PeakZebra vs. the Others
The main thing is, we don’t take a cut of your revenue and you’re in complete control of all your things. But if you’d like more detail, here’s a chart:
| PeakZebra | Others | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing and transaction fees | From $15/mo (first 3 months free) takes 0% fees (you will have flat fees from third-party services). Beyond fees, you keep all your revenue | Some have flat fees, but some take 10% of your revenue. That’s in addition to (unavoidable) credit card fees. |
| Custom domain | ✅ Yes, you pay domain registration fee | ???? Generally yes, but mostly with a separate fee (beyond the domain registration fee) attached |
| Custom email from-address | ✅ Yes, obviously | ❌ No, not always. |
| Share your writing on Social Media | ✅ Yes | ❌ No, some services (looking at you, Substack) hide your links |
| Custom design | ✅ Yes, create your own brand and customize as much as you need | ❌ No, most services make you live within their templating |
| Offer multiple premium tiers | ✅ Yes, custom tiers with both monthly and yearly payment options | ❌ No, “free” or “paid” only |
| Supported currencies | ✅ Everything Stripe supports | ⚠️ 13 western currencies |
| Rich writing experience | ✅ Yes, with WordPress block editor and vast block libraries. | ❌ Often it’s basic editor only |
| Apps & integrations | ✅ Yes, both those PeakZebra provides, plus any WordPress integrations you use yourself | ❌ Not necessarily. Ghost can be expanded, Substack can’t. |
| Launch your own referral program | ✅ Yes | ❌ No |
| Ownership of your audience data | ✅ Yes, your subscriber list is yours, period | ❌ No, other services promote other products and newsletters to your audience |
| Open source | ✅ Yes, you own the technology | ❌ No, you are subject to the whims of your provider. Beehiiv talks about being open, but they are most definitely not open source |
| Developer platform & API | ✅ Yes | ❌ Depends, but often no. Substack is a no, for instance. |
Migrating something else to PeakZebra is easy.
Why? Because we’ll do it for you. All content, subscribers, subscriptions and payments can be seamlessly migrated from whatever you’ve got to PeakZebra. Only in rare, complex cases will we need to charge extra for this.