Substack subscriptions in the iOS app: inflated prices and a new “walled garden” for newsletters
If you host a paid newsletter on Substack, pay attention to the platform’s new in-app subscription offering for iOS. The company published a long FAQ about the change.
Apple requires all apps that sell digital content to use its in-app payment system — the one that charges a 15–30% fee. Substack relied on a loophole created by the recent Epic Games ruling in the US to make its iOS app compliant with App Store rules, giving iOS users the (default) option to subscribe via the web and avoid Apple’s fee.
The problem is that this exception applies only to the United States.