A popular sentiment on HN is "don't make an app when you can just have a web page". Reading articles is an an almost perfect fit for the web. What are your reasons for having an app?
Email is actually pretty great for this, and email is especially powerful for giving writers direct connection to their readers. But there are limits to what you can do there, and stuff like community discussion, audio and video, and even 'not accidentally going to the promotions tab' can get a big upgrade.
Somewhat related: developing for email is still a pretty big pain. It's kinda like the bad old days when you had to support IE6 - lots of people still use old versions of outlook or whatever.
I hear you, it's a shit show! I'm gonna have to do that myself soon and I don't look forward to it.
> But there are limits to what you can do [in email]
But email will still be a very common entry point for readers (unless you expect to change the behavior of your users), so you still need to link to the app or website from the email.
As a user I don't mind an app from a technical perspective. It gives me more options! But what are the things the app can do that the web cannot?
As a subscriber to many Substack newsletters with different publishing schedules, I've found it to be a bit tedious and distracting to have my email inbox be inundated with new posts. I'd rather go to a reader app that has all the newsletters I've subscribed to in one place for when I have the time and the interest to spend a couple of hours reading. I'd like for the app to just send me a reminder once a week with who published what so that I can decide if I want to go to the reader app and peruse at my leisure.
As a writer on Substack I've found that readers like to reply directly to the emails they receive instead of leaving a comment on the web version so that others could see it and perhaps react/interact with it. If the app could help harness a community for the writers by making it more comfortable for readers to like and leave comments, then that would be beneficial in building a brand. Additionally, if the app has a mechanism to recommend Substack newsletters that are similar to the one a particular reader is reading then that would help expand the reach/discoverability of lesser known writers.
This is one of my favourite thins about email, it is a way to deliver something to me, but imposes no limitations on my workflow. I can customize however I want.
This is one reason I would never use a substack app. I don't want a different app for substack, medium, WordPress, blogger and have to check them all and learn their imposed workflows. I just want everything sent to my email then I can use the workflow that I want for all of the content.
A simple but important one: being able to get a notification on your phone when a new post lands in your inbox. There are lots of subtle little things around readability, scroll performance, etc. too. There are also a decent number of Podcasts on Substack now, and listening in a web player (on mobile) is a pretty sub-par experience.
Also useless, because it is very likely you cannot read the article at the moment you receive the notification, because you are busy.
I don't know what Substack is, but it seems similar to Medium, and as such an app is unnecessary. You don't need apps to display and read text, I already have a web browser. Distraction-free reading? Just make sure your pages are compatible with Reader View, or better yet, make a distraction free design in the first place.
I turn off gmail notifications. I suppose some of their readers might want to know when the Substacks they subscribe to have new content but don't want to know when they're getting new spam.
I can imagine Substack is more of an "aspires to read X" platform than a place for actually reading X. This argument is anecdotally supported by the sensationalism of popular pieces I see go viral, the payment system (it is always easier to quickly monetize aspiration than behavior), and its reliance on growth through virtue-signaling (eg twitter).
If you have any further reading on this please share.
n=1 with exception for scientific papers I do essentially all my reading on my phone and I do not experience any attention difference. I also have my phone on perpetual DnD so notifications and other distractions are not a thing.
This assumes this is goal for Substack founders and leadership. The null hypothesis absence of other evidence, is that the goal is active reader/subscriber growth
Being able to open the app to read when I want to will be much nicer.
While I agree with the overall message of web over app (and have bugged some of my colleagues for going "App First", locking themselves into particular ecosystems before gaining audience), for consuming content, there are benefits to Apps, when done properly .
Most pertinently, offline content - I will always use Prime/Netflix/Disney in app form rather than Web form.
Offering an app as an option is a brilliant way to meet everybody's needs.
(nagging/pushing an app and deprecating web, however, is devil's work:)
One of the main products at my job is a new site that we've spent a lot of time making performant and readable but we're still building an app experience because we want to meet our users (particularly affluent users) where they are.
I have yet to hear a user data analytics team say that.