Substack is now enabling authors to put a paywall around their 'Chat' conversation areas. The platform is rolling out functionality that allows creators to restrict access to their full Chat or particular conversation threads exclusively to paid or founding subscribers, as announced by the company on Wednesday. This development follows 18 months after Substack first introduced Chat as a means for authors to directly engage with their dedicated followers.

The firm contends that introducing paywalls for Chats will maintain the exclusivity and privacy of discussions, deterring unwanted intrusions, while also serving as an additional benefit for subscribers. According to Substack, analyses indicate that individuals actively participating in Chats are 12% more prone to maintain their subscriptions.

Authors now have the flexibility to restrict access to an entire Chat or select threads within it. When access to a Chat is restricted, those who haven’t subscribed or have free subscriptions will be met with a prompt to upgrade for access.

In addition to these updates, Substack is enhancing the Chat interface to simplify navigation within large conversations. The introduction of a search function for Chats aims to ease the process of finding previous discussions. To further enhance the user experience, it is introducing notifications for threads and new badges for replies, helping users to keep track of their position within discussions. Substack is also refining its underlying infrastructure to enable the real-time loading of new Chats and responses, streamlining the process of staying informed during live discussions.

At the time of launching Chat, Substack sought to leverage the turmoil on Twitter following Elon Musk’s acquisition. The platform continues to view Chat as a preferable alternative to Twitter (now X), stating in a recent blog post their users' appreciation for the simplicity of Substack Chat over other platforms. This admiration is exemplified by a comment from a paid subscriber who mentioned the chat as an excellent replacement for X.

Moreover, Substack aims to compete with X not only with its Chat feature but also through the introduction of a Twitter-esque "Notes" feature a year prior. This feature allows for the sharing of posts, quotations, comments, images, videos, and more, in a format reminiscent of a Tweet, gathered in a specialized feed akin to Twitter.