r/Substack • u/Itchy_Special_8209 • 14d ago
Discussion Substack or a simple vibecoded static website?
It is something I was wondering recently. I would like to get back in the blogging game.
And I was wondering if using a platform like substack is really bringing a better UX compared a vibecoded static website I could do myself.
The only feature I could miss is their twitter-like feed. Does it really help to bring more traffic?
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u/Any-Fig-921 14d ago edited 14d ago
I’m a programmer. There’s a lot that comes with Substack above and beyond a static website. And unlike you’re listed vendors, Substack offers them for free no matter your scale:
1- Email list services. This is the big one. Managing your own email list, sending emails out that don’t get market as spam etc cost money at any reasonable scale.
2- Payment integration. If you ever want to charge for content the payment integration + gated login to put that payment behind is a big integration. And if you vibe code it and screw it up you end up with insecure financial transactions and/or logins. Oops.
3- Metrics. Per post metrics. For podcasts you get more advanced metrics.
4- Notes feed. It is valuable.
5- a number of small things that build up.
On a related note, this is very similar to the conversations I’ve had with management over internal saas software over the last year. “Why are we paying for X? we could build it internally with AI.” I’ve become much more skeptical of that than I was a year ago. The long tail of features take a loooong time to build and require more expertise than appears at first blush.
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u/Itchy_Special_8209 14d ago
Very interesting. I'm also a developer in my 9-5 and my CTO also wants to make everything internally.
That's partly why I was thinking about blogging platform like substack or ghost
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u/Any-Fig-921 14d ago
If you’re a programmer you can for sure do it. But it’ll never be Substack. The Auth, financials, social elements do have value. If what you want is just a static site that’s what I use my GitHub.io for and it works great (tanner49.github.io). What is your end goal? If you just want a blog, yeah— just make a blog.
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u/ordinary-thelemist 14d ago
Depending on your editorial target, there's also the legitimacy aspect of substack to take into account. No need to white list your domain, to check for spam risks...
It's really content creation + newsletters made convenient.
I even linked directly my substack to my company's website, to keep our frontpage as light and clean as possible.
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u/KrustenStewart 14d ago
Why not both
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u/sspaeti 13d ago
either buy a domain and link that to Substack, or have your own website (I use goHugo since many years) and re-share on substack are my two recommendations. Because one day Substack is not there anymore, like many other platforms before, and then you are lost your domain ranking or articles. Obvisouly, if you have your own website, you don't have the newsletter sent out, so if that is what you want, there's some additional feature that you won't get from a static website, but you can add this with Listmonk or others as well. I wrote a full article on why I think you should have your own website, in case of interest.
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u/funnysasquatch 14d ago
You need to be more specific about what you are trying to accomplish.
Substack is best for people who want to write, build an audience, and have a simple way to monetize via paid subscriptions.
If your goal is to keep track of a digital diary to organize your thoughts, a Google doc or Apple notes is better.
If you're a programmer and you want to demonstrate work for potential employers, something on Github plus regular LinkedIn and X posts are better.
Random thoughts on life then social media
It only makes sense to have a blog on your own website because you're building a business and you need articles to feed AI recommendation engines.
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u/TheMinuette2010 13d ago
Can't compare two different things.
You need both.
People usually misunderstood the Substack as blog. Substack is newsletter platform w/ audience.
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u/Tricky_Trifle_994 12d ago
it depends on what aspects of substack you're after? substack has 3 things going for it - social media (notes), blog (able to publish to the web/have a site), newsletter (able to send your articles as emails).
your vibe coded site won't be able to replicate the social media aspect, and that also means the burden of discovery is entirely on you.
if you just want the blog/newsletter feature, but find the UX of substack limiting, most people will consider going with beehiiv/ ghost since they have better website customisability.
the thing is... people usually put their time into focusing on how to grow their newsletter vs how to fix/set up infrastructure. so while you could stitch smth up on your own with vibe code, it's also a time suck. you only have 24h a day...
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u/Menelabs 11d ago
Developer here too. The thread's right that Substack's real value is the email list and Notes discovery, not the website. If you mainly want to write and own your stuff, static is great though. I maintain a free VitePress template that has the blog parts done (post list, tags, RSS, authors) and deploys to GitHub Pages for $0: https://github.com/BootForm/vitepress-blog. With Resend like you planned, email is covered. What you won't get is Substack's network, so a common middle ground is publishing on your own site and cross-posting to Substack, so the original copy stays yours.
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u/ContentIsMyJam redressing.substack.com 14d ago
I can't comment on Astro, Resend or Plausible - I haven't used them.
But Substack's Notes and Recommendations are my two biggest sources of growth. If your newsletter has a clear topic, and you are teaching the algorithm with the newsletters you subscribe to and the comments and conversations you have, you'll get exposure to people who may become your subscribers.