The subscriber count you see on Substack is a lie, but it's a lie born from something much larger than one platform's desperation. It's the dying gasp of an economic experiment that lasted fourteen years and convinced an entire generation of founders that growth is a business model. Understanding why Substack inflates your numbers—and why they now feel compelled to turn your newsletter into discount Twitter—requires understanding the bizarre economic conditions that created the influencer economy in the first place. And more importantly, it requires knowing how to get out.

When the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to near zero in December 2008, they weren't trying to create Mr. Beast or make Joe Rogan worth a quarter billion dollars to Spotify. They were trying to save the global financial system from collapse. But consequences don't ask permission. For the next fourteen years—interrupted briefly between 2015 and 2020, then resurrected during COVID—money cost essentially nothing. This single fact rewired Silicon Valley's brain and, subsequently, the entire creator economy.

Here's what zero interest rates actually mean for venture capital: when parking your money in Treasury bonds returns 0.5% per year, suddenly betting on some twenty-something with a pitch deck doesn't seem so crazy. The math changes. Risk-free returns approaching zero meant capital flooded into tech seeking any yield at all. Gergely Orosz, who writes The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter, calculated that post-ZIRP, risk-free returns on investments increased by almost ten times. That's not a rounding error. That's a completely different investment landscape.

During the ZIRP years, particularly the 2020-2021 COVID boom, something genuinely unprecedented happened. Venture capitalists deployed capital at twice the long-term annual average. Q1 2021 saw roughly $500 million per quarter pouring into creator economy startups alone. The average VC fund size hit a record $371 million in early 2022. Exit liquidity peaked at $841.5 billion in 2021—a number so large it has no meaningful context except to say: money was everywhere, looking for a home.

This created the business model we've come to recognize as standard tech industry practice: subsidize everything, lose money forever, capture market share, figure out profitability later. Uber rides below cost. Amazon shipping that defies physics. Streaming services that lose billions annually. These aren't businesses in any traditional sense—they're bets that cheap capital will last long enough for monopoly to emerge. Cory Doctorow, who coined the term "enshittification," describes the three-stage process: first, platforms are good to users; then they abuse users to benefit business customers; finally, they abuse everyone to extract value for shareholders.

The creator economy followed this exact playbook. Platforms competed for talent by offering increasingly absurd deals. Spotify paid Joe Rogan $200 million over 3.5 years for podcast exclusivity—then renewed him in 2024 for up to $250 million more. Mr. Beast grew from bedroom YouTuber to a $700 million annual revenue business empire by 2024, employing 250 people and reinvesting nearly all revenue back into content. These aren't normal outcomes. These are what happens when money costs nothing and platforms compete for attention using investor subsidies.

ZIRP didn't just create mega-influencers—it supercharged the second wave of crypto scams. When Bitcoin peaked at $68,789 in November 2021 and the total crypto market cap hit $3.048 trillion, the combination of excess capital and influencer economics created a perfect scam machine.

Kim Kardashian promoted EthereumMax to her 330 million Instagram followers for a $250,000 payment she didn't disclose. The SEC fined her $1.26 million. Floyd Mayweather faced over $300,000 in SEC fines for similar promotions. Logan Paul's CryptoZoo raised $6.5 million before collapsing. Lindsay Lohan, Lil Yachty, and Jake Paul collectively paid $400,000 in fines for undisclosed paid partnerships. Chainalysis found that nearly 24% of new tokens showed pump-and-dump characteristics.

The collapse was swift and brutal. Terra/Luna wiped out $45-50 billion in May 2022 when the algorithmic stablecoin entered its death spiral. FTX's November 2022 bankruptcy vaporized $200 billion. From peak to trough, crypto lost $2.2 trillion—a 73% decline that tracked almost perfectly with the Fed's rate hikes.

This wasn't coincidence. When money costs something again, speculative assets are the first casualties.

In March 2022, the Federal Reserve began raising rates aggressively to combat inflation that had peaked above 8%. By 2023, rates reached 5.25-5.5%—a twenty-year high. The party ended instantly.

Tech layoffs exploded: approximately 93,000 workers in 2022, 200,000 in 2023, over 126,000 in the first days of 2025. Creator economy funding crashed from that peak of $500 million per quarter to just $180 million by Q4 2022—a decline of more than 90%. In 2023, global VC funding fell 38% to $285 billion, the lowest since 2018. At least 277 startups closed in 2024, a 29% increase from the previous year, with 109 having raised over $20 million.

