Patreon strikes me as a fantastic lifestyle business, a small company that earns modest profits for the owners, not a viable unicorn.

More like Twitch, less like Facebook

Curious, does anyone know of a good (similar) alternative to move to that isn't as profit-crazed?

Liberapay but they don't support rewards / exclusives for patronages.

OpenCollective is more organization focused and have plenty of accounting help.

Subscribestar does not censor creators and is pretty much the same service.

Taking a cut from donations is a unetical business model imho.

"Donation" is not the word the OP should have used, because it implies Patreon is some kind of charity middleman. They are not. Patrons are not donating money to creators, they are paying them to create; creators are not receiving donations, they are receiving income. Patreon is charging a service fee to them, and they know this up front. It is no more or less ethical than any other similar business proposition like setting up an online store with Shopify or selling an ebook on Amazon.

> they are paying them to create

That’s really not true. Subsidising creation maybe, but for most patreon that I’ve seen most of the value produced by the creator is public.

There might be some exotic sideshows (eg access to a discord server, time-limited exclusivity is also common) but I’d see it more as funding creation than paying to create, the latter implies much more direct transaction and benefits / exchange e.g. commissioned work, that is “paying to create”.

>because it implies Patreon is some kind of charity middleman

They're not? I honestly thought they were a utility like PayPal.

Bizarre that people think they can make big money off it.

Paypal also takes a cut.

Paypal is a bank. I think its in the gray zone what Patreon is. Investors are probably buying goodwill.

they are not taking a cut. if anything they are providing a payment structure to relieve the work of credit card handling including fraud work. Very similar to how twitch began selling bits to viewers who could then use them to tip streamers.