The Patreon Problem: They Keep Copying The Cool Kids (And it’s Not Working) By Angela Holowell

Guest Essay by Angela Holowell, the creator/host of the Honey & Hustle podcast. 

 Hey honeys and hustlers,

I remember when Patreon felt like the place where the indie creators went to monetize their audience. Back when “creator economy” wasn’t a common term, Patreon had real main-character energy. It wasn’t trying to be Twitter. It wasn’t trying to be a glossy magazine. It wasn’t trying to become your entire identity. It was just a simple, powerful idea: if people love what you make, they can pay you directly for more of it—and you can actually build something sustainable without begging the algorithm for table scraps.

Issa Rae was the poster child. Podcasters were quietly stacking serious money. People built real businesses. I’ve seen creators paywall content so effectively they could hire help. Joe Budden has reportedly pulled in around $900K a year through Patreon supporters. Flagrant Media and Andrew Schulz reportedly make tens of thousands a month through the platform. From the outside looking in, it seemed as though everybody was eating.

So why does Patreon still feel… weirdly hard to recommend?

Not because it’s “bad.” Not because creators aren’t winning there. But because Patreon has been fighting the wrong fight for years—and every time it tries to catch up, it ends up feeling like a very under-thought iteration of whatever platform it’s trying to compete with. It’s losing because it’s scattered. Patreon’s core problem is that the internet changed, and Patreon didn’t fully commit to what it needed to become to serve the creators building online businesses. And then, like a plot twist no one asked for, Patreon laid off about 20% of its workforce. Layoffs happen across tech, sure. But it also raises the question creators quietly ask whenever a platform starts pivoting too hard: Is the business stable? Are they building for us—or trying to find a new story?

The whole thing reminds me of Skype losing all of its market share to Zoom during the pandemic, even though it had a massive head start. Skype had the name recognition. Zoom just understood the moment better—and built a product for how people actually behave.

Patreon is CHANGING

Creators don’t just need a paywall anymore. They need distribution. They need retention. They need relationship infrastructure. And that’s why Substack started eating people’s lunch—not because Substack invented paid subscriptions, but because Substack understood the boring-but-deadly truth: email is a cheat code. Email is portable. Email is direct. Email doesn’t wake up and decide it hates you because you posted at 9:03 instead of 8:57. Email doesn’t randomly throttle your reach because you forgot to add a trending sound. Substack’s network effects didn’t come from magic. They came from mechanics: discovery through a social feed, easy content sharing, cross-pollination, and a built-in recommendation pipeline that lands directly in your inbox.

Patreon saw that—and started doing the modern platform thing where they panic-build features like you’re speedrunning a product roadmap in front of investors for another round of funding. They introduced a community chat feature (app-only, not super robust), a connection to Spotify for private podcasts (which Substack already had in addition to complete podcast hosting), newsletters (because obviously), and announced a “healthier” social feed (because Notes is hot right now and everyone wants to be a town square). I haven’t heard much about the progress or creator impressions on the social feed they’re building on Patreon, though. They even gave creators the ability to sell products, refined tiers, and a free tier—because if you can’t beat Shopify, you might as well cosplay as it.

I don’t even think any of these are inherently bad ideas. I think the problem is that Patreon keeps reaching for creator platform-like features when what it really needs is to give more creator control. Because if you ask most creators what they actually want, it’s not “another feed.” It’s: “Help me keep my subscribers. Help me automate my business. Help me onboard new supporters and get them engaged in the community without manually reinventing the wheel every week.” And right now, Patreon still makes too many creators feel like they’re building inside someone else’s house—with rules that weren’t designed for how creators operate today.

One of the most underrated red flags is the email newsletter functionality itself. Patreon’s newsletter functionality exists, but it’s limited in a way that feels almost suspicious at best and dangerous at worst. Not being able to change your “from” address is a real deliverability problem, not a minor preference, and everyone shares the same sending address!? If you’re tying your email reputation to everyone else’s behavior, that could lead to detrimental email flags for every creator on Patreon. Meanwhile, platforms like beehiiv let you send from an email address that you actually own.

Then there’s automation. Patreon’s built-in automations have improved, but they still feel slim and overly templated. Welcome sequences, tier flexibility, group subscriptions, smarter workflows—these shouldn’t be “nice-to-haves” in 2026. They should be table stakes. Because creators aren’t just artists anymore; they’re operators. The ones who survive are running media companies, schools, and studios. And when your revenue depends on people sticking around month after month, you can’t afford to treat retention like a hobby.

