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Medium vs Sailthru

Medium logo

Medium

News

The best place to read and write stories on the internet

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Sailthru logo

Sailthru

Email Marketing

Retail and publisher email personalisation, now one product inside the Marigold portfolio

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Medium has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Medium unlimited access to stories requires a paid Medium membership; Sailthru the product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • They diverge on capability: Medium covers Story publishing, Sailthru covers Interest profiles.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Medium and Sailthru actually diverge.

Attributes where Medium and Sailthru differ
AttributeMediumSailthru
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelfreemiumquote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWeb, MobileWeb, REST API
CategoryNewsEmail Marketing
Founded2012Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Medium

  • Story publishing
  • Member program
  • Earning potential
  • Reading time estimates
  • Clap reactions
  • Highlighting & annotations
  • Story recommendations
  • Following system

Only in Sailthru

  • Interest profiles
  • Personalisation engine
  • Prediction Manager
  • Site personalisation
  • Zephyr templating
  • Lifecycle optimiser

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Medium

  • Publishing articles without running your own blognot Sailthru
  • Reading long-form writing across technology, culture and newsnot Sailthru
  • Earning from writing through the Medium Partner Programnot Sailthru

Sailthru

  • A publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content cataloguenot Medium
  • A retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity modelnot Medium
  • High-cadence sending where per-recipient content assembly matters more than journey branchingnot Medium
  • Teams that want churn and lifetime value scores available as native campaign conditions rather than imported fieldsnot Medium

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Medium

  • Unlimited access to stories requires a paid Medium membership
  • Audio versions of stories are a member-only feature
  • Earning money from writing requires joining the Medium Partner Program rather than being automatic
  • The iOS app requires iOS 17.0 or later

Sailthru

  • The product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • Pricing counts stored profiles, so retained inactive readers keep costing money long after they stopped opening anything.
  • On-site personalisation requires a developer to implement the JavaScript and maintain the content feed, which puts the highest-value feature behind engineering time.
  • Zephyr is a proprietary templating language, so template maintenance skills are scarce compared with the Liquid syntax used by most competitors.
  • It is built for high-cadence content and retail sending, and B2B lifecycle programmes with long sales cycles sit poorly on the model.

Pricing, plan by plan

Medium

Free
  • FreeFree
    • Unlimited reading
    • Publishing platform
    • Story drafts
  • Medium Membership$5/month
    • Unlimited access
    • Exclusive stories
    • Member earnings

Sailthru

On request
  • Sailthru$undefined/year
    • Priced on stored profiles and send volume
    • Site personalisation and prediction features licensed by module
    • Annual contract through Marigold

Which should you pick?

Choose Medium if

  • You need story publishing.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Mobile.
  • You also want member program.
Medium review

Choose Sailthru if

  • You need interest profiles.
  • You work on Web, REST API.
  • You also want personalisation engine.
Sailthru review

Questions people ask

Is Medium or Sailthru better?
Neither clearly leads. Medium starts at Free and Sailthru at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Medium or Sailthru?
Medium has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Medium and On request for Sailthru.
Does Medium or Sailthru run on more platforms?
Medium runs on Web, Mobile. Sailthru runs on Web, REST API.
Can I use Medium for free?
Yes. Medium has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Sailthru starts at On request.
What is Medium best used for?
Medium is most often used for publishing articles without running your own blog, reading long-form writing across technology, culture and news, earning from writing through the medium partner program. Of those, publishing articles without running your own blog and reading long-form writing across technology, culture and news are not what Sailthru is typically brought in for.
What can Medium do that Sailthru cannot?
Medium covers Story publishing, Member program, Earning potential, Reading time estimates. Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Personalisation engine, Prediction Manager, Site personalisation.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Sailthru: Who owns Sailthru now?

Marigold, formerly CM Group, which also owns Campaign Monitor, Emma, Selligent, Liveclicker and Cheetah Digital.

Sailthru: Does that affect the roadmap?

It can. Overlapping products in one portfolio compete for investment, so ask which platform is the strategic one for your segment before signing multi-year.

Sailthru: Is it worth it just for newsletters?

For personalised daily newsletters at publisher scale it remains one of the strongest options. For simple broadcast sending it is heavily over-specified.

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