They is whatever service you are signed up to that is outside of your control.
"Takes it all away" I think is really meant to mean a multitude of things. At the worst end is the service closing down unexpectedly. They may have been impacted by a cyberattack, haven't been paying hosting bills, never tested backups etc. Your site is under something.theirdomain.com and theirdomain.com is sold in a fire sale. Your audience can't get to the site and you can't redirect them.
More frequently there is an abhorrent change to the service from your perspective. Perhaps they start inserting ads into your content, charging for previously free features, or even repurposing your content per their terms that you didn't read when signing up to coolservice.com. These kinds of changes are more insidious. On the lowest end, they may just change their system to be a worse experience for you with some new user interface that you don't like.
You can see how these things are going to go from the start. Startup invests in a nice user interface and they are declared the new darling without any viable business model. They can only operate this way for a while because it's unsustainable. Things change for the worse and the pattern is repeated. Sometimes the new kid considers how to make a sustainable business which can be an anathema in their startup community and things stay better for longer. I've not studied Substack, but I think they may have thought more about this.
>> But WordPress? Isn't it controlled entirely by you?
WordPress.com hosts WP for you. WordPress.org offers the open source version of the product.
They is whatever service you are signed up to that is outside of your control.
"Takes it all away" I think is really meant to mean a multitude of things. At the worst end is the service closing down unexpectedly. They may have been impacted by a cyberattack, haven't been paying hosting bills, never tested backups etc. Your site is under something.theirdomain.com and theirdomain.com is sold in a fire sale. Your audience can't get to the site and you can't redirect them.
More frequently there is an abhorrent change to the service from your perspective. Perhaps they start inserting ads into your content, charging for previously free features, or even repurposing your content per their terms that you didn't read when signing up to coolservice.com. These kinds of changes are more insidious. On the lowest end, they may just change their system to be a worse experience for you with some new user interface that you don't like.
You can see how these things are going to go from the start. Startup invests in a nice user interface and they are declared the new darling without any viable business model. They can only operate this way for a while because it's unsustainable. Things change for the worse and the pattern is repeated. Sometimes the new kid considers how to make a sustainable business which can be an anathema in their startup community and things stay better for longer. I've not studied Substack, but I think they may have thought more about this.
>> But WordPress? Isn't it controlled entirely by you?
WordPress.com hosts WP for you. WordPress.org offers the open source version of the product.