I'll let him chew on it when he's back from holiday but we have automations for LinkedIn & so it's inevitable we'll have some from Substack & cross platform
It makes sense. Once you're using LinkedIn automation, Substack and cross-platform solutions seem like a natural next step. I'm curious to see what kind of workflow you create 😃
Right now the node focuses on Notes and reading data through the (unofficial) API. Creating newsletter drafts isn’t supported yet. That said, it’s definitely on my radar - I plan to extend the node with more features.
Do you already have a workflow in mind where this would be useful? 🙂
Hey Jakub, I'm on cloud-hosted n8n version 1.113.3 (stable). Can't find the install community node. I think n8n now only allows installs from the add nodes page. Also, asked their chat ai about it and this is the answer I got:
Assistant:
Since you are using n8n Cloud, you cannot install unverified community nodes like n8n-nodes-substack. n8n Cloud only allows the use of official and verified nodes for security and stability reasons.
What you can do:
You can request the n8n team to consider verifying and adding the node to n8n Cloud by posting on the n8n community forum.
Alternatively, if you need to use custom or community nodes, you would need to switch to a self-hosted n8n instance, where you have full control and can install any node you want.
Hey Adrian, first of all, thanks a lot for letting me know. Really appreciate it. I’ve seen that statement in the documentation that community nodes on Cloud instances are very limited, and your confirmation makes it clear that this is indeed the case.
Would you be interested in opening a small pull request to update the README and mention this limitation for Cloud users? It would be great to have it documented directly in the repo.
Thank you Jakub, first for creating the n8n node, and second for sharing your knowledge so thoroughly!
I've been automating the heck out of Substack with your tool.
Everything from scheduling notes via a Google Sheet I prep in advance, to auto-sharing my latest blog posts on Bluesky and Mastodon, to backing up all my posts in both Google Sheets and GitHub (as markdown). So if Substack ever goes sideways, I can republish everything elsewhere or on my own site without missing a beat.
Quick question: Is it possible to fetch subscribers directly through the API instead of using the email trigger approach you described?
That would be incredibly useful for syncing subscriber data.
Your work has made this possible without writing custom API calls every time.
Hi Marcel. Thanks for reaching out! At the moment Substack Node does not support fetching subscribers or, at least, doesn’t expose them. But yeah, that feature could be very useful. I will see what I can do. Cheers! 🚀
I was tripping with it for a while because the credentials modal kept failing the test saying it couldn't connect but after a while decided to give it a shot anyways.
Thanks Gunnar! 🙌 ActiveCampaign + automation sounds like an exciting combo. Totally agree - n8n gives so much flexibility compared to Zapier, especially once you start self-hosting or extending it with custom nodes. Curious - have you used it in any of your workflows yet, or still mainly on Zapier/ActiveCampaign?
Thanks so much, Robin! 🙌 I’m curious - are you thinking about automating something similar, or do you already have a workflow in mind you’d like to try?
Hey Jakub, I am basically interested in tools that can be of help to online entrepreneurs wanting to build more visibility and trust. I have been testing Writestack for a while and exploring Substack Pro Studio and analyzing the pros and cons of their approach. Your app, takes a smart different approach and could soon become something that anyone can use. For now, although your explanations are very clear, it's a bit too nerdy for the average non-techy person. Just too many things to do to make it run. But given the approach you have taken may have some key advantages.
My use case is one that sits in the middle between wanting to automate, but not wanting to lose my unique voice, spontaneity and not ending up as most of those using automation on Substack now: they feel fake, lame, even when their words or ideas are good, they do sound robotic, artificial, not genuine.
I know this is a difficult obstacle to overcome, but I look forward to automation systems that truly reflect my voice, attitude and idiosyncrasies, so that I can extend myself without sounding artificial.
In the end: automation is good, but needs to be paired with ways and methods that allow us to remain true to who we are. When everyone looks perfect, I smell plastic.
Thanks a lot for such a thoughtful message, Robin 🙏 You’ve nailed one of the key challenges: automation should extend our voice, not replace it with something plastic. I really like how you put it. When everything looks too polished, it starts to feel artificial. I’m curious, since you’ve been experimenting with Writestack and Pro Studio, what are your feelings about those tools? What are the pros and pain points you see at the moment?
Jakub, thanks for asking. Here my initial impressions:
1) Both are the first tangible working attempts at automating Substack Notes and at giving some analytics data to start understanding what works better and what doesn't.
2) Writerstack is much more refined UI-wise and usable than Pro Studio. Both are in their early stages and are changing / improving rapidly.
3) Pro Studio has some interesting analytics
4) Writestack is an ongoing subscription cost. Studio Pro is a one-time purchase.
5) Studio Pro has complementary tools that can be bought to further understand data and what works.
6) Writestack has a good note generation facility, with multiple abilities (generate Notes from your Substack publication analysis, from specific files you upload, from specific articles you have published on SS.
7) Pro Studio is much more rudimentary on this front and requires more manual work and the use of a separate AI of your choice to actually generate the content.
