Your site is on WordPress, but your newsletter is on Substack. Bring it home: your readers, your archive and your sending, all on your own domain. Nobody has to subscribe again.
What comes with you
- Every free subscriber, with the date they subscribed. They already said yes on Substack, so they don’t have to confirm again.
- Every unsubscribe. Readers who left your Substack stay unsubscribed. Readers who never confirmed are left out. An import never emails someone who said no.
- Your archive. Posts and images come over with WordPress.org’s free Substack Importer plugin.
What doesn’t, yet
- Paid subscriptions. LetterWP doesn’t take payments yet. If you have paid readers, keep them on Substack for now, or tell us you need paid plans.
- Substack’s network. Recommendations and the Substack app stay on Substack. On WordPress, new readers find you through search and your own site.
How to move, step by step
1. Export from Substack
In your Substack dashboard, open Settings, find Export and create a new export. When it’s ready, download the .zip. It holds your posts and a CSV of your subscribers.
2. Bring your posts
In WordPress, install the free Substack Importer plugin (made by WordPress.org). Go to Tools → Import → Substack and upload the .zip.
Did you use your own domain on Substack? Then old links look like yourdomain.com/p/post-name. Set Settings → Permalinks to the custom structure /p/%postname%/ and those links keep working once the domain points to WordPress.
3. Install LetterWP and connect Resend
LetterWP sends through your own Resend account, from your own domain. Resend is free for up to 1,000 subscribers. Paste your Resend key, add your domain, copy the DNS records it gives you, then run Setup. LetterWP tells you when the domain is ready to send, and warns you if a DMARC record is missing.
4. Import your subscribers
Go to Subscribers → Import/Export and upload the subscriber CSV from the .zip. LetterWP recognises a Substack export by its columns. Before anything is saved, you see which column feeds what, the first rows and how many people will be imported. Then LetterWP adds them to Resend in the background. A list of 5,000 readers takes an hour or two, so keep the page open. If you leave, the import pauses: click Carry on on the Subscribers screen to pick it up where it stopped.
5. Send a short “we’ve moved” email
Your first email comes from a new address, so tell readers why. A few plain lines are enough: you’ve moved the newsletter to your own site, nothing else changes, and here’s how to unsubscribe if they’d rather not follow. A reader who recognises you won’t mark you as spam. Your sending reputation depends on that most in the first weeks.
6. Close the Substack side
Publish one last Substack post that points to your site, and change your Substack About page to do the same. Then stop publishing there, so nobody gets the same newsletter twice.
Or we’ll do it for you
For our first customers, we do the whole move ourselves, free. Send us an email and we’ll set it up together.
Questions
Will my readers notice?
Only the sender address, and the “we’ve moved” email you send them. Emails now carry your site’s look and your own domain.
Do my readers have to subscribe again?
No. Imported readers are active straight away. Only people who sign up on your site from now on get a confirmation email.
Can I bring my archive?
Yes. WordPress.org’s free Substack Importer brings your posts and images from the same export .zip. See step 2.
What about paid subscribers?
LetterWP doesn’t take payments yet. Paid subscriptions are on the way. Tell us if you need them, and we’ll tell you when they’re ready.
Can I go back?
Yes. Your list is in your WordPress database. Export it from Subscribers at any time, as a CSV that Substack, Ghost or any other tool can read.