If you haven't turned on paid subscriptions for your Substack, Pledges are a tool for your audience to show you they believe your work is valuable. This feature allows your subscribers to pledge to become a paid subscriber if and when you turn on paid subscriptions.
Note: This feature is only available if you have not set up payments on your Substack.
Here's how it works:
Managing Pledges
Pledges will be on for all free Substacks with suggested pricing tiers. To make changes, head to your publication's Settings page and scroll to the Payments section.
- To turn off or turn on Pledges, click on the toggle next to "Allow readers to pledge subscriptions".
You can change the suggested monthly, yearly, and founding subscription pricing and enter your minimum. The pledge amount must be higher than the standard Substack minimum of $5/month and $50/year.
What do readers see?
When readers subscribe to your Substack, they'll see an opportunity to pledge a yearly, monthly, or founding plan. If they'd like to continue without pledging, they can select "No pledge".
Subscribers must enter their payment information to complete their pledge, but there will be no immediate charge. If you turn on paid subscriptions, their pledges will turn into recurring paid subscriptions. If you never turn on paid, nothing will happen.
The subscriber can also write a message about why they'd like to support your publication.
Tip: If a subscriber is logged into their Substack account and has a paid subscription to at least one other publication, their card details will be automatically pre-filled.
Pledges work on auto-pilot. Free subscribers logged into their Substack account will see prompts to “Pledge your support” instead of the "Subscribed" buttons on your publication and in your posts. If you created a Substack from your profile, you will not have a publication.
How do I know when I get a Pledge?
When a subscriber pledges to pay for a subscription, you'll be notified by email.
You'll see the options to turn on payments or manage the Pledges feature (found on your publication's Settings page).
To turn off email notifications for pledges, head to the Notifications section on your Settings page and toggle off next to "New pledged subscription".
To see a complete list of your Pledges, head to your Stats page and click on Pledges. Here, you'll see the number of pledges, potential annualized revenue from pledges, and any notes a subscriber has sent.
What happens when I enable payments on my Substack?
When you set up payments and connect to Stripe, your pledges automatically convert to paid subscriptions. Only enabling payments are needed on your end. The new paid subscriptions can take up to one hour to appear on your Subscribers dashboard.
Readers who've pledged will get an email notifying them that their pledge has converted to a paid subscription. These notifications are automatic.
What happens if I enable payments but my subscription plans are different than the pledge amounts?
If you set up your subscription plan prices at a price lower than the initial pledge plan amounts, the pledges will be converted to paid subscriptions at the lower price.
If you set up your subscription plan prices at a price higher than the pledge plan amounts, we'll display the number of mismatched pledges and the pledge amount. You'll have the option to accept pledges at any pledge tiers you've previously set up, meaning that all pledges will automatically convert to paid subscriptions at the price point pledged.
If the "Accept pledges at any price" is toggled off, we'll notify the reader via email about the price change. The reader can become a paid subscriber at a higher rate by clicking on "Subscribe" in the notification email. Then, they'll immediately become a paid subscriber.
For example, if you set the pledge pricing tiers to be $8.00/month but you set your subscription monthly price to $10.00/month during the payment setup, the reader's pledge won't automatically turn into a $10.00/month subscription.