Substack Reviews 157

Absolutely useless app. Continually crashes on Google Pixel Phone despite numerous reinstalls, cache/storage clearing and a factory reset of the phone itself. Terrible support forum.

Authors are fine but Substack not allowing a consumer to delete a credit card (even though I'm not subscribed) leaves me open to too many privacy problems.

Substack doesn't allow me to delete a credit card even if I don't have a subscription. A.I. typed to tell the author to delete it via Stripe (and gave me his substack address...) and the Nobel Laureate to whom I subscribed had no idea what to do. I was embarrassed.

I went to Stripe and there's no way to have them delete it. There likely is. Why are they keeping my card in their database?

I checked BBB and they have a lot of A.I. based complaints (it explained by I've had two issues lately that support never got back to me about - there is no real support).

There are enough complaints (BBB, Reddit, TrustPilot) that I will change my credit card. This is really nuts.

AVOID AVOID AVOID. Substack suspend your account without warning . Same as the FB police . Seems you can't post historical facts about a certain tribe.They don't like it .
AVOID AVOID AVOID.

My account on Substack was suddenly suspended without any prior warning or clear explanation. I carefully reviewed their content guidelines and could not identify any violation that would justify this action. Despite reaching out to their support team, I received no meaningful response — just generic replies with no real investigation or resolution.
This level of opacity is unacceptable for a publishing platform that creators depend on. Suspending an account without explanation, and then failing to provide any real support when the user reaches out, shows a serious lack of respect for their users.
I hope Substack improves how they handle account issues and communicates more transparently with users in the future. Until then, I cannot recommend this platform to anyone who values security and fair treatment.

I have made an unauthorised subscription payment from a credit card. Under my account, under "Subscriptions", there are no subscriptions found. The AI support agent is unhelpful and is unwilling to transfer to a human, nor will it give an email address where customer support can be contacted.

This is pretty awful business practice, and I feel bad for Substack because I have evidence of having no active subscriptions and the credit card chargeback will cost their company money. But since they don't give me an option to get in touch, I suppose I'm simply processing the chargeback and hoping they realise they need to do better.

Can't unsubscribe from spam emails because my account is blocked. The appeal review has already taken a month with no result

I'm trying to give substack zero stars but trustpilot only starts at one, so take this as a full 0.
We've had a series of absolutely horrible customer service interactions with the artificially subintelligent bot that puts you into endless circles of dead ends trying to resolve issues. Call it out for being idiotic, it cries that you're being mean and threatens to stop supporting you... For one thing, it would have to start supporting to be able stop, and the other thing... it's a BOT!
Sadly, a couple of the creators we used to support on there no longer get our support, just due to how terrible it is. Somebody, create a better instance of this kind of site, now. There's clearly plenty of creators in need of the support.

Make closing subscription to SUBSTACK as easy as they claim it is to unsubscrib to other companys. Notice that I have 1 day to close app or it will renew at $99.00 year.
3 hours later and I still can not close this damn account.

BE CAREFUL!
your draft articles made on Substack are completely visible and reacheable by anybody, though you never published them.
If you write sensible stuff on your draft and think nobody see it, think again!
I had a bad issue with a Company, because I quoted it in a draft article that I never want to make public, but it was visible to anyone.

Disgusting platform. Makes free offers to view posts that it locks, and after you jump through all of its dozen hoops to collect your information, it won't even let you view the post.

My article disappeared overnight and the chat bot ‘support’ was useless. There is no way to contact them so this is the only way I have to express this issue. Their formatting is awful as well and hard to use on the app. Will not be using again.

Since the begin of this year I have an account on Substack, to place and link my written articles. After a problem with not being able to login, I have NO possible way to solve this... No mail, no good working link to reset my password... Nothing. In fact I am canceled.
No communication is possible, only an AI chatbot that does nothing understand...
This is a very bad and incompetent medium!

I had a very frustrating experience trying to resolve an issue through Substack’s customer support.

I subscribed to “The Menopause Professor” (Kay Anne Kubutko) via Substack for £70. The content was not what I had expected as it was very general despite being marketed as "not just generic tips", and I also did not receive some of the advertised material (including a “hormone blueprint”). I contacted the provider to request a refund within the stated 7 day period, but did not receive a response.

I then tried to contact Substack directly. However, their support appears to rely entirely on a chatbot, which repeatedly cycles through the same questions without resolving the issue. There does not seem to be any clear way to escalate a query to a human.

I also emailed the terms of service address, but received an automated response stating that if the issue is not specifically related to terms of service, the email will not be actioned.

As a result, my issue remains unresolved and I am currently out of pocket, despite acting within the stated refund window.

Overall, the lack of accessible customer support and inability to escalate issues has been very disappointing.

Substack sent all my login codes to Spam, I never saw them until they blocked me from logging in for 24 hours. I thought they were censoring me. Who would think to look in Spam for a log in code when a website kept bouncing me out? Maybe it is censorship. Otherwise I'm pretty happy with the website, except that the funnel their algorithm keeps tightening and narrowing until I feel like I'm in an echo chamber or silo. It's been a great diversion while I was too sick to do anything else but binge on it.

Like most of the reviews, you can only chat with a Bot. I paid my subscription but keep getting asked to upgrade and pay again. I emailed my specific subscription, Cricket Et Al and simply don't get a response. It's disgraceful to take your money and not provide access or support.

Substack has an identity crisis. It started as a newsletter tool, then evolved into a blog platform, and now wants to be a social media site — and in trying to be all three, it does none of them decent, well would be 'wishful thinking'..

As a newsletter platform specifically, it falls short on the fundamentals: segmentation is basic, automation is almost non-existent, analytics are surface-level, and monetisation options are limited. For anything beyond a simple paid/free split, you'll quickly hit a wall. The overall experience feels confused and the UX/UI is simply terrible!

For anyone with serious content or business goals, look elsewhere.

I published on Substack for almost a year. Original content about consciousness and awakening. No hate, no violence, no spam—just truth.

Then one day, my account was suspended. No warning. No specific reason given.

I appealed. They rejected it with a generic message. I asked for one simple thing: which post violated which rule? They refused. Their "policy" is to never tell you. You just lose your work and your voice.

Their support is not human—just bots that send you in circles. There is no accountability, no transparency, no way to defend yourself.

If you value your work, do not trust this platform. They will delete you without explanation, and you will never get a real answer.

Good luck trying to unsubscribe if you give them any payment info. You'll be charged "by mistake" repeatedly. It's a scammy company.

I was charged 2 times, but they don't see the payments and the author I wanted to subscribe to, doesn't see my subscription.

I'm only chatting with a bot, that isn't helpful at all.

So I lost 2 times 70 euros but I have no subscription and a whole lot more frustrations.

Do not waste your time on this site. The authors and followers are abusive. Be ready to be be attacked for expressing your opinions if they are not in line with others.