Best Open Source Alternatives to Substack

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform and Substack alternative with native newsletters, membership tiers, and full control over your MySQL data.

vs Substack: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed MIT.

WordPress is a self-hosted CMS replacing hosted builders like Wix with full database control, block editing, and an extensible plugin engine.

vs Substack: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed GPL-2.0-or-later.

WriteFreely is an open-source alternative to Medium, offering federated Markdown blogging and ActivityPub distribution from a lightweight Go binary.

vs Substack: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed AGPL-3.0.

Notifuse is a self-hosted email platform replacing Mailchimp with a visual MJML builder, multi-provider delivery routing, and zero per-contact fees.

vs Substack: a free, open-source option you fully control.

Plume is a self-hosted, federated blogging engine in Rust that replaces platforms like Substack with decentralized ActivityPub publishing.

vs Substack: a free, open-source option you fully control, licensed AGPL-3.0.