One of Substack’s greatest downsides is a lack of customization. You want to use an API connection or create a unique landing page in-platform? Eat a bag of rocks you yokel. The one thing Substack does offer though is an embed form that you can put on a third party website. Thankfully, that embed form is all we’ll need to create our own custom landing page for Substack.

Please note: In this article I will only reference products and services I’ve actually used. There are 0 affiliate links. I stand to gain $0.00 if you click anything in this article or use any of these services. 

Overview

Here is the landing page I created, and here’s how I did it.

Top half

Bottom half

Step 1  – You need website

You need a hosted website with a custom domain*. I won’t explain how to set up a website since there are 17 gabillion articles on it already. I use GoDaddy since they have cheap hosting packages. I also use Cloudflare to improve loading speeds.

*I don’t mean that your Substack needs to be on a custom domain. You just need your own website, any website will do. 

Step 2  – Find a place for your landing page

Decide where you want to put the landing page. You can use a sub-domain like I did. For example: writing.unhedgedcapitalist.com

Step 3  – Create a custom landing page

There are lots of services that will let you create a custom landing page but I use Carrd.co. They have a yearly plan for just $20 and it allows me to do absolutely anything I want. Furthermore, after spending 25+ hours with Carrd I’m extremely impressed with the user experience.

Once you’ve signed up with Carrd you can begin creating your landing page as an offline draft. There are lots of templates to choose from and I recommend choosing something simple unless you’re already familiar with web design.

Once you’ve created your landing page you can move on to the next step. For reference, it took me about 8 hours to design my landing page.

Step 4  – Move your Carrd page to your custom domain

Migrate your Carrd landing page to your website using these instructions. I’m OK at CSS/HTML but not comfortable messing around with DNS settings, so I pay someone to migrate my website. I use this freelancer from Fiverr and he’s excellent (if a bit pricey). However, if he’s unavailable you can easily find someone else to do it.

If you’re using Cloudflare like I am the setup process might be more complex. I recommend reading this article or passing it on to your freelancer to read.

Step 5a –  Create an embed form

Check to see if this website is still working. If it is, then follow these directions. If it is not, please skip to step 5b.

You can use the Substack API website to customize your embed form. Change the colors and text, etc. It’s incredibly simple to use. Just enter your Substack name in the website, change the settings and all the code will automatically adjust.

Choose your style

Once you have the settings as you’d like them, copy the code from the box.

Copy this code from the website

Step 5b

If the Substack API website is no longer working you can get the embed form directly from Substack. You won’t have the same level of easy customization, but that’s Substack for you.

Follow these directions to get your embed form from Substack, and then copy the code once you’ve found it.

Step 6  – Add the embed form to Carrd

Once you’ve copied the code for the embed form (whether you get it direct from Substack or from Substack API website), go over to your Carrd landing page editor and click on the “+” button to add a new element to your page.

Then select embed.

Then you paste your code into the box that comes up. Make sure that the setting is on “inline.”

You won’t be able to see the subscription form from your Carrd landing page editor…

You can’t see the embed form from within the editor

But as soon as you save the website and view it from your browser, the embed form will show up…

Step 7  –  Optional step: center the embed form

By default the embed form is justified to the left of the page. If you want it centered I was able to achieve that effect using ChatGTP. I just posted the embed code into ChatGPT and asked it to center the form. Specifically, you should ask Chat to center it using the “flexbox” method.

Step 8  – Test your landing page!

If you’ve done everything properly you should now have a custom landing page on your website with a Substack subscription form embedded. Enter a new email and give it a test run!

Unfortunately Substack does require a double opt-in with the embed form so all new subscribers will have to confirm their email address.

If you don’t like double opt-ins you could set up an email collect form and then manually import addresses. However, the downside is the added time and effort, and also new subscribers won’t immediately receive your welcome email.

That’s all folks

If you have any questions you can leave a comment or send me a DM on Twitter. If you’d like to check out the Substack I created a landing page for, I write about investing, philosophy and whatever else grabs my interest.