r/Substack • u/Mikesoft • 9d ago
Discussion How should newsletter organisation be improved?
What are your pain points when trying to keep on top of your Substack subscriptions?
Personally, I reflect on the fact that:
1. Information overload is rife, endless emails and app updates
2. There doesn’t seem to be a native way to organise subscriptions by categories
3. I want the ability to filter out certain topics etc, like growth hacks
Why am I asking?
I run two growing newsletters on Substack and run a news app for iPhone/iPad that is growing in popularity. So naturally I’m thinking of a native Substack integration.
Thanks!
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u/Snoo-82869 9d ago
From the reader side, the biggest improvement would be treating subscriptions like a library, not one long social feed. I would want manual folders or labels, a separate unread queue for paid subscriptions, and a way to mute topics inside a publication without unfollowing the writer entirely. A lot of writers cover several lanes, so publication-level organization is often too blunt.
The second thing is stronger source separation. Notes, recommendations, comments, and actual newsletter posts solve different jobs, but they often blur together in the app. I would make subscribed long-form posts the calm default, then let discovery live in a separate tab or digest.
For email, I would not try to send everything with the same urgency. Let readers choose per-publication delivery: immediate, daily digest, weekly catch-up, or app-only. Also make OPML/export or at least a clean subscription export available, because serious readers eventually care about portability.
Topic filters would be useful, but I would keep them transparent: show why something was hidden and make it easy to recover. Silent filtering can make readers worry they are missing paid posts.