Discord vs Substack

Discord

Where communities hang out online

Discord is a communication platform for communities. People join servers - spaces created around a game, a hobby, a creator, a company or a group of friends - where conversations happen in text channels organised by topic, alongside always-on voice channels, video calls, screen sharing and live streaming. It started in gaming, where players needed low-latency voice chat while playing together, and gaming remains a large part of its identity. But Discord has become a home for many other communities: open-source projects, study groups, crypto and AI communities, fan groups for creators, startups that host their user communities there, and friend groups who simply hang out in voice channels. The server structure is what makes it work for communities. Admins create channels for different topics, set roles and permissions that control who can see and do what, and use moderation tools such as automated filters and verification levels to keep spaces safe. Threads and forum channels organise longer discussions, stage channels host audio events, and community features help large servers onboard new members. An extensive ecosystem of bots adds moderation, music, games, polls, integrations with other services and custom functionality, and Discord's developer platform supports apps and activities that run inside the client. Discord is free to use, earning revenue from Nitro, a subscription that adds perks such as higher upload limits, better streaming quality and custom emoji across servers, and from server boosts and in-app purchases. It is available on desktop, web, mobile and consoles. The trade-offs are discoverability and structure: conversations are fast-moving and hard to search compared with forums, content is not indexed by search engines, and large servers require active moderation. Alternatives include Slack for workplace communication; Circle and Mighty Networks for creator and brand communities with courses; Discourse for searchable forum communities; Telegram and WhatsApp for group messaging; Guilded for gaming communities; and Reddit for public topic-based discussion. Choose Discord when you want a lively, real-time home for a community with voice, text and rich customisation.

Substack

Publishing platform where writers own their audience

Substack is a publishing platform for newsletters, and its defining decision is that it charges nothing until you charge your readers. You write in a plain editor, it emails the post to your list and publishes it as a web page, and if you turn on paid subscriptions it takes a cut of the revenue. There is no monthly fee at any list size, which is why it became the default for writers starting from zero. The platform now covers more than email. Posts can carry paywalls at the post or section level; there is podcast hosting with private RSS feeds for paying subscribers, video, threads and chat for community, and Notes, a short-form feed that has become a meaningful growth channel. Recommendations let publications refer readers to each other, and this network effect is the real product: a Substack with no audience is discoverable in a way that a self-hosted newsletter is not. The economics: publishing free is $0. On paid subscriptions Substack takes 10% of revenue, and Stripe takes its own processing fee on top — roughly 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction, with an additional recurring-billing fee — so budget 13-16% of gross rather than 10%. On a $10 monthly subscriber you keep somewhere around $8.40. That is excellent at small scale, where a fixed platform fee would exceed it, and expensive at large scale, where 10% of a six-figure revenue line buys a lot of alternative tooling. What "owning your audience" actually means here is worth being precise about. You can export your subscriber list, including paid subscribers, and move to another platform, and you can point a custom domain at your publication. What does not travel is the network — the recommendations, the Notes feed and the Substack app that were sending you new readers. That is the lock-in, and it is a real one. Beehiiv is the closest competitor and is built for growth mechanics and ad monetisation, with tiered flat pricing that beats 10% once revenue is meaningful. Ghost is the open-source option: a flat platform fee or self-hosting, no revenue share, full ownership, and no discovery network to lean on. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) is the choice when the newsletter is a funnel for other products rather than the product. Buttondown is the minimal, developer-friendly option. Patreon is better when the offer is membership access rather than writing. Choose Substack to start writing today and let the network find your first thousand readers.