First thread! Tell us which features you’d like to see in Substack, or ask us feature-related questions. (Please, no support questions – send those to support@substack.com.)
I've tweeted at you guys about this before (and also talked to Hamish about it), but just reiterating my longing for an iOS app so I can write on the go!
Anchors. So, we can click to another spot in our newsletters or direct people straight to that spot when we reference something in a newsletter in another social medium. (At least 'anchors' is what they used to be called when I was hand-coding newsletters many years ago...
1. A way to gift a paid subscription for a specific duration to an email address via API. This would make it easier for me to sync my Patreon patrons over to Substack as I transition people over and eventually deprecate Patreon use.
2. Zapier support for new subscriptions so I can also invite them to other places (like my Discord community).
3. Multiple tiers of subscription, and a way to tag subscribers to a tier. I'm using coupons right now to create a $1 tier and a $5 tier, but there's no way to send things only to the $5 tier subscribers. There are also use cases where I might want two $1 tiers for different areas of interest, so being able to segment my subscribers by a supplied tag or group would be great too.
4. Plus-100 to image resizing so I don't have to re-crop tall images to not take up the entire screen.
These are not super urgent request, just the ones that came to mind. Overall, loving Substack and also love that you are able to say no to feature requests to keep things minimal.
I would like to be able to post a single post in two languages, so the readers would automatically get it sent or see it online in their language automatically either:
Just starting out but I agree with the calls for more design control, image placement, font size/style options, etc. The ability to have a caption/attribution under an image would also be nice. Thanks.
because all of our newsletters get archived, i would love more layout options to show them. perhaps by topic or just the ability to personalize it a bit more.
I would love to see an email "autoresponder" feature where you can select a number of archived posts that get sent to new subscribers in any order you choose at a preset interval (e.g., daily, weekly, etc.). This could be positioned as a "free email course" or series to encourage people to sign up for your list and introduce them to your content in a predetermined manner. Great product! Keep up the good work!
Option for Image selection and attribution from sourced articles. Specifically, pull and display/format image(s) from source article and put attribution in editable text box.
Oh, here's a super minor one for everyone else that's mostly just important for me because I write about books: in the emails, text that is bolded, italicized, and hyperlinked just shows up as italicized and underlined, but not bold. Would love for it to display as all three, though this could also be an email client issue.
Would love 1-2 other static website pages other than the About page -- I needed one to post my privacy and data collection policy and had to host it elsewhere. Also, seconding all the comments requesting various customizable promo codes.
Finally, I've found a lot of people don't really realize that this is a newsletter you can subscribe to when they're linked to a post, especially people unfamiliar with Substack. Not sure what a fix would look like, but would love it if it was somehow clearer what subscribing meant -- maybe some sort of customizable call to action on free web posts above the subscribe button, succinctly explaining that this is a newsletter about XYZ, sign up for free updates or subscribe and pay for all posts. I find I really have to explain what it is to people right now before I can get them to subscribe, which defeats the utility of free posts that get a lot of clicks outside my own social media channels, places where I can't highlight to people that it's a newsletter.
In addition to the welcome emails, I would like to be able to send certain emails with a trigger of my choosing. For example, send a 'thanks for reading' email after 10 emails opened.
A series feature where I can string a bunch of posts into a reading sequence, with all sequence trailheads listed in a series index. Reverse chronology is a bitch. On my wordpress blog, ribbonfarm.com, I use a series plugin for doing this. Since I have many parallel, intertwined threads going on my 2 lists, gives new readers a way to catch up instead of facing an intimidating archives-moat. Especially valuable for those of us who like to gradually build on past issues.
Also, while I appreciate you guys seeking user feedback, I kinda like how you’re product-driven and opinionated so I’d like to see you continue that to the tune of say 80% of the roadmap and listen to us only 20%. I’m wary of this turning into Homer Simpson’s car https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer
If this wasn't mentionned before, would love the ability to bulk select subscribers. Mostly for list cleaning / list management / export or copy paste.
Love the platform overall & appreciate how you've put so much thought into keeping it streamlined.
-One suggestion I'd like to echo would be to allow for a little more site customization to make branding (especially for those who have migrated from other platforms) more seamless. (Things like web font choices, etc.).
-Second thing would be pagination of email openers/subscribers, etc - clicking to view details about a subscriber returns you to the top of the list right now.
The ability to create a simple one link, a few lines email from an article. something like Buffer/hootsuite for newsletters. I'd like to send quick updates to my subscribers or clue them into something really quickly. If I can send an email as quickly as I can tweet. That'd be great. LIke breaking updates since my newsletter is all about industry news.
