Newsletter software for people like you.

Tens of thousands of people are ditching their old, overpriced email tools for an easier way to collect subscribers, send emails, and collect payments.
My newsletter has grown from a fairly small list to over 15,000 subscribers.
Buttondown's easy and user-friendly system has been a genuine breath of fresh air.
This product has been exactly what I’ve needed! Thank you for building it.
Start for free · No credit card required

What makes Buttondown different?

There are a bajillion email tools out there, I know. I built Buttondown because none of them worked the way I wanted them to.

Some were super-powerful and super-complicated, designed for huge companies who were spending all day tweaking templates + workflow automations.

Others wanted to own my entire digital identity, keeping me on their platform and selling my subscribers’ data to the highest bidder.

I just wanted a small, elegant tool that let me collect subscribers and email them easily, with no fuss and at a reasonable price point.

It turns out tens of thousands of other happy writers, creators, and businesses wanted the same thing.

—Justin, the guy who runs Buttondown

Why people love us

But wait, there's more

Zapier support
Support for multiple newsletters
Custom sending & hosting domains
Real-time analytics
Stale subscriber detection
Automatic link checking
Tagging and metadata
Webhooks
Pay-what-you-want plans
Support for global currencies
Hosted archives
One-click data portability
Privacy & invite-only newsletters
AI-powered email validation
HTTPS & SSL everywhere, even for custom domains
No ads or pop-ups, ever
Customize your archives with HTML & CSS
Surveys and polls
Attach whatever files you want, just like real email

As seen in

Logo for Daring FireballLogo for WiredLogo for the VergeLogo for Business Insider

How folks use Buttondown

An engine of precaritization

It’s become a cliché to say we live in uncertainty, but lately I’ve wondered if the better word is really precarity. That is, it’s not merely that a lot of things that seemed stable and predictable no longer are, but that a lot of things that seemed comforting and supportive have vanished. Layoffs; the end of emergency pandemic protections; ice storms and atmospheric rivers and drought; the slow-motion collapse of our healthcare industry—I could go on, but it seems everywhere you look there’s something else pushing some risk calculation higher.

Mandy writes about work, reading, and technology on her beautiful personal blog, cross-publishing to Buttondown so readers stay in the loop.
FEBRUARY 2023

First, a thank you. Travis and I wanted to make something we would love as comic fans and it seems like it hit a chord with many of you. The responses from you, publishers, and our partners have been outstanding. So the big question is, when are going to launch? The answer is everyone’s favorite definitive answer: soon. We’re finishing a few features and ingesting publisher content as we speak. We can say that we’re weeks away, not months.

Kenny & Travis are building Omnibus, a comic book reader for the modern age. They're pre-launch, and use Buttondown to collect feedback and keep pre-orderers engaged in the process.
Everything's an API

I’ve got a lot on my plate this week, so I’ll keep this newsletter short and sweet. Hyrum’s law:

With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody.
Hillel teaches thousands of engineers about formal methods and software engineering in his weekly newsletter.
Synthesis

Research is what gives us ground to stand on – and synthesis is how we turn our research into revenue-generating design decisions. During synthesis, we look at what we’ve gathered and plan as many changes to your business’s funnel as possible. That involves both one-off changes (this is broken, fix it) and test ideas (changing this might be a tradeoff, and we need to measure its economic impact).

Nick runs two newsletters — one for his design consultancy for eCommerce and SaaS businesses, and another paid newsletter for his writing on personal sundries like cocktails and sports.
10 Years Of Smithery

1st Principle: Have a mental model of the terrain you operate in. Imagine the perspectives that others hold of the same terrain. Remember that it’s easier to change perspective than terraform the terrain around you.

2nd Principle: Building up doesn’t have to be about increasing numbers (sales, employees, square foot, etc). Instead, build familiarity with the terrain; the ability and agility to work in lots of different ways, creating different sources of value.

John uses Buttondown to power his Shopify store and to keep potential consultancy clients in the loop on his design and industry thinking.
Interview question of the week

Last week, I had you print out the length of a program in English words. Some of y’all made this very simple, and some engineered something much more hardcore, and I loved all of the interpretations of it! Great job Miguel, Nate, Ángel, Jonnie, Saad, Ten, Leyan, Zoé, Will, Andrew, Carine, Alvin, Prashant, Austin, Muhammad, and Christian!

Cassidy shares her thoughts on life, code, and creativity with programmers of all stripes, helping them stay informed and inspired each Sunday evening.

