Substack vs Flodesk: Which One is Better for Food Creators?
Photo by Elevae
Are you completely lost when someone brings up email marketing because you just don’t know where to start? And then, decision fatigue hits because you’re not sure if you should choose Substack or Flodesk? Once you’ve landed on an option, someone else will pop up with an argument for the other, and you’re back where you started (or didn’t).
There isn’t a right or wrong option. It’s only about what’s right for you as a food creator. Your email list should grow with you as your career expands, and whatever service provider you choose, should be one that can evolve with you.
(Quick note: I only recommend products and services I can’t shut up about. Some of the links in this post are affiliate links at no additional cost to you and may put some dollars in my pocket.)
So, is Substack or Flodesk better for you as a food creator? Let's explore both platforms and decide:
Substack
Substack is a newsletter platform and has a no-frills approach to how they deliver content. With an emphasis on monetizing that content, it’s super popular with food writers and creators. From David Lebovitz to Stained Page News, the potential with Substack has definitely exploded with potential for folks who want to make some cash sharing work that would otherwise be free.
Pros:
Simple newsletter format: Substack allows you to deliver your cookbook content in a newsletter format, providing readers with regular updates, recipes, and cooking tips.
Variety of subscription options aka $$$: You have the freedom to choose which content is free or paid, or even select the option to have an entirely paid newsletter. Substack encourages a range of options, which is helpful as you start out and continue to grow.
Community-focused: Substack has incredible resources around creating a place for your community to gather, including comments, discussion threads, and direct communication with your people.
User-friendly: Substack is simple and user-friendly, so you don’t have to spend hours figuring out how to design and manage your newsletter.
Flodesk
Flodesk is an email marketing platform known for its beautiful and engaging email campaigns. If you’re on my list, you’ve seen them.
With stunning templates and drag-and-drop options, Flodesk makes it easy to customize and maintain all of your emails and workflows. As a former Mailchimp user, I was drawn to the simple design elements and how you’re not dinged for growth. Most email marketing platforms will raise your monthly costs as your subscribers increase, but Flodesk has a flat monthly rate. Hi, hello, yes, please.
Pros:
Pretty and easy-to-use email templates: Flodesk gives you stunning templates to use for emails, opt-in pages, workflows and sales pages (known as Checkouts). It’s a sigh of relief when you want to create A+ content, but your design brain just isn’t working.
Customization: Your emails, opt-in and sales pages can match your brand, including fonts, colors, and images. Plus, you can insert your reader’s names in each email, so they feel like you’re writing directly to them, instead of a thousand other people.
Automation without the headache: Flodesk allows you to set up automated email sequences for opt-ins aka free content you give away in exchange for someone’s email. You can also create automated workflows if you choose to use their Checkouts feature, which would allow you to sell digital products and services to your subscribers.
Analytics: This doesn’t sound sexy, but numbers are a HUGE factor when looking at any piece of your business as a food creator. You can track email open and click-through rates along with other metrics to see what’s popping and what needs improvement.
How to Choose Between Substack and Flodesk
There is no one way to go with this, but there are a few things to think about before choosing which one is better for you as a food creator.
Pricing
If you go the paid route with Substack, they’ll collect 10% of each subscription + processing fees. So, it could be worth it to build up your list with free content and once you have a decent-sized audience, you could promote paid posts.
With Flodesk, you’ll pay a flat monthly fee, and that’s it. There is the initial hurdle of paying for a service when you have a small list, which is a roadblock for most people. But knowing what you want long-term will help you choose what’s best for you now. It’s also a great motivation to get people on your list faster.
And if you decide to go with Flodesk, you can get 50% off of your first year here.
Audience and long-term goals
With anything, you have to know what you want and why. The format of your newsletter doesn’t matter as much as what you want your career to look like in the long term. If you want to monetize your content, Substack would be a great place for your newsletter. But if you want to expand beyond newsletter content and promote books, courses, and other digital products, Flodesk offers you better ways to do that without having to buy 10 different pieces of software.
Something to think about: If you decide to join Substack and then switch to Flodesk, you won’t have subscriber email names, which is essential for impactful email marketing.
Promotion aka Getting People to Subscribe
This is the piece no one likes to hear, but regardless of which one you choose, you will need to promote your newsletter. If people don’t know about it, they can’t subscribe to it. A lot of folks assume if they go with Substack, their growth will be instant because of the suggested newsletter options on the platform. But with SO many newsletters on Substack, you can’t rely on people finding you organically.
With Flodesk, you have the option of giving people a freebie, be it a video course or PDF download, in exchange for their email address. Substack would be them just signing up for your newsletter, but you could also get creative with which posts you promote to get folks on your list.
Take some time to figure out which option is best for you—not the one other people are trying to push on you. And in the meantime, sign up for my free course “Writing Gold: 5 Days to Kickstart Your Cookbook Writing and Grow Your Audience of Raving Fans”. Email is so much more than just recipes or a round-up dump of your most recent blog posts. In less than a week, I’ll give you the framework for making email easy and a tool for your cookbook writing.
How you do one thing is how you do everything, so let’s make your email marketing the catalyst for killer content that’ll have people lining up. So, let’s cross one worry off of your list, and join Writing Gold now. You know you want to.
