ConvertKit is a great platform for running a newsletter, especially if you’re planning on monetizing it. So if you’re bringing over your newsletter from Substack, let’s get you set up!

We’ll cover these steps for migrating a free/paid Substack newsletter to ConvertKit:

When you use Substack, you have a main newsletter landing page with an email form for collecting subscribers. You can recreate this page by setting up your ConvertKit Creator Profile.

Want to see what a creator profile looks like live? Take a look at ConvertKit's Creator Profile!

You can access your Creator Profile by clicking Grow in the top navigation in ConvertKit, followed by Creator Profile.

For your Creator Profile, you can easily customize your name, profile picture, and bio to tell people who you are and what your newsletter is all about.

At the top of your Creator Profile, visitors will be able to subscribe to your emails and automatically get added to your ConvertKit subscriber list. They’ll also be able to read previous emails you’ve sent (and you can choose which emails to make private or public).

You can also customize the URL of your creator profile to easily share in your social media bios.

Everything you need to know about setting up your Creator Profile can be found here.

Once you’ve set up your ConvertKit Creator Profile, don’t forget to replace the links to your Substack newsletter with that for your ConvertKit profile!

Want to set up a simple landing page to collect subscribers instead? Here’s how.

Go to Substack and export all your Substack subscribers as a CSV file. If you have paid subscribers, export those as a separate CSV file as well.

(Don’t worry about duplicate subscribers. We’ll merge any duplicates we find as you import your subscribers!)

In ConvertKit, click Subscribers under the Grow tab in the top navigation, followed by Add Subscribers.

Select Import a CSV, then import the CSV file containing all your Substack subscribers.

If needed, you can add your subscribers to forms, sequences, or tags when importing them.

From the Subscribers page, create a new tag to help you identify your paid subscribers. You can call the tag “Paid subscribers” or similar.

After that, repeat the steps above to import your CSV file of paid subscribers to ConvertKit. Be sure to add your paid subscribers to the “Paid subscribers” tag before clicking the Import Subscribers button.

Learn more about importing subscriber lists to ConvertKit here.

In ConvertKit, you’ll write your newsletters as “Broadcasts.” You can access the Broadcast editor by clicking Broadcasts under the Send tab in the top navigation.

Click the + New broadcast button to start writing your Broadcast!

For more information on Broadcasts, visit our full guide to creating, sending, and sharing Broadcasts.

If the newsletter you’re writing is for paid subscribers only, there are two extra things you’ll need to take care of.

1. Select your paid subscribers as your broadcast recipients

First, you’ll need to select only your paid subscribers in the broadcast recipients setting.

For example, if you have tagged all your paid subscribers with a “Paid subscribers” tag, then add a filter to send your broadcast to only subscribers who have that tag.

2. Mark the newsletter as a paid post

Next, toggle the Paid Subscribers Only setting on to allow only paid subscribers to access the newsletter from your newsletter feed.

The Paid Subscribers Only setting will appear after you have toggled the Post to my public feed setting on as well.

To migrate your paid Substack newsletter, you’ll create a new paid newsletter product using our ConvertKit Commerce feature.

If you haven’t already set up payments for your ConvertKit account, you’ll need to do that first.

After that, follow the steps in this guide to creating a paid newsletter in ConvertKit to set up your paid newsletter product.

Importantly, select the “Subscription” product type for your paid newsletter product so you can set a recurring pricing plan for it.

When you’re done creating your paid newsletter product, click the Publish button at the top right of the product builder.

You’ll then see options for either sharing a link to your product or embedding your product into your website.

At this time, there is no convenient method of migrating your paid subscribers’ subscriptions (along with their payment details) to ConvertKit.

A workaround would be to:

We also suggest informing your paid subscribers of your migration plans in advance.

This way, they won’t get a rude shock when their paid Substack subscriptions are canceled on their behalf. You’ll also have time to sort out any refund requests as you switch platforms.

Need help with migrating your Substack newsletter to ConvertKit? Contact our migrations team and they’ll be happy to assist!