How do I automate subscribing with Carrd & Substack?
As it turns out, Carrd.co works with many newsletter platforms, but not Substack.com due to its current lack of an API.
Carrd supports just about every other newsletter platform there is so I don't believe they'd let this slide if they had a way to make it happen.
So to work around this limitation, I started out 'manual' with a simple custom form. When a subscriber clicked the Subscribe button on my landing page, it would trigger an email to me with their email address. I would then subscribe each person on my Substack site manually. That worked for a couple of weeks, but then I noticed the number of subscribers was growing and most were coming in while I was sleeping.
This meant my new subscribers weren't getting the critical Welcome email until I got around to manually subscribing them. I even noticed I missed a few - for several days. This sucked and was demoralizing.
That's when I tried to leverage the POST URL (/api/v1/free?nojs=true) that Substack's very own subscribe form used. It failed but exposed the critical nugget of info I was missing. And, more importantly, it was something I had not found on the all-powerful Google.
If you send a GET request to https://your-account.substack.com/[email protected], it will attempt to auto-submit the subscription form immediately after the page finishes loading.
That was the secret sauce I was missing. And I can proudly report that it is working well after being in place for a couple of weeks now.
Hey @caseywinans, was googling for a solution to integrating Substack to Carrd and found my way here!
Sorry I didn't quite understand the GET request URL... can you explain what you put in this part of the URL?
/welcome?email=your-subscriber@their-domain.com
What should be the url that goes after
email=....?It should be the values that the user input into the Carrd form right? But how get the values into that URL? Sorry if this is a noob question...
Hey all, just so those seeking a solution in the future land on this page:
Though Substack do provide an embed code for a subscribe form, it's ugly, and you can't edit the colors or button much.
Just found a way to embed a beautiful Substack signup form on my Carrd, using this:
https://substackapi.com/
Hi Casey! Thanks for the tip. Did you run into CORS Access-Control issues with your GET request? I can't seem to submit my form so wondering if it's a Substack reject.
Hey there, I did not. However, I've moved away from that landing page as I'm in the midst of rebranding. While I never saw any issues, Substack or Carrd may have made changes that kicked my workaround.
I just have a static site, not Carrd. Substack are blocking any ajax requests, so my workaround is to use
window.location.hrefin an input field.