Making the work
Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover ad networks. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
Ad server you download and run yourself
Get paid for recommending other newsletters
Revive Adserver | SparkLoop | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Free | Not listed |
| Pricing model (they differ) | Free | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on (they differ) | Web, Linux | Web |
| Covers | Ad Networks | Ad Networks, Giveaways & Referrals, Newsletter & Email |
Shaded rows are where the two answers disagree and both listings have answered. A row where one side has not stated a fact is left plain, because silence is not a difference.
Ad server you download and run yourself
Revive Adserver is software you install on your own hosting, so it does the counting rather than the selling. Campaigns, zones, targeting and delivery reports all live on a server you control, which means nothing sits between you and the advertiser and nothing takes a share of what you invoice. Setting it up is a PHP application and a database, and that is a real afternoon of work. Publishers who have already sold the slot are who this is for.
Our note
Budget for the maintenance rather than the licence. The software is free and the ongoing work is not, so this pays off for a site running ads continuously and rarely for one selling a sponsorship a quarter. If the server side is the objection, AdButler and Broadstreet do the same job as a subscription.
Get paid for recommending other newsletters
SparkLoop turns a newsletter's own audience into revenue by paying it to recommend other newsletters, either inside the email or on the page somebody lands on after subscribing. The same network runs the other way, so a publisher can buy subscribers from it as well as sell them. Both sides sit on the free plan. It works with the mainstream sending platforms rather than replacing one.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Substack |
|---|
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
|---|
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
|---|
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
|---|
Our note
Treat the free tier as the whole product and the $2,000 add-on as a separate decision for a newsletter already growing fast enough to reward referrers. Read the per-subscriber rates before planning revenue around this, because they are the number the pricing page leaves out.
Only on this side