8) Finn Tropy the guy behind Pro Studio is very friendly and humble. He appears also to be quite insightful in his data analysis.
9) Orel Zilberman the guy behind Writestack is also very friendly and open to feedback and suggestions. He is somewhat more commercially-oriented than his competitor which has its pros and cons.
Thanks a ton for laying this out so clearly, Robin. That’s one of the best side-by-side impressions I’ve seen of these tools. Super helpful for me to understand how people are evaluating this space. I find your points about the trade-offs really interesting - subscription vs one-time cost, depth of analytics vs smoother UI, content generation vs manual control. It almost feels like two ends of a spectrum. Out of the things you listed (analytics, note generation, UI simplicity, cost model) - which one feels most critical to you right now as a creator?
Out of water, food, sunshine and some social life what do I consider most critical to a healthy human life? :-)
That’s kind of an impossible question to answer, in the sense that a healthy life does require all of of those elements in appropriate amounts.
All those factors, namely analytics, note generation, UI simplicity are to me vital. Cost could be the temporary variable, in the sense that in temporary absence of alternatives I’ll use whichever has the 3 basic elements well developed over the one that costs less.
I obviously prefer the one-time cost approach much better than having to pay a monthly subscription.
In fact I would personally favour a one-time cost sales strategy paired with with the ability to buy credits for AI Note Generation.
Cool, Jakub. I think a lot of Substackers will like it. Recently, I started going deeper into n8n, so many interesting things we can do with it. This piece is very inspiring.
Thanks a lot, Luan! 🙏 Totally agree - n8n opens up so many creative possibilities once you dive in. Excited to see what you’ll build with it - keep me posted! 🚀
For the JSON code for the N8N workflow do have it in GitHub?
Nope. But let me create GitHub Gist for you!
The link: https://gist.github.com/jakub-k-slys/32c24450cc6a82a14fc7e6250c2a2aa5
Really do appreciate it. I usually create my posts on notes than manually paste into Substack with my photos.
However, I find it tedious with adding photos to the posts as it messes with the spacing especially right below the main title.
So excited I've Restacked & shared with my Ops lead 🤞
That’s awesome, Chris 🙌 thanks for the Restack and for sharing it with your Ops lead - do you already have some ideas brewing on how you might use it?
I'll let him chew on it when he's back from holiday but we have automations for LinkedIn & so it's inevitable we'll have some from Substack & cross platform
It makes sense. Once you're using LinkedIn automation, Substack and cross-platform solutions seem like a natural next step. I'm curious to see what kind of workflow you create 😃
We need a way to create newsletter draft on this substack node. Is it possible?
If not any plan to add this in node?
Right now the node focuses on Notes and reading data through the (unofficial) API. Creating newsletter drafts isn’t supported yet. That said, it’s definitely on my radar - I plan to extend the node with more features.
Do you already have a workflow in mind where this would be useful? 🙂
Oh yes, creating a newsletter latest edition using n8n. All automated.
Thank you for this. Automating notes has been on my to do list.
That’s very generous, thank you so much for sharing this!
Hey Jakub, I'm on cloud-hosted n8n version 1.113.3 (stable). Can't find the install community node. I think n8n now only allows installs from the add nodes page. Also, asked their chat ai about it and this is the answer I got:
Assistant:
Since you are using n8n Cloud, you cannot install unverified community nodes like n8n-nodes-substack. n8n Cloud only allows the use of official and verified nodes for security and stability reasons.
What you can do:
You can request the n8n team to consider verifying and adding the node to n8n Cloud by posting on the n8n community forum.
Alternatively, if you need to use custom or community nodes, you would need to switch to a self-hosted n8n instance, where you have full control and can install any node you want.
Just thought to share this with you.
Hey Adrian, first of all, thanks a lot for letting me know. Really appreciate it. I’ve seen that statement in the documentation that community nodes on Cloud instances are very limited, and your confirmation makes it clear that this is indeed the case.
Would you be interested in opening a small pull request to update the README and mention this limitation for Cloud users? It would be great to have it documented directly in the repo.
Thanks again for sharing the details! 🙏🏻
This is amazing. Thank you Jakub.
Thank you Jakub, first for creating the n8n node, and second for sharing your knowledge so thoroughly!
I've been automating the heck out of Substack with your tool.
Everything from scheduling notes via a Google Sheet I prep in advance, to auto-sharing my latest blog posts on Bluesky and Mastodon, to backing up all my posts in both Google Sheets and GitHub (as markdown). So if Substack ever goes sideways, I can republish everything elsewhere or on my own site without missing a beat.
Quick question: Is it possible to fetch subscribers directly through the API instead of using the email trigger approach you described?
That would be incredibly useful for syncing subscriber data.
Your work has made this possible without writing custom API calls every time.
Really appreciate it!
Hi Marcel. Thanks for reaching out! At the moment Substack Node does not support fetching subscribers or, at least, doesn’t expose them. But yeah, that feature could be very useful. I will see what I can do. Cheers! 🚀
This is great Jakub. Thanks.
