Buttondown vs. Substack

Buttondown gives you more freedom and costs much less than Substack.

Migrating your existing newsletter is free and easy!

Save yourself time and money and let me migrate your content and existing subscribers! No coding or manual labor required, and existing subscribers won't have to resubscribe (or repay).

Interested? Get in touch → justin@buttondown.email

Substack is a new tool for creating paid newsletters that collects 10% of the revenue generated from your paid subscriptions. Buttondown takes none of your profits – ever.

You shouldn't be penalized for growing. That's why Buttondown's fee doesn't inflate with your newsletter's success.

Substack is also missing some of the key features required to make an easy, technically-inclined newsletter, like support for scheduled emails, analytics, and an API.

Feature	Buttondown	Substack
Free for your first thousand subscribers	Because it shouldn't take a credit card to get a newsletter off the ground.
Free archives	Because sometimes you don't want your newsletters to disappear into the ether.
Drag and drop image uploading	Images are uploaded quickly and securely.
Free RSS support	I mean, some people _really_ like RSS.
Smart embeds	Embed tweets, Youtube videos, and more just by dropping in the link.
Paid subscriptions	Buttondown makes it easy and painless for you to get paid for your newsletters. Want to have a free tier? That's possible, too!
'Pay what you want' mode
Discussion threads
Embeddable widget	Have your own personal site? We'll hook you up with the code.
Analytics	Dive into individual email performance, client information, and more
Markdown support	Buttondown also supports HTML and good old fashioned plain text: whatever your preference is!
Email scheduling	Write an email on Thursday and send it out on Friday; queue up an entire month's worth of letters.
Clean, usable design	Design is more than just how it looks, and Buttondown is designed top to bottom to make it easy to use.
Autosaving	Never worry about accidentally closing a tab ever again.
First-party API	Everything you can do on Buttondown's interface, you can also do with our REST-ful API.
Third-party integrations	Setting up your Buttondown account to work with Zapier, IFTTT, Weebly, Squarespace, Ghost, and more.
Privacy-first	Buttondown is GDPR-compliant — and then some. I don't collect any data about you (or your subscribers), and you can turn off pixel tracking and link tracking with a click of a button.
Multiple newsletters	Want to run more than one newsletter from the same account? Buttondown's got you covered.

Kind words from happy writers.

Screenshots of tweets from users who love Buttondown.

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