The creator economy specifically suffered. Patreon, Cameo, and Substack all conducted layoffs in 2022. Linktree cut over 25% of staff. Hunter Walk, a venture partner who's studied the space, summarized it bluntly: the creator economy had been "turbo'd" by COVID, ZIRP, new VCs wanting to define categories—and now the temporal factors had reversed.

This is the context for understanding Substack's recent behavior. They're not making strange decisions in a vacuum. They're reacting to an extinction-level event in their funding environment.

Substack's funding history tells the story of a company trying to survive ZIRP's end. After their $65 million Series B in March 2021 at a $650 million valuation, they attempted to raise a Series C in May 2022. The target: $75-100 million at a $750 million to $1 billion valuation. They failed. According to the New York Times and TechCrunch, Substack abandoned these efforts after investor discussions went nowhere.

One month later, June 2022, they laid off 14% of their workforce—13 employees from a team of 94. CEO Chris Best announced the company needed to become "robust even in the toughest market conditions...without relying on raising money."

The Series C that finally closed in July 2025 took approximately three years from first attempt to completion. In the interim, Substack resorted to a community fundraising round via WeFunder in March 2023, raising just $7.8 million at the same $585 million pre-money valuation they'd achieved two years earlier—actually a down-round when you account for the new money. A small $10 million growth round from individual investors including Nate Silver and Naval Ravikant came in November 2024.

The eventual Series C: $100 million at a $1.1 billion valuation, led by BOND Capital and The Chernin Group. But here's where the math gets uncomfortable. Substack's estimated 2025 revenue is approximately $45 million, putting them at a 24.4x revenue multiple. CEO Chris Best stated the company "doesn't plan to be profitable anytime soon" and is "focused on growth."

This is ZIRP thinking applied in a post-ZIRP world. And it explains the subscriber inflation.

Substack claims over 50 million active subscriptions and 5 million paid subscriptions as of March 2025. Note the careful word choice: subscriptions, not subscribers. Even their own clarification admits "this includes multiple subscriptions attributed to the same user, so the real number of users is likely lower." One person subscribing to ten free newsletters counts as ten subscriptions. A paying subscriber with three paid newsletters counts three times in the paid number.

Independent analysts at Backlinko noted that "paid subscriptions may not represent unique paying subscribers...the real number of users is likely lower." Back in November 2021, when Substack announced one million paid subscriptions, critics observed this was explicitly "not the same thing as saying one million paying subscribers."

The contributor subscriber counts that sparked the original "growth lie" analysis are part of this same inflation apparatus. They're a way to compete with mega-influencer ecosystems on platforms that have fully enshittified—by making Substack writers look bigger than they are. It's false advertising dressed up as community building.

Substack's pivot to Notes in April 2023, followed by Chat features, video, and now Reels-style vertical video, isn't a mystery when you understand the economic pressure. As co-founder Hamish McKenzie told the New York Times in July 2025, "The company today is more interested in taking on YouTube than MailChimp."

John Gruber's response was devastating: "Does a company 'more interested in taking on YouTube than MailChimp' sound like a company focused on writers as talent and readers as users to you?"

Casey Newton, who left Substack for Ghost in January 2024 over content moderation concerns, predicted the post-Series C platform would need to implement pay-to-boost Notes features, pre-roll ads on podcasts and videos, and AI training licensing of writer content. Net.wars described it more simply: "I'd say enshittification is well under way."

The pattern is visible if you know what to look for. When platforms can't grow by subsidizing users, they grow by extracting value from them. The recommendation algorithm starts favoring big names over newcomers. The leaderboards and Explore curation create rich-get-richer dynamics. Some writers reported 70-90% decreases in monthly new subscribers by mid-2025, described as the end of a "growth bubble."

Substack is becoming Twitter pre-Musk: a platform that started by serving writers, is now serving advertisers (in the form of algorithm-boosted big names), and will eventually serve only itself. The timeline is just compressed because they raised money in a post-ZIRP environment that demands results faster.

Enough diagnosis. Here's the treatment. You can leave Substack without losing your audience, but you need to understand the process and choose the right destination.

