Mujaz vs Substack for Arabic newsletters: an honest comparison (2026)

The short answer

• Pick Substack if you want to sell paid subscriptions today, or if your readers mostly read English and find you through the Substack app.
• Pick Mujaz if your newsletter is in Arabic and you want it to arrive looking the way you wrote it: fonts, harakat and right-to-left layout, with automations, welcome emails and analytics for a regional audience.
• Don't decide on price alone: Substack is free until you earn, Mujaz is free up to 500 subscribers. The real difference is how your email looks and what tools you get.

Side by side

The difference a table can't show: how Arabic looks

You can write in Arabic on Substack and your email will arrive. But the platform is built for left-to-right reading: the editor, template, buttons and layout all run that way, and there is no dedicated handling for Arabic type, so each mail client shows it in whatever font it picks. The result is readable, but it isn't what you designed. In Mujaz everything starts from the right, every heading is paired with a tuned Arabic font, and we test rendering in Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail, because that is where Arabic usually breaks.

The best test doesn't need our opinion: write the same issue on both, send it to yourself on Gmail, Outlook and your phone, and compare.

What you pay as your list grows

• Free newsletter, 1,000 subscribers: nothing on Substack. $19/month on Mujaz (Lite), or $15.20 billed annually.
• Free newsletter, 5,000 subscribers: nothing on Substack. $69/month on Mujaz (Growth, with a sender address in your name).
• Paid newsletter, 500 readers at $5: Substack keeps about $250 of $2,500 a month, before payment fees. Mujaz doesn't offer paid subscriptions yet, so if that is your income today, Substack is the better fit right now.

Where Substack is better, honestly

• Paid subscriptions work today, and you pay nothing until you earn.
• The reader network: the app and writer recommendations bring new subscribers, which a newer platform can't match.
• Audio, video and community: podcasts, Notes and chat in one place.

Where Mujaz is better

• Arabic first: a right-to-left interface, editor and preview, and a font engine that keeps joined letters and harakat intact in the inbox.
• Sending tools: welcome emails and sequences, a spam check before every send, resend to non-openers, and best-send-time analysis from the Starter plan up.
• An AI assistant that writes Arabic for subject lines, rewrites and summaries.
• Your identity, not the platform's: a sender address in your name from Growth, your own sending domain from Pro.

Moving from Substack to Mujaz

1. In your Substack settings, export your subscribers as a CSV.
2. In Mujaz, open Subscribers, then Import CSV, and upload the file.
3. Copy your recent issues into Mujaz if you want an archive on your public page.
4. Send a short issue telling readers about the move, so a new sender address doesn't surprise them.