A new feature for paid Substack newsletters
Hot or not?
Hey there, hello, Buongiorno!
Thank you for being a subscriber of Pubstack Success. You probably signed up a while ago. If you haven’t heard from me in a while that’s because I have been travelling in Italy. My Substack newsletter allows me to work from anywhere. So good!
I’m writing today because Stripe just emailed about a new feature to use with Substack. Reminder: Stripe is the payment platform that processes the credit card payments for Substack subscriptions. The new feature is Stripe Customer Portal.
I was so excited, I tried it out straight away, using my test newsletter.
Some of my paying subscribers in my B2B Substack publication have needed help to get their payment paperwork organised, which meant I was doing more customer support than optimal.
This new feature from Stripe should make life easier for my subscribers, and, by extension, for me too. Or so I thought.
If you’re interested, I just published a comprehensive break-down of what the customer portal is and how to use it for your Substack publication. [by the way this link is a Medium friend link so you don’t need a Medium membership to read it].
The big question for me was “Would it help me help my subscribers?”. Unfortunately, after extensive testing, the answer was “no”.
Although I was initially excited about the Stripe customer portal, I won’t be using it for my newsletter.
It does not offer a better format for invoices, nor is it more accessible to my customers, compared to what is already available through their Substack account settings.
The main page of the portal shows a prominent, large button labelled “Cancel Plan” to people with current subscriptions. This makes it very easy for a subscriber to cancel, perhaps even by accident. I would prefer a little more friction in the cancellation process 😃
It does not give me an easier way to assist my customers with their subscription management.
The customer portal won’t help me be a better publication owner, and it might even cost me a subscriber or two, with its prominent ‘cancel subscription’ feature. I will continue to use Substack’s built-in payment management for my customers instead.
What about you? Are you excited for new Stripe features, or have you got other plans for growing your Substack? Leave a comment below.