Go to your publication Settings page and click "Import/Export" in the left navigation. Select "Create new export" to generate a ZIP file containing your posts and subscriber data. You'll receive an email when it's ready. For subscriber-only exports, navigate to Dashboard, then Subscribers, click the three dots above your list, and select Export.

What you can export: email addresses, names, subscription dates, free/paid status, payment information, engagement metrics, and all post content in HTML format.

What you cannot export: reader comments, Notes engagement, recommendation data, and images—which remain hotlinked to Substack's servers and will break when you delete your account. For paid subscribers, standard CSV exports may lack the Stripe IDs you need for seamless migration. Use your destination platform's migration tool instead.

Send your migration announcement before you move, from your Substack, with at least two to four weeks of lead time. The message should reassure subscribers they don't need to take any action, explain why you're moving in honest terms, highlight benefits to readers, and provide a clear timeline.

Follow with a transition email from Substack announcing the exact timing, then a welcome email from your new platform, and a check-in one week later with reminders about your new URL. Do not rush this process—rushing creates deliverability problems that destroy your sender reputation.

Domain configuration is where migrations die. Before sending your first email from a new platform, configure SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MX records properly. Molly White, who migrated Citation Needed to self-hosted Ghost, reported her first email send had a "huge percentage" bounce because of missing MX and DMARC records.

For paid subscribers using Stripe: contact Substack support and ask them to "disconnect Stripe from my publication and remove the 10% application fee, without cancelling or refunding any existing subscriptions." Do not disconnect Stripe yourself through the Substack dashboard—this will cancel and refund all subscriptions immediately. Be persistent; initial support responses may incorrectly tell you to self-service.

Set up 301 redirects from Substack's /p/ URL structure to your new platform's format. Ghost handles this automatically. Submit your new sitemap to Google Search Console—reindexing takes months, and you'll lose search traffic temporarily.

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform Substack run by a non-profit foundation, offering either managed hosting through Ghost(Pro) or free self-hosting. GreyCoder The core differentiator is 0% transaction fees on all revenue—you keep everything after Stripe's standard processing. Sender

Pricing: Ghost(Pro) Starter at $15/month (annual) includes 1,000 members and a custom domain but excludes paid subscriptions. Sender Publisher at $29/month adds paid subscriptions, Zapier integration, and three staff users. Business starts at $199/month for 10,000+ members. Self-hosting costs approximately $10-50 monthly for server and email service.

Data ownership: Complete. You own everything and can export at any time. Self-hosted users have full database access. The open-source nature means no vendor lock-in ever.

Migration from Substack: Built-in Substack migrator in Settings. Critical advantage: you can connect the same Stripe account, allowing paid subscriptions to continue without subscribers re-entering payment information. Ghost(Pro) offers free migration assistance that can remove Substack's 10% fee for you. Ghost

Best for: Professional writers and journalists, publishers prioritizing site speed and SEO, anyone wanting 0% platform fees, technical users comfortable with more complexity, those leaving Substack for ethical reasons. Sender

Limitations: More expensive managed hosting than competitors, technical skills required for self-hosting, limited email automation compared to dedicated marketing tools, Mailgun-only email for self-hosted installations. Sender

Built by former Morning Brew employees who grew that newsletter to over four million subscribers, Beehiiv focuses explicitly on newsletter growth and monetization with tools developed from that experience.

Pricing: Launch (free) includes 2,500 subscribers, unlimited sends, and three publications. Scale starts at $43/month (annual) and adds monetization features, surveys, A/B testing, and most importantly 0% platform fee on paid subscriptions. Max at $96/month removes branding and adds audio newsletters and ten publications. EmailToolTester

Data ownership: Full ownership with complete CSV export available. No lock-in.

Migration from Substack: The most straightforward of all platforms. Built-in Substack content importer, maintains the /p/ URL structure for automatic redirect compatibility, and DNS management via Entri partnership eliminates manual DNS changes. Beehiiv Paid subscriptions still require Stripe migration.

Best for: Newsletter operators focused on growth, creators wanting built-in ad monetization through their Ad Network, those wanting Morning Brew-style referral tools, anyone running multiple publications.

