- Published on
The Substack Paradox: When Platform Branding Trumps Custom Domains
- Authors
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- Name
- Justin Hunter
- @polluterofminds
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When you think about services that allow you to create content online, the services usually fall into two categories:
All of the content, from everyone, lives on the platform’s main domain (example: Twitter/X)
The content lives on a subdomain of one of the platform’s domains (example: Glitch, Netlify, Substack)
In fact, this pattern dates back to the earliest days of the consumer web. In the mid-1990s, GeoCities pioneered this approach by organizing personal websites into themed “neighborhoods” like SiliconValley for tech content or Broadway for entertainment. Each site lived at an address like geocities.com/SiliconValley/Ridge/1234. Other services like Angelfire and Tripod followed similar patterns. These early platforms democratized web publishing by giving millions of people their first chance to create content online, even if they didn’t own a domain name.
The evolution continued through the blogging era with services like LiveJournal and Blogger, where again users typically published on subdomains. This history makes today’s platforms part of a long tradition of making web publishing accessible to everyone.
In the first case, everyone knows what they are getting into. They are creating content specifically for the platform while trying to use the platform for exposure (in most cases). There is no expectation that your content will live on a domain specific to you.
However, in the second case, there is generally an expectation that the content you create lives on a domain specific to you. When platforms provide this path they will normally allow users to add a custom domain to these sites either for free or as a paid feature (my company, Orbiter, allows users to add a custom domain on paid plans, for example).
It is this second case we’re going to focus on—platforms in which users create content with the expectation that the links to this content will have some sort of reference back to them. Normally, people who use these platforms desire the branding of their own custom domain. If these people are not technical and aren’t comfortable with custom domains, they are often happy to keep their content on the provided subdomain (something like justin.platformdomain.com). What’s interesting to me is the situation where people may be capable of adding a custom domain but choose not to because the platform’s brand is more powerful than their own.
You might think most platforms have a brand that is more powerful than the end user’s. But this isn’t necessarily the case. A simple blog like the one you’re reading this on, when tied back to my name or domain is significantly more powerful than if it were tied to a specific platform. That’s because this blog is portable. I currently host it on Orbiter, but I used to host it on Vercel. And before that I hosted it on Netlify. The fact that I have been writing on my own domain instead of linking my content to the domain of the hosting platform means I have power. I have control. And since we’re talking about writing specifically, that’s a nice transition into the antithesis of users wanting their content to live on a custom domain.
That antithesis is Substack.
Substack is a newsletter platform that many people use as a general blogging platform as well. The writing people do on Substack is aggregated and there are discovery features similar to social media. However, the content is linked back to the individual writers through a subdomain on Substack’s main domain. Substack does offer custom domains (they didn’t always), but the vast majority of content you’ll find on Substack uses the subdomain approach and forgoes the custom domain. Why is that?
Part of the reason could be how long it took Substack to introduce custom domains. Substack launched in 2017 but they did not allow writers to link a custom domain until 2020. We’re now nearly five years past that announcement though, so I don’t think the delay is the reason most people today still choose to live on Substack’s subdomain.
Another reason might be that linking a custom domain requires a one-time $50 payment. This is not for domain registration. Presumably it is there to offset the cost of Substack creating SSL certificates and renewing those certificates every year. But that cost is low and it would take many many years for the cost of renewing certs to equal $50. The fee might exist as a deterrent to linking a publication to a custom domain. After all, Substack is free for writers, so they are surely hoping that those writers will generate new readers and writers simply by displaying the Substack name in the domain and elsewhere. Regardless of the reason, it’s not obvious to me that people who would otherwise link their Substack site to a custom domain would balk at the $50 payment.
Instead, I think the reason we don’t see more people use custom domains with Substack is because Substack has become a status symbol. Much like YouTube created the Creator Economy and made people into “YouTubers”, Substack has created a new category for creators in newsletters. People ask each other if they have a “Substack”, not if they have a newsletter. You subscribe to Substacks, not to newsletters. As a writer on Substack, you are part of a club. You are one of the creators. Substack creates emails just for you, making you feel like an insider. Your domain having “substack” in it lends some credibility to your writing. After all, if you put it on Substack, you must be serious, right? Not like all those other bloggers out there.
This dynamic actually mirrors what happened with GeoCities in its heyday. Having a GeoCities site in a prestigious “neighborhood” like SiliconValley carried a certain cachet. People would proudly share their GeoCities addresses, and the platform became synonymous with personal publishing on the web. The key difference is that GeoCities eventually faded as web standards evolved and users demanded more control, leading to the rise of custom domains and self-hosted solutions.
The web was once made up of individual websites living on the custom domains purchased and maintained by the creators of those sites. Over time, that has eroded as platforms have made creating content online easier and easier. But we still have examples of platforms that make things easy and allow people to control the content and the branding of their sites through custom domains. And when the option is available, people tend to take it. Except for with Substack.
Substack is the next iteration of YouTube. A platform where it seems at first like you are not locked in but you kind of sort of actually are.
Now, there is an entire flip side to this story. Substack’s product marketing has put them in this position. And as a for-profit company, this is the exact position they probably want to be in. They have done many things right over the years to create both a good product and great positioning. There’s nothing wrong with that. And it’s not like they don’t let people set up custom domains.
I don’t know if Substack is the start of a trend that will lead to fewer and fewer custom domains on the web, but it is a clear indicator that people will trade ownership and control for certain benefits if the benefits feel strong enough. History shows us this pattern repeats - from GeoCities to LiveJournal to Medium and now to Substack. I’ve written on Substack before, but I’ll stick with putting my writing on a domain I control where I can move between providers whenever I want.