Buttondown vs. Curated

So — you're looking for a newsletter solution and you're weighing both Curated and Buttondown.

Welcome!

I try pretty hard not to be biased with these writeups — there are a lot of great products out there, and I'm not going to pretend that Buttondown is the best fit for every use case.

Let's start with the points in Curated's favor:

It's cheaper to get started. Buttondown's free plan only lets you collect a hundred subscribers, while Curated's free plan lets you collect up to 1500.
Curated has built-in support for sponsorship management. While Buttondown has support for paid subscriptions through Stripe, sponsorship management is not supported.

If you really need sponsorship management taken care of for you, or if you're extremely price-sensitive — Curated may be the right choice for you.

However! (There's always a however, isn't there?) There are a couple big red flags with Curated:

The product is on life-support. I don't mean this in a mean way — I mean this in a literal way. The copyright notice on their main site still says 2021; they haven't tweeted in two years. Meanwhile, Buttondown is shipping tons of new features every week.
While Buttondown's free plan is less generous than Curated, almost every other price point is cheaper. Two thousand subscribers will cost you $39 on Curated compared to $29 on Buttondown; five thousand subscribers will cost you $129 on Curated compared to $79 on Buttondown.
Buttondown is a richer, more popular product. It's got integrations with all of your favorite apps — plus RSS and API support — to make it easy for you to curate an editorial newsletter of your dreams.

Check out the comparison table below:

	Curated	Buttondown
Scheduling	Curated	Buttondown
Web archive	Curated	Buttondown
Send from custom domain	Curated —	Buttondown
Privacy-first	Curated —	Buttondown
Write in Markdown	Curated —	Buttondown
CSS	Curated —	Buttondown
Tags	Curated —	Buttondown
Attachments	Curated —	Buttondown
Metadata	Curated —	Buttondown
Run by humans	Curated —	Buttondown
First-party API	Curated	Buttondown
Paid subscriptions	Curated —	Buttondown
Analytics	Curated	Buttondown
RSS-to-email	Curated —	Buttondown
Surveys	Curated —	Buttondown
Integrations	Curated —	Buttondown
Host on custom domain	Curated —	Buttondown
Send from Gmail (or wherever)	Curated —	Buttondown
Multiple newsletters	Curated —	Buttondown
Webhooks	Curated —	Buttondown
Automations	Curated —	Buttondown
Teams	Curated —	Buttondown
Remove Buttondown branding	Curated —	Buttondown
Dedicated IP	Curated —	Buttondown

Feature comparison: Buttondown vs. Curated

Kind words from happy writers

This long weekend I fulfilled a long-standing promise to myself to switch my RSS-to-email provider from Mailchimp to Buttondown, and it’s been such a great experience. It’s cheaper, more flexible, less cluttered, and it’s run by Justin Duke who is just delightful and answered a bunch of my questions over the weekend (even though I asked him to please not!).

Rian van der Merwe
Director of Product at PagerDuty

I've been wrangling half a dozen tools to get my stuff up and running recently, almost all of which had some hiccup. Buttondown had zero. It did everything I expected and needed the first time.

Catherine Cusick
Self-Employed FAQ

I've been wrangling half a dozen tools to get my stuff up and running recently, almost all of which had some hiccup. Buttondown had zero. It did everything I expected and needed the first time.

Catherine Cusick
Self-Employed FAQ

I, like almost everyone else I've seen talk about Buttondown, am IMMENSELY happy and impressed with your customer service. It turns out we can have nice things, which is really refreshing.

Ed Yong
Staff writer, The Atlantic

Email makes the world go ‘round, and Buttondown is how I manage it all for my keyboard projects.

Tim van Damme
Founder, MVKB

It's a truth, that should be more universally acknowledged, that Buttondown is the best newsletter software. Simple, does exactly what it sets out to do, and reasonably priced.

Noel Welsh
Founder, Inner Product

Buttondown is the perfect fit for my headless newsletter use case. And I contacted support with some specific requests and Justin responded within 30 minutes with great answers and a nice pinch of charm.

Sam Roberts
Software engineer, Tamr

Hands down the easiest way to run a newsletter - and the free version is generous!

Javeed Khatree
SEO expert

With API and Markdown support, you can build workflows that make it so easy to write.

Westley Winks
Peace Corps

I’ve never enjoyed writing newsletters as much as I do with Buttondown.

Kevin Lewis
You Got This!

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

As a recent user of Buttondown, they are super on the ball. A week ago I discovered a security vulnerability and reported it on Friday afternoon. They acknowledged and fixed it in under two hours. On a Friday night! Talk about going above and beyond for your users!

Predrag Gruevski
Principal Engineer, Kensho

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

Thanks for getting me excited about email newsletters again.

Garrick van Buren

I'm very thrilled that I can just write in Markdown without having to deal with email builders and all that crap.

Parham Doustdar

Thanks again for all the help! You’ve really turned something super complex into something super easy – sending new issues is as simple as firing off a text message.

Kartik Chaturvedi

Thanks for creating a simple way for people who want to, like, put words in a hole and have it sent to people... I am just thankful that something just nice and human exists on the internet.

Emmanuel Quartey

I tried 3 other newsletter services today and I felt like wanting to rip my hair out. They were all painfully slow. I'm so glad I found Buttondown.

Mohamed Elbadwihi

I’ve found Buttondown to be a great fit for my workflow and have been delighted by all of Justin’s thoughtful features and improvements to the product.

Michael Lee

Like seriously, so many lovely little easter eggs in one could-be-boring service.

Alexandra Muck

I just switched over from Tinyletter and I'm really excited to have found a place to host my tiny newsletter that doesn't seem like it's assuming everyone sending newsletters is an email marketer / growth hacker.

Tessa Alexanian

I'm in love with the simplicity of Buttondown.

Ekfan

I’ve used similar tools in the past and Buttondown is by far the simplest to use and most promising.

Fabrizio Rinaldi

Thank you for creating such a simple and brilliant tool. I’ve just signed up and the experience has been smooth and painless (the docs are great too!)

Oliver Holms

As a developer who has hated every email system I've ever used this is so nice.

Drew Hornbein

I wish I still wrote a newsletter just so I could use buttondown again. It’s like that.

Steven Kornweiss

Check out the wall of love

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