I was tripping with it for a while because the credentials modal kept failing the test saying it couldn't connect but after a while decided to give it a shot anyways.
Worked perfectly.
Thanks, Ernesto! Glad you pushed through and gave it a shot anyway. Really appreciate you taking the time to test it out 🙌
Hi, I can’t find the connect.sid name. What am I doing wrong?
Have you tried looking for it in other requests?
This one might just kill what’s left of the industry mate, don’t you think?
Excellent! Working professionally im marlering automation at ActiveCampaign, I can vouch for n8n as a clever alternative to Zapier.
Thanks Gunnar! 🙌 ActiveCampaign + automation sounds like an exciting combo. Totally agree - n8n gives so much flexibility compared to Zapier, especially once you start self-hosting or extending it with custom nodes. Curious - have you used it in any of your workflows yet, or still mainly on Zapier/ActiveCampaign?
well done man..
I like how detailed it is..
Thanks a lot, Sharyph! 🙌 Glad the details helped - are you working on any workflows or automations yourself right now?
I needed this thank you
Glad it was helpful, Alexander 🙏🏻 Curious - what are you going to automate?
Great job Jakub. Thanks for sharing it!
Thanks so much, Robin! 🙌 I’m curious - are you thinking about automating something similar, or do you already have a workflow in mind you’d like to try?
Hey Jakub, I am basically interested in tools that can be of help to online entrepreneurs wanting to build more visibility and trust. I have been testing Writestack for a while and exploring Substack Pro Studio and analyzing the pros and cons of their approach. Your app, takes a smart different approach and could soon become something that anyone can use. For now, although your explanations are very clear, it's a bit too nerdy for the average non-techy person. Just too many things to do to make it run. But given the approach you have taken may have some key advantages.
My use case is one that sits in the middle between wanting to automate, but not wanting to lose my unique voice, spontaneity and not ending up as most of those using automation on Substack now: they feel fake, lame, even when their words or ideas are good, they do sound robotic, artificial, not genuine.
I know this is a difficult obstacle to overcome, but I look forward to automation systems that truly reflect my voice, attitude and idiosyncrasies, so that I can extend myself without sounding artificial.
In the end: automation is good, but needs to be paired with ways and methods that allow us to remain true to who we are. When everyone looks perfect, I smell plastic.
Thanks a lot for such a thoughtful message, Robin 🙏 You’ve nailed one of the key challenges: automation should extend our voice, not replace it with something plastic. I really like how you put it. When everything looks too polished, it starts to feel artificial. I’m curious, since you’ve been experimenting with Writestack and Pro Studio, what are your feelings about those tools? What are the pros and pain points you see at the moment?
Jakub, thanks for asking. Here my initial impressions:
1) Both are the first tangible working attempts at automating Substack Notes and at giving some analytics data to start understanding what works better and what doesn't.
2) Writerstack is much more refined UI-wise and usable than Pro Studio. Both are in their early stages and are changing / improving rapidly.
3) Pro Studio has some interesting analytics
4) Writestack is an ongoing subscription cost. Studio Pro is a one-time purchase.
5) Studio Pro has complementary tools that can be bought to further understand data and what works.
6) Writestack has a good note generation facility, with multiple abilities (generate Notes from your Substack publication analysis, from specific files you upload, from specific articles you have published on SS.
7) Pro Studio is much more rudimentary on this front and requires more manual work and the use of a separate AI of your choice to actually generate the content.
8) Finn Tropy the guy behind Pro Studio is very friendly and humble. He appears also to be quite insightful in his data analysis.
9) Orel Zilberman the guy behind Writestack is also very friendly and open to feedback and suggestions. He is somewhat more commercially-oriented than his competitor which has its pros and cons.
Thanks a ton for laying this out so clearly, Robin. That’s one of the best side-by-side impressions I’ve seen of these tools. Super helpful for me to understand how people are evaluating this space. I find your points about the trade-offs really interesting - subscription vs one-time cost, depth of analytics vs smoother UI, content generation vs manual control. It almost feels like two ends of a spectrum. Out of the things you listed (analytics, note generation, UI simplicity, cost model) - which one feels most critical to you right now as a creator?
Out of water, food, sunshine and some social life what do I consider most critical to a healthy human life? :-)
That’s kind of an impossible question to answer, in the sense that a healthy life does require all of of those elements in appropriate amounts.
All those factors, namely analytics, note generation, UI simplicity are to me vital. Cost could be the temporary variable, in the sense that in temporary absence of alternatives I’ll use whichever has the 3 basic elements well developed over the one that costs less.
I obviously prefer the one-time cost approach much better than having to pay a monthly subscription.
In fact I would personally favour a one-time cost sales strategy paired with with the ability to buy credits for AI Note Generation.
Cool, Jakub. I think a lot of Substackers will like it. Recently, I started going deeper into n8n, so many interesting things we can do with it. This piece is very inspiring.
Thanks a lot, Luan! 🙏 Totally agree - n8n opens up so many creative possibilities once you dive in. Excited to see what you’ll build with it - keep me posted! 🚀