
What marketers dislike about Substack's editor.
Keystone's Editorial Experience Issues
What marketers dislike about Keystone'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.
KeystoneJS does not specifically support a mobile first editing experience; the editing capabilities are primarily designed for desktop use.
"Keystone helps you build faster and scale further than any other CMS or App Framework. Describe your schema, and get a powerful GraphQL API & beautiful Management UI for your content and data."Source
"KeystoneJS is a powerful Node.js content management system and web app framework built on express and mongoose. It features an intuitive Admin UI."Source
"... Strapi is more oriented towards providing a mobile-friendly and customizable interface compared to KeystoneJS which has a more traditional desktop-focused UI."Source
"Keystone has a beautiful auto-generated Admin UI that is primarily designed for desktop use without a mobile-first editing option."Source
"Keystone's Admin UI will save you time and make managing your data easy, but there is no mention of mobile editing capabilities."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
Keystone JS does not support automatic related blog linking, relying instead on manual relationships.
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
KeystoneJS does not support automatic linking of CTAs to content through AI.
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
Keystone.js does not support built-in external commenting features out of the box. Custom fields can be created, but not natively.
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.
What Developers Say
Hear from developers who've integrated and built on Substack and Keystone about their experiences.
Substack's DX Highlights
What developers love about building with Substack.
Keystone's DX Highlights
What developers love about building with Keystone.
Substack's DX Issues
What developers dislike about building with Substack.
Keystone's DX Issues
What developers dislike about building with Keystone.
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
KeystoneJS offers extensive content modeling capabilities with various field types and GraphQL API.
"Keystone helps you build faster and scale further with the programmable open source GraphQL API back-end for structured content projects."Source
"KeystoneJs is an open source Node.js CMS with a wide range of features including a user-friendly admin UI, content modelling, and a powerful GraphQL API."Source
"KeystoneJs is an open-source Node.js CMS with a wide range of features including a user-friendly admin UI, content modelling, and a powerful GraphQL API."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
Keystone supports adding custom React components via Document fields in the rich text editor.
"The really cool stuff is behind the **`+`** button on the right of the toolbar – these are the **Custom Components**."Source
"They store structured data, and can be inserted (and edited!) anywhere in the document."Source
"If you need a field type which isn't provided, or you need a specialised version of an existing field type, you can define your own custom field type."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.
Keystone.js supports native full-text search across entire datasets, allowing robust search functionality.
"Native full-text search. A way for you and editors to easily search for strings across your entire dataset."Source
"Keystone manages three models fundamental for the whole system. The role of Keystone is to manage the content of basic pages for the main frontend app."Source
"Thanks for posting. It looks like you are calling the findOne query using the non-plural name on GraphQL; you can see a list of example GraphQL queries Keystone generates."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.)
KeystoneJS offers a starter kit to quickly create a new project.
(Expand section to see a list of Keystone templates and starter kits.)
Pricing & Plans
Compare the prices of Substack and Keystone.
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.