Even more happy customers

Buttondown remains the easiest thing I use regularly, and I am grateful for that.
Casey, Journalist
It's a humble app doing a common job but with end users in mind.
Si Jobling, Engineering Manager
Buttondown has been an amazing experience for me. The service is constantly being improved and customer service is the best. My newsletter with Buttondown has grown from a fairly small list to over 15,000 subscribers, and it hasn't broken a sweat yet.
Cassidy Williams, CTO, Contenda
I switched over to Buttondown from Mailchimp because of the difficulty I had with Mailchimp's campaigns, so Buttondown's easy and user-friendly system has been a genuine breath of fresh air.
Jessi Eoin, Illustrator + Comic Artist
You’ve truly built a great product that I feel good about using (vs a monopoly from our tech overlords).
Rachel, 2030 Camp
I love how personal Buttondown feels, especially compared to Mailchimp, Convertkit, and services like that.
Simen Strøm Braaten, Designer
This product has been exactly what I’ve needed!
Nathan Bird, Podcast host, Chattanooga Civics
It's already so refreshing compared to the mega companies.
Casey Watts, Author, Debugging Your Brain
Definitely will be using for the foreseeable future. It’s a great service and I feel well cared for. Thank you!
Phoebe Sinclair, Author
I’m a sucker for elegant UI and I really love your site, but above that I think your product has so much value for so many different people. I’m not a coder, I’m only familiar with the bare basics, but I was able to figure out and utilise Buttondown quickly.
Claudia Nathan, Founder, The Repository
The killer feature for me: Buttondown will take an RSS feed then automatically slurp up the content (in their words) and then send it to our subscribers. Job done. They seem like a good company too, so I’d say this is a winner.
Andy Bell, Founder, Set Studio
Well may I just say your support experience is already approximately 1 billion times better than ConvertKit. Excited to be switching!
Michael J. Metts, Author, Writing is Designing
Privacy focused sending and sign up form; lets me focus on writing - editor is "just" markdown; simple, elegant design template looks like a blog post; the founder is amazing - he's helped with every question I've had, even outside of Buttondown.
Joe Masilotti, Founder, RailsDevs
We need more nice and professional services like yours on the web.
Tobias Horvath, Designer and developer
No one is paying me to say this, but I love @buttondown so far for my lil newsletter. It’s so smart, simple, and attractive (and to my knowledge, not actively anti-trans!). Customer service is also legitimately excellent.
Julie Kliegman, Copy chief, Sports Illustrated
I love it! It lets me breathe, not compete as I write with other writers.
Devin Kate Pope, Writer and editor
It’s a pleasure working with you. Thank you! (And what a contrast with Mailchimp, where I spent two weeks and a dozen of emails trying find out why our form goes down sometimes (only sometimes), and never really got a real answer.)
Anton Sotkov, Software Engineer, IA
Buttondown exemplifies how I wish most software worked, and I hope to achieve a similar thing with the software I develop in the future.
Matt Favero, Software engineer
It feels incomparably good to be able to email just like a guy named Justin when you have a @buttondown question 15 minutes before you’re about to blast a Geistlist email. (Not a guarantee but wow this guy is human-level good.)
Jacob Ford, Designer About Town
Enter Buttondown, Justin Duke’s lovely little newsletter tool. It’s small, elegant, and integrates well. And it is also eminently affordable.
Will Buckingham, Author
Your settings page is a joy to use and everything about Buttondown makes me happy.
Gareth Jelley, Magazine editor
have been on Buttondown for ~18 months and I can't recommend it enough.
Elizabeth Minkel, Podcast host
You really do make ALL other customer service look terrible by comparison.
Chris Mead, Improv teacher
There is a caring person on the other side of this software, which is one of the things I like the most about Buttondown.
Keith Calder, Film & TV Producer
I’d also like to add that @buttondown is an absolute joy to use. Hats off, Justin!
Elliot Jay Stocks, Creative Director, Google Fonts
Shoutout to @buttondown and @jmduke for building an amazing bootstrapped product for newsletters, all while being very open to feedback and connecting directly with customers 🙏 Easily one of the most enjoyable product experiences I've had.
Den Delimarsky, Head of Ecosystem, Netlify
if you are looking for "newsletter tool for hackers" i tentatively believe the answer is @buttondown full api, compose in markdown, good docs for setting up domain auth, simple subscribe form HTML that you style yourself (or not)
Brian David Hall, Author, Your Website Sucks
I really like @buttondown as a blogging platform, it has the simplicity of Substack but the corporate culture is less toxic.
Chad Loder, Extremism researcher
I worked with @buttondown and asked for some new payment support beyond the supporter single tier / pay-what-you-want options. Justin was great and built it in just a couple days.
Dan Hon, Author & consultant
I write nonfiction and I use @buttondown buttondown.email/Changeset - indie, GREAT personal customer support, very nice default styling, all the options I want including ones to protect my readers' privacy
Sumana Harihareswara, Open source maintainer
I use @buttondown because it does exactly what I need (manage subscribers and send markdown emails), not more and not less 👍 As a bonus it's made by an indie dev which I love!
Max Stober, Founder, GraphCDN
If you’re considering running an email newsletter, or if you already run one and are considering a change of provider, I highly recommend @buttondownemail. Super-easy app, very fair pricing with a generous free tier, and exemplary support. 💯
Peter Gasston, Technologist and speaker
imo @buttondown is easily one of the best-designed services i’ve used in recent years, if you have a substack you should really consider switching!
Kabir Goel, Engineer, Cal