substack vs ghost: which is best? [2026 review]
Substack vs. Ghost: Why Your Content Strategy Is Bleeding Money
You're probably staring at these two platforms right now, wondering which one will finally get your newsletter off the ground.
I get it. I was in the exact same spot 18 months ago.
But here's what I wish someone had told me then: you're not just picking a newsletter tool. You're deciding whether your content will ever be discoverable.
The Real Choice You're Making
Substack feels like the obvious choice, especially when you're starting out for free.
Everything about it screams "just start writing."
Clean interface, zero technical headaches, and you can publish your first newsletter before lunch. The community aspect is genuinely helpful, and not paying upfront feels like a win.
Here's the problem: your content becomes invisible to search engines.
Substack's SEO is so bad it's almost like they designed it to hide your work from Google.
When did you last discover a newsletter through organic search on Substack? Never, right?
Ghost demands more upfront, at $15 monthly, but treats your content seriously.
This platform was built for publishers who understand that great content deserves to be found. Your articles will rank in search results.
Your site loads lightning-fast. You control your brand completely. And instead of surrendering 10% of your earnings forever, you keep everything.
The catch? You're paying from day one, and the learning curve is steeper than Substack's "click and publish" approach.
The Search Traffic You're Losing
Here's the reality check that changed my perspective: quality content on Ghost can easily attract 2,000+ monthly visitors from search engines.
Conservative conversion math says 3% of those visitors subscribe at $8 monthly. That's $480 in recurring revenue you're missing every month on Substack.
Annually? $5,760 in lost income. Over three years, you're looking at $17,280 that simply vanishes because your content can't be found.
But there's another layer to this: Ghost and Substack rely on Mailgun for email delivery.
It works well for certain email providers but struggles with others.
Their email engine excels with Yahoo and Hotmail delivery, but Outlook, Gmail, and iCloud subscribers might experience issues.
This is where Lemon Email becomes interesting.
Rather than accepting the limitations of any single delivery system, Lemon integrates with multiple engines - Mailgun, SendGrid, and others, intelligently routing each message through the optimal channel for that specific recipient.
What This Really Comes Down To
Look, if SEO and long-term content discovery are your main priorities, and you're not particularly focused on squeezing maximum ROI from every email you send, then Ghost makes perfect sense.
You'll build something substantial that grows organically over time.
But if you're thinking about this differently, if you want to make sure every single email you send actually reaches your subscribers and generates a return - then the delivery limitations of both platforms become a real problem.
That's where something like Lemon Email starts to make sense.
It won't help you rank in Google or build a beautiful content site. But it will ensure that when you do send an email, it actually gets delivered to the right inbox, whether your subscriber uses Gmail, Outlook, or anything else.
The choice really depends on what you're optimizing for: long-term content strategy and organic growth, or immediate email performance and subscriber engagement.
There's no single right answer.
But losing $17,280 in potential search traffic or watching 25% of your emails disappear into spam folders - those are both expensive mistakes you can avoid by being honest about what you're actually trying to build.