Is there a way to (as a publication) turn off email receipts that subscribers are sent for recurring subscriptions? I feel turning them off by default would help keep churn down, especially for the monthly subscribers.
Love the splash page but would love a way to customize it a bit more. Have a few different ways to ask for subscriptions. First name last name would be good to have as well.
A call to action to subscribe automatically added to the end of each free post. I share free posts to grow my list, but it seems like a lot of people are reading without subscribing to the free list. Creating a more prominent reminder could be great.
First I would just like to say thank you for creating a great platform. Really great job!!
I would like to see two things:
Accept Cryptocurrency you can use something like Coinbase to do this.
I am still a growing newsletter but would be cool to have some of the lower subscribed newsletters on the front page. Kind of like what Bandcamp does to feature interesting bands.
Again these are just requests, something I would like to see over time.
I'd love to have all the features I have on my laptop available on mobile (iOS) Things like auto embedding of videos from links etc. A wordcound as I write would also be cool. I'd also like to be able to export all my newsletters as a book. ;-)
A web clipper and iOS extension to save articles for later newslettering
Oooh, I would love more formatting options. Center text alignment, sans-serif / serif typeface, just a few more options would be swell
I've tweeted at you guys about this before (and also talked to Hamish about it), but just reiterating my longing for an iOS app so I can write on the go!
A newsletter signup widget I can host on my own website! And +1 to more design customization options
It'd be great if we could preview the URL for scheduled posts, so I could also pre-schedule social shares for when public posts go live.
Anchors. So, we can click to another spot in our newsletters or direct people straight to that spot when we reference something in a newsletter in another social medium. (At least 'anchors' is what they used to be called when I was hand-coding newsletters many years ago...
Custom domains please!
1. A way to gift a paid subscription for a specific duration to an email address via API. This would make it easier for me to sync my Patreon patrons over to Substack as I transition people over and eventually deprecate Patreon use.
2. Zapier support for new subscriptions so I can also invite them to other places (like my Discord community).
3. Multiple tiers of subscription, and a way to tag subscribers to a tier. I'm using coupons right now to create a $1 tier and a $5 tier, but there's no way to send things only to the $5 tier subscribers. There are also use cases where I might want two $1 tiers for different areas of interest, so being able to segment my subscribers by a supplied tag or group would be great too.
4. Plus-100 to image resizing so I don't have to re-crop tall images to not take up the entire screen.
These are not super urgent request, just the ones that came to mind. Overall, loving Substack and also love that you are able to say no to feature requests to keep things minimal.
I would like to be able to post a single post in two languages, so the readers would automatically get it sent or see it online in their language automatically either:
* based on preference
* based on browser setting
I've put this link on https://www.reddit.com/r/Substack/comments/xoj2o2/bilingual_posts/ as well.
A homepage / reader (think Feedly, Google Reader, etc) where I'd be able to read issues from Substacks I follow
more on-site analytics; specifically bounce rate & time on site.
Thank you, everyone, for participating in this thread. We're checking out for the day. We'll do this again soon!
instagram embeds!
Just starting out but I agree with the calls for more design control, image placement, font size/style options, etc. The ability to have a caption/attribution under an image would also be nice. Thanks.
Changing image size without using external tools :)
Tags or categories? Interest communities? Like, who else is mailing poetry and can we help each other out somehow?
The ability to create segments within an email list. (For example, "people who regularly open" or "former paid subscribers.")
I'd like to find a more prominent way for my name to be highlighted as the writer of the newsletter.
More ways to customize email templates/layout. Would love to differentiate more from other newsletters :).
because all of our newsletters get archived, i would love more layout options to show them. perhaps by topic or just the ability to personalize it a bit more.
Easy intuitive drop down to insert links to previous articles we wrote in Substack and tagging for articles to make search better.
I would love to see an email "autoresponder" feature where you can select a number of archived posts that get sent to new subscribers in any order you choose at a preset interval (e.g., daily, weekly, etc.). This could be positioned as a "free email course" or series to encourage people to sign up for your list and introduce them to your content in a predetermined manner. Great product! Keep up the good work!
Option for Image selection and attribution from sourced articles. Specifically, pull and display/format image(s) from source article and put attribution in editable text box.
Oh, here's a super minor one for everyone else that's mostly just important for me because I write about books: in the emails, text that is bolded, italicized, and hyperlinked just shows up as italicized and underlined, but not bold. Would love for it to display as all three, though this could also be an email client issue.
also the ability to embed video into a newsletter without having to host it elsewhere first
Would love 1-2 other static website pages other than the About page -- I needed one to post my privacy and data collection policy and had to host it elsewhere. Also, seconding all the comments requesting various customizable promo codes.
