I agree! That's why I built Pagecord. Like Substack it's a blog with a mailing list, but it's also your personal website (pages, for example) with a custom domain. Also, source available.

Most people will defer to Substack because (A) the brand, and (B) it can be monetised which is probably the biggest draw.

Maybe I need to bring monetisation to Pagecord? :)

https://pagecord.com

https://github.com/lylo/pagecord