Substack’s Section feature lets you run multiple newsletters under a single publication. Each Section has its own name, subscription toggle, and archive page—but everything lives under one domain and subscriber dashboard.
Most operators discover Sections when they want to add a secondary content stream without fragmenting their audience or managing two separate Substacks. The feature works, but only if you understand what it actually controls and what it doesn’t.
How Sections work
When you create a Section, you’re adding a category filter to your publication. Subscribers can opt in or out of each Section independently. A reader might subscribe to your main newsletter but skip your weekly link roundup, for example.
Each post you publish gets assigned to one Section. Your homepage feed shows all posts by default, but readers can filter by Section using the navigation menu. Each Section gets its own RSS feed and archive URL.
Sections don’t create separate subscriber lists—everyone is still subscribed to your publication. The Section toggle just controls which emails they receive. Your total subscriber count remains unified, and free vs. paid status applies across all Sections.
This matters for billing. If you have 5,000 subscribers but only 1,000 opted into your premium Section, you’re still paying for 5,000 subscribers. Substack doesn’t prorate based on Section engagement.
When to use Sections
Sections make sense when you want to publish different content formats or cadences without forcing every subscriber to receive everything.
Common use cases: a weekly main newsletter plus a daily news brief; a free newsletter with a paid-only deep-dive Section; a primary topic with a secondary niche that overlaps but doesn’t fully align.
Sections don’t work well if your content streams target completely different audiences. A marketing newsletter and a cooking newsletter should be separate publications, not Sections. Substack’s discovery and recommendation algorithms treat your publication as a single entity—readers who find you through one Section will see the rest.
Sections also don’t solve the problem of list fatigue. If subscribers are tuning out, adding more Sections usually makes it worse. You’re better off consolidating or changing your primary content strategy.
The non-obvious filtering tip
Substack’s subscriber export includes a sections column that lists which Sections each subscriber has enabled. Most operators ignore this field, but it’s useful for segmentation.
You can filter your CSV export to find subscribers who opted into one Section but not another. This tells you which content streams resonate and which don’t. If 80% of your subscribers turned off your link roundup Section, that’s a signal to kill it or rework the format.
The export also shows Section opt-in dates, so you can track adoption over time. If a new Section isn’t attracting opt-ins after 30 days, it’s probably not differentiated enough from your main feed.
One edge case: Substack doesn’t let you set default Section subscriptions for new subscribers. Everyone who signs up is automatically opted into all Sections. You can’t onboard new readers into just your free Section and gate the premium one—they get everything unless they manually toggle it off.
This means your welcome email needs to explain what each Section is and how to manage preferences, or you’ll see higher unsubscribe rates from people who didn’t expect the volume.
Section limitations
Sections don’t have separate branding. The header, logo, and colour scheme apply to your entire publication. If you want each Section to feel visually distinct, you’re limited to post-level formatting.
You also can’t schedule posts to different Sections at the same time. Substack’s scheduler works at the publication level, so if you want to send your main newsletter and a bonus Section on the same day, you’ll need to stagger the send times manually.
Paid subscriptions apply across all Sections—you can’t charge separately for individual Sections. If you want to monetise one Section independently, you’d need a second Substack publication.
Sections work best when your content streams share a core audience but vary in format, frequency, or depth. If you’re running a single newsletter and considering expansion, Sections are worth testing—but only if you’re prepared to let subscribers self-select out of the extra volume.
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