Finally, I've found a lot of people don't really realize that this is a newsletter you can subscribe to when they're linked to a post, especially people unfamiliar with Substack. Not sure what a fix would look like, but would love it if it was somehow clearer what subscribing meant -- maybe some sort of customizable call to action on free web posts above the subscribe button, succinctly explaining that this is a newsletter about XYZ, sign up for free updates or subscribe and pay for all posts. I find I really have to explain what it is to people right now before I can get them to subscribe, which defeats the utility of free posts that get a lot of clicks outside my own social media channels, places where I can't highlight to people that it's a newsletter.
In addition to the welcome emails, I would like to be able to send certain emails with a trigger of my choosing. For example, send a 'thanks for reading' email after 10 emails opened.
A series feature where I can string a bunch of posts into a reading sequence, with all sequence trailheads listed in a series index. Reverse chronology is a bitch. On my wordpress blog, ribbonfarm.com, I use a series plugin for doing this. Since I have many parallel, intertwined threads going on my 2 lists, gives new readers a way to catch up instead of facing an intimidating archives-moat. Especially valuable for those of us who like to gradually build on past issues.
Also, while I appreciate you guys seeking user feedback, I kinda like how you’re product-driven and opinionated so I’d like to see you continue that to the tune of say 80% of the roadmap and listen to us only 20%. I’m wary of this turning into Homer Simpson’s car https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer
Ability to set special offer priced trial subscriptions--One or Two Month Trial $1--then conversion to one year full price
Some writers use their own domains. When will custom domains be publicly available?
If this wasn't mentionned before, would love the ability to bulk select subscribers. Mostly for list cleaning / list management / export or copy paste.
This might have been said, but more unified analytics. See all stats on one page.
Coloured hyperlinks
Thank you! Love this platform and how easy it is to get started. A couple of my feedbacks:
1. Easier ability to see names of authors associated with newsletters
2. More analytics drill-downs: I.e. the ability to see where traffic is coming from day by day
3. Ability to email specific groups; i.e. people who haven't ever read - prompt them to unsubscribe if they want to
4. Breakdown of yearly/monthly recurring revenue
Custom Domains!
Love the platform overall & appreciate how you've put so much thought into keeping it streamlined.
-One suggestion I'd like to echo would be to allow for a little more site customization to make branding (especially for those who have migrated from other platforms) more seamless. (Things like web font choices, etc.).
-Second thing would be pagination of email openers/subscribers, etc - clicking to view details about a subscriber returns you to the top of the list right now.
Thanks again for all you're doing! Cheers
-A toggle for 'Newsletters' and 'Podcasts' on the landing page so that it's easily filterable
-Detailed information on podcast metrics (similar to Libsyn)
The ability to create a simple one link, a few lines email from an article. something like Buffer/hootsuite for newsletters. I'd like to send quick updates to my subscribers or clue them into something really quickly. If I can send an email as quickly as I can tweet. That'd be great. LIke breaking updates since my newsletter is all about industry news.
Is there a way to (as a publication) turn off email receipts that subscribers are sent for recurring subscriptions? I feel turning them off by default would help keep churn down, especially for the monthly subscribers.
Love the splash page but would love a way to customize it a bit more. Have a few different ways to ask for subscriptions. First name last name would be good to have as well.
Discount codes or direct link to paid subscription service for social media use?
instagram embeds!
Coloured hyperlinks
For podcasting, the ability to pause/restart recording and record interviews with others similar to Anchors capes
I wish twitter embeds with videos would include the video and I would like 5000 more people to pay for my newsletter.
A call to action to subscribe automatically added to the end of each free post. I share free posts to grow my list, but it seems like a lot of people are reading without subscribing to the free list. Creating a more prominent reminder could be great.
First I would just like to say thank you for creating a great platform. Really great job!!
I would like to see two things:
Accept Cryptocurrency you can use something like Coinbase to do this.
I am still a growing newsletter but would be cool to have some of the lower subscribed newsletters on the front page. Kind of like what Bandcamp does to feature interesting bands.
Again these are just requests, something I would like to see over time.
I'd love to have all the features I have on my laptop available on mobile (iOS) Things like auto embedding of videos from links etc. A wordcound as I write would also be cool. I'd also like to be able to export all my newsletters as a book. ;-)
The ability to send free newsletters that don’t appear on the username.substack.com homepage