Limitations: Significant price jump from free to paid tiers, month-to-month pricing only with no annual discounts, less robust automation than ConvertKit

Rebranded from ConvertKit in October 2024, Kit positions itself as an email-first operating system for creators with a focus on automation, landing pages, and digital product sales alongside newsletters. Satori Review

Pricing: Newsletter (free) includes up to 10,000 subscribers but limits you to one basic automation and one email sequence, and requires mandatory recommendations. Creator at $33/month (annual for 1,000 subscribers) adds unlimited automations, integrations, and removes branding. Creator Pro at $66/month adds the referral system, subscriber scoring, and advanced A/B testing. Brevo

Data ownership: Complete ownership with full CSV export at any time.

Transaction fees: 3.5% + $0.30 per sale on all plans including free—higher than Beehiiv or Ghost's 0%.

Migration from Substack: Moderate difficulty. Export subscribers as CSV and import with tagging, but paid subscriber payment details do not migrate—subscribers must re-subscribe. Kit offers free migration assistance for paid plans.

Best for: Course creators and coaches, authors building email lists, anyone selling digital products alongside newsletters, creators needing sophisticated automation sequences, YouTubers and podcasters wanting one platform for multiple needs.

Limitations: Expensive at scale with costs growing significantly with subscriber count, Campaign Refinery recent 35% price increase in September 2025, EmailOctopus limited email templates, higher transaction fees than competitors, free plan mandates

Paragraph operates as a Web3-native publishing platform using blockchain for content ownership and NFT-based memberships. Content lives on Arweave for permanent, uncensorable storage. Best for crypto creators and DAOs; too complex for mainstream audiences.

Mailchimp has newsletter capabilities but charges for all contacts including unsubscribed, starts at $13/month for just 500 contacts with 5,000 sends, and reaches $800/month at 100,000 contacts. Not recommended for newsletter-focused creators.

Revue shut down in January 2023 after Twitter's acquisition and subsequent Musk takeover. All data was deleted.

At $300/month in paid subscription revenue, Substack takes $30. Ghost(Pro) Publisher costs $29. The break-even happens almost immediately.

At $5,000/month in revenue, Substack takes $500 monthly. Ghost takes $29. That's $5,652 per year you're donating to a platform that's actively trying to become discount Twitter.

The platforms with 0% transaction fees—Ghost, Beehiiv, and Buttondown—all offer equivalent or better features for paid newsletters. The only thing Substack offers that they don't is the recommendation network, and as mid-2025 growth slowdowns demonstrated, that network's value is declining as the platform enshittifies.

Weeks 1-4: Research platforms, audit your content, plan DNS changes. Choose your destination based on your specific needs.

Weeks 5-6: Build your new site, configure email sending, test everything. Import content using platform migration tools, not raw Substack exports.

Week 7: Test with small batches. Send to your most engaged subscribers first and monitor deliverability.

Weeks 8-9: Communicate with subscribers. Send pre-migration announcement from Substack.

Week 10: Execute technical migration. Connect Stripe, update DNS, activate new platform.

Weeks 11-14: Monitor deliverability, address subscriber questions, watch for issues.

Writer retention data from those who've made the move is encouraging. Molly White reported readership growing "at the same rate as before" post-migration. A.R. Moxon of The Reframe found the same. Ty Burr saw paid subscriber percentage drop slightly from 12-14% to 10% on Ghost, but noted he's "making more money this year than previous years" due to eliminating the platform cut.

The biggest loss is Substack's recommendation network—but that network is becoming less valuable as the platform optimizes for engagement rather than quality. What you gain is ownership of your audience, your data, and your future.

The economic conditions that created the influencer economy are not coming back. Interest rates have normalized. Venture capital has become "extremely selective." Government bonds offering 50% returns over ten years compete directly with risky tech investments. The era of growth-at-all-costs subsidized by free money has ended.

Platforms built during ZIRP are adapting to post-ZIRP reality by extracting more value from users. This is not speculation—it's the documented pattern Doctorow identified and named. Substack's trajectory from simple newsletter tool to engagement-maximizing quasi-social network with inflated metrics follows this pattern exactly.

The question isn't whether Substack will continue enshittifying. The question is whether you'll still be there when it does. You have options. Your subscribers will follow you if you communicate clearly and handle the technical transition competently. The platforms that want to be MailChimp rather than YouTube are waiting.

Take your audience and get the fuck out.