Choosing the right platform for my newsletter and blog✍

I’m setting up a Ghost site for my newsletter Listen Up IH

Its past 1300 subs now, I figured high time it had a separate identity.

(beyond the Indie Hackers website)

Reflections on the pro/cons of all the blogging platforms I’ve considered –

(originally published as a Twitter thread)

WordPress

Pros –

Self hosted – Complete control to the creator

Great support and love from the dev community

Cons –

Need too many plugins to get the basic stuff done

Can get slow if you’re not an expert

This was my 1st choice, but it felt like too much extra work.

Substack

Pros –

Very easy to set up.

Great creator experience.

Cons –

Very little control over the UX.

Every Substack looks the same🤷‍♂️

No post level SEO controls.

Only GA and FB analytics option

Takes 5% cut for every paid sub (This is bad when scaling)

Webflow –

Pros –

Looks beautiful.

Granular SEO controls.

Cons –

A bit hard to setup.

Way beyond what I need.

Too expensive (I’m thrifty😅)

Revue

Pros –

Direct Signup from Twitter

(that’s it🙃)

Cons –

Poor creator experience

Not meant for blogging, only to send emails

No SEO features.

Experimenting with Revue for The Indie Creator newsletter.

Notion Based

There are No-Code website builder on top of Notion like MDX.ONE, super.so and potion.so.

Pros –

I love notion, it’s super easy to use, do all my writing on it anyways

It’s easy to setup

Cons –

Hard to have gated content.

No native newsletter option.

I’m a big fan of these website builders, but Ghost seemed to be the best option👇

Ghost

Pros –

Fast

Easy to setup

Fits my Pocket

Newsletter Built in

Self hosted option available

Gated content option built in

Great writing and reading experience

Cons –

Poor native analytics

Limited themes in base plan.

To Do

Work around the cons, I’m on it, will have an update by next week soon.

Thank you for reading🙏

Hope this helps you in your platform choice.

I’m reading up on all the analytics options right now.

Watch out for next week’s post for what I learn.

Hint – I hate Google, would rather have no analytics than GA. More next week. Ciao👋

Let me what you think, say hi on Twitter –