Open source Substack alternative

There are roughly 12-18 open source publishing platforms claiming Substack-like functionality (Ghost, Letterhead, Beehiiv's API, custom Wordpress setups, etc.), but almost none hit the trifecta of ease-of-use, native subscription handling, and genuine open source maintenance. The real pain points: most open source options require hosting expertise that creators don't have, lack native payment processing (forcing Stripe integration nightmares), or are abandoned projects with security gaps. The actual gap isn't in the feature set—it's in the deployment experience. Creators want to own their audience data and avoid corporate platform lock-in, but they don't want to hire a DevOps person. The opportunity sits squarely in the middle: a self-hostable platform with one-click deployment (Vercel, Railway, Render), native Stripe integration baked in, a clean editor UI, and active maintenance. A new founder should hyper-focus on the install experience and monetization layer—get those two things right and everything else becomes secondary. The market is small but growing: post-Twitter exodus and Substack pricing fatigue have created real demand from 5k-50k creator segments who actually care about open source.