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Alternatives to Patreon (Patreon)

Published:
2017-12-11 18:05:37
Imported:
2026-06

Content

I'm sorry, all.  I know you're probably annoyed and tired of all these posts related to the fee changes of Patreon.  It's important to me because I feel it's unfair that you're now carrying the burden. But also, I pushed and pushed and PUSHED to get people willing to sub at $1 and now they're the ones being most impacted by this.  I have about 25 patrons that sub at $3 and below. I've already lost almost $50 in subs, so that could easily become $75 if a significant number of people drop. That's a lot of money. That's a fuckton of money for me.


For the record, just thinking about this stuff constantly has made it difficult to do my other work, like right now I have severe artist's block trying to work on Kaerwyn - for what is a very important page.


In my poll, several of you said you're interested, but want more information. So let me lay out what I've been thinking about for the past several days.

Please feel free to reply with your thoughts.


Option #1: I create my own subscription/donation methods


My Site:

I spent all weekend looking at various Content Management Systems that have a paywall/subscription addon.  Right now I'm seriously looking into Joomla with an addon that costs me a flat $30 for the software but allows you to subscribe using Paypal or Stripe. I would not have your payment information *at all*, all of your transactions would go through Paypal or Stripe, period.  (Stripe is what Patreon uses as well, just in case you didn't know).  I was also looking into Drupal that has another addon that's about $110/month and another that was $40/month. They all offer various things that makes me keep them in mind despite the higher cost. For the record, Patreon costs me almost $100 a month currently.


Now this would be my own personal site, it would not be connected to anyone else. Though Shadowsmyst (Creator of the Shifters webcomic) and I have talked about sharing a site so that we can provide content for all of our users (We tend to share userbases as well).  We're still looking into if this is plausible.


Site Security is a real concern of mine, as CMS's are notorious for being hack targets, but Joomla has a pretty good record and they have auto-updates now.  I've also got one running using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) as well.  This is what turns http into https in your URL bar. This adds an extra level of security.

I would like to make it so that if the site gets hacked, then the only thing lost will be email addresses and maybe passwords. I know this sounds dire, but I'm always thinking of "when, not if" when it comes to this stuff, so I want to mitigate as much damage as possible.  The likelihood of getting hacked is pretty low, but it exists.


A mailing list:

I've been thinking about this one very seriously for my $3 and under patrons. You get screwed the most, and you're the most likely to drop support.  So I've been thinking about setting up some subscriptions for Paypal but also donations via Ko-Fi (uses Paypal for one time payments) and Google Wallet (Not sure if they have a subscription method).

I would add you folks to the mailing list and you'd get your early arrival comics delivered to you that way.  I'd have to do this manually so, this adds more of a timesink, but I think it's worth it in the end until we can get an alternative.


If you use this to donate more than the $5 tier, I'm not sure how to get the special tier information to you, other than making a mailing list per tier? That might be difficult. This option is mostly for those donating under $5 who are impacted the most.


Option #2. Patreon Alternatives


Commiss.io:https://commiss.io/ 

Currently, there aren't really any good alternatives to Patreon.  However, I have been speaking with Commiss.io's guys in their discord chat (Along with several others) offering advice on a subscription model like Patreon's.  Commiss.io is highly regarded among artists getting commissions, so having them create a Patreon alternative is VERY exciting.  I have told them all of my gripes with Patreon: The fees, Allowing you to donate more than one month at a time for your selected tier, Lack of static pages for things like information and  downloads, gallery for special images, etc. We've made a ton of suggestions and they'e looking into setting this up, very seriously. Unfortunately we don't know when. But I am hoping that they will hit Patreon where Patreon has its strongest advantage: Get lots of artists on board and you can support all of them on one platform.


Drip:https://d.rip

Drip is Kickstarter's version of Patreon. I have signed up for their waiting list, but currently it's in invite only beta.  They expect it to be open sometime early next year.  I'm watching this one, but currently Commiss.io is my preferred alternative.


This is all the information I have to give right now. I will be playing around with Joomla and other CMS's for my own site in the coming weeks. I will not have anything available before these damn fees hit.  If you guys are interested in the mailing list option, please let me know so I can set up the appropriate paypal buttons.


Comments

Simone Spinozzi

Commiss.io does not seem a good alternative and d.rip you need to be part of an elite clique. I... don't favour any of those two. I'd suggest going for the "paypal/strype" and using the mailing list to deliver content. That seems the more sensible choice at the moment if you wish to abandon patreon.

Jakkal
>>8827021

I'm probably not going to leave Patreon entirely, but I want people to have options if they'd like to continue supporting me. On my end, not much will change (Probably just making a lot less). I'm curious why you think commiss.io isn't a good alternative.

Merrick Ackert

I don't really have an issue with the change. I mean, a 20 percent increase sounds like a lot yeah, but for a 1$ a month subscription that's still only 20 cents, and I could lose way more than that just by buying an extra candy bar at the gas station every month. Of course, I don't have dozens and dozens of subscriptions in that bracket, so I guess the situation is slightly different for somebody who spends a hundred bucks a month on a collection of 1 dollar subscriptions.

Jakkal
>>8828217

A $1 sub is actually going up to $1.38. And yeah, if you're supporting 5 people at $1 now, it'll cost you close to $7 after the change. I know some people who were supporting 20 people with $1 subs, that'll up them to $27/month. I think someone else calculated that the creator only sees $.67 of that, when we used to see about $.80 of it. It's a wait and see game for sure.