Patreon still thrives best when the creator’s content is truly exclusive—content you can’t get anywhere else. But exclusivity is a treadmill. A lot of creators burn out trying to produce “special” content for paying subscribers while also producing free content on public platforms to attract new subscribers. That’s two jobs. Sometimes three. It’s like running a restaurant where you also have to farm the ingredients, design the menu, and do stand-up comedy out front to get customers to come inside. Patreon’s job should be to make that treadmill less brutal—to turn “exclusive content” into “exclusive relationship,” and to provide tools that make staying subscribed feel effortless and rewarding.

To their credit, Patreon has also been one of the earlier platforms willing to take a stronger stance on hate speech and violent content. That matters. Moderation is expensive. Moderation is controversial. Moderation is thankless. But I’d rather a platform wrestle with hard moral questions than shrug and call it “free speech” while creators become collateral damage. Still: being principled doesn’t automatically make you competitive.

So what would I do if Patreon called me tomorrow and asked for help?

I think Patreon needs to stop trying to compete with Substack, and start eating the lunch of much more vulnerable creator monetization platforms. I’d stop chasing the idea of being a social network and double down on being the best creator membership engine on the internet.

First, I’d fully fold Memberful under the Patreon brand in a way that makes sense. Right now the ecosystem feels split: Patreon as the mainstream membership platform, Memberful as the paid option for creators who want more control. That separation might be organizationally convenient, but it’s strategically confusing. Creators should be able to choose: revenue share model or paid plan model—based on what they need at different stages. Let beginners start with revenue share, then graduate into a more powerful plan with deeper automations, cleaner integrations, better data, and more ownership. Memberful’s pricing is very straightforward, so I think this would be low-hanging fruit.

Second, I’d make integration a flex, not a weakness. If Patreon can’t match every feature in Substack, Kit, and beehiiv tomorrow, fine. But Patreon can win by becoming the cleanest membership layer that plugs into the rest of your stack. A Zapier-first approach to connecting with related apps isn’t glamorous, but it’s effective. Creators don’t want a million mediocre tools inside one app—they want a few excellent systems that talk to each other.

Third, I’d go after the more vulnerable competitors instead of trying to win a heavyweight fight against Substack. Buy Me a Coffee. Ko-fi. Circle. Kajabi-adjacent offerings. Not because those platforms are bad for creators, but because they’re closer in positioning: fan-supported, community-driven, creator-led. Patreon can own that lane if it gets serious about making it easy to add a tip jar, create robust community chat channels for member-to-member conversations, run public funding campaigns, build courses, and support creators who want to monetize without becoming full-time content factories or ad machines.

And if Patreon wants to be clever? The ad and sponsorship layer is right there. Substack and Kit are just now playing in brand partnerships, but Patreon could do something genuinely native: let brands sponsor a set number of memberships at certain tiers. Imagine a brand underwrites 500 subscriptions for a creator’s new supporters for a month. The creator gets growth and conversion potential. Supporters get access with a built-in trial. Brands get visibility in a space where people are already paying attention and already emotionally invested. Everyone wins—without forcing creators to wedge awkward affiliate links into heartfelt posts.

Finally—and this is the part I’d actually bet on—Patreon should make “fan mail” feel magical again. Not the chaotic comment-section kind. I mean structured, playful, human connection: voice notes, prompts, “ask me anything” workflows, easy ways to feature supporters in podcasts or content, and tools that make community participation feel like an exclusive experience. If someone is paying to be part of an exclusive community, they don’t just want more content. They want proximity. They want recognition. They want to feel like they’re inside the room—not just paying for the PDF outside the door. There are a few platforms that have tried to do this for creators, but independent of connection to their actual content, I don’t think they’ve truly picked up market share in this area.

Patreon can still be the OG. Jack Conte has always struck me as thoughtful, and the “healthier algorithm” ambition is genuinely refreshing in a world where most platforms treat human attention like a commodity to be used and abused. But Patreon’s next era can’t be “Patreon tries to be everything.” It has to be: Patreon becomes the best place on the internet to run a membership business without losing your mind.

Creators don’t need another social feed. They need a home base that actually acts like one. 

 _________________________________________________

Angela Holowell is the creator/host of the Honey & Hustle podcast, where she talks to creators shaping the future of the creator economy through education, community, and technology.

Angela is also one of the most insightful voices in podcasting.

You can read her Substack here. 

 Angela graduated with her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She then started a photography business, Ang H. Studio (now Rootful Media), and photographed my first weddings. Angela got accepted into the Master’s of Peace and Human Rights program at UAB. 

One of her proudest achievements is that her short film, Trail Therapy, is finishing its film festival run at Hayti Heritage Film Festival. 

 Honey & Hustle is a video podcast sharing stories from North Carolina's creators, entrepreneurs, nonprofit founders, and startups. This show is about how to create a sustainable business, while the prevailing narrative around successful entrepreneurship tells you to scale fast, raise money, and plan for an exit. There's a better way to build businesses, create meaningful work, and have a positive impact in your community.