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Substack Chat or SoloBase? It depends on whether writing is your product.
Substack Chat is a room for a newsletter’s readers, inside the newsletter’s app. SoloBase is a Studio under your own name: a Community Hub for your members, a private Client Hub for each client, and support from your own app, paid to your own Stripe. Here is how to tell which one you need.
Which one are you?
Most people land here at one of three stages.
Your newsletter is the product
Readers pay for what you write, and the chat is a side room for them. That is a writer’s shape, and it suits a writer’s tools.
Your readers became clients
People read you, then ask to work with you. Now there is a proposal, a deposit and notes for each one, and a chat room is not where client work lives.
You want it all on your own name
Your community, your clients and your support, on your own domain, with every payment going to your own Stripe at 0%.
What SoloBase does
Your crew, your clients and your community, under your own name.
Built for one person who advises or teaches, a small crew beside them, and the members and clients they serve.
A Community Hub with channels you own
Announcements, questions answered once for everyone, pins and decisions, search, and direct messages between your team, on your own domain.
A private Client Hub for each client
The brief, the notes, the files and the proposal they sign, in one place only you and that client can open. Your clients join free.
Support from your own site or app
One line puts a Help button on any site. Each customer gets their own conversation, and your team answers from one inbox.
Money into your own Stripe, at 0%
A paid Community Hub, paid channels, proposals and invoices are paid straight to your own Stripe account. SoloBase never holds the money.
Honestly
When Substack fits you better.
This is about the shape of your work, not about which tool is better.
Writing is what people pay for
If your newsletter is the product and chat is a perk, keep the place built around publishing.
You want its network to find you readers
SoloBase has no feed and no discovery: people come to you through your own name and links. If being recommended inside a writers’ network is the goal, stay there.
You prefer a share of revenue to a plan
Some writers would rather pay a share of what they earn than a monthly plan. That is a fair trade at some sizes, and yours to make.
Substack Chat or SoloBase, answered.
Can I keep my newsletter where it is?
Yes. Keep publishing where you do, and link your Studio for the people who want to work with you: their Client Hub, your Community Hub and your support.
Can members pay to join?
Yes. A paid Community Hub or paid channels, paid straight to your own Stripe in one payment today. Monthly memberships are next.
Does SoloBase take a cut of what my clients pay?
No. 0% on every plan. Money goes straight to your own Stripe account; Stripe’s standard processing fees apply.
What is live today?
Live: the card and Studio Site, the Content Hub, Client Hubs, proposals with e-signature and a deposit, numbered invoices, Community Hubs with channels and support, payments to your own Stripe, calls for up to 25 people, and booking at your open times.
Are you affiliated with Substack?
No. Product names are trademarks of their owners.
Start with your own name on the door. Decide the rest later.
Make your card in a minute. It is free until you have earned $1,000 through SoloBase.