Substack is a tool for creating paid newsletters that collects 10% of the revenue generated from your paid subscriptions. (They also have some questionable content policies.) How does it compare against Buttondown?
Substack's pricing is a little different than Buttondown's; they don't charge for free newsletters (meaning you can send as many emails as you want without spending a dime unless you've monetized you're newsletter), but they take a whopping 10% cut of any paid subscriptions you do sell.
Assuming you have 20% of your subscribers on a paid plan for $10/month, here's how much you'd save by switching to Buttondown:
It's a huge delta — though admittedly, if you're only sending free newsletters, Substack is cheaper than Buttondown.
Buttondown is a more focused tool than Substack. It is a drop-in replacement for Substack's existing functionality: we can import your archives, subscribers, and payments in minutes, and your subscribers won't have to re-subscribe or re-enter their payment information or anything like that. (However, Substack has some social features — like comments and "notes", their Twitter replacement — that Buttondown has deliberately chosen not to build so as to focus on the core newsletter experience.)
Check out the full list of features below:
Substack | Buttondown | |
Scheduling | Substack | Buttondown |
Web archive | Substack | Buttondown |
Send from custom domain | Substack — | Buttondown |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
CSS | Substack — | Buttondown |
Tags | Substack — | Buttondown |
Metadata | Substack — | Buttondown |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
Substack | Buttondown | |
Substack | Buttondown | |
Substack | Buttondown | |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
Substack | Buttondown | |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
Host on custom domain | Substack | Buttondown |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
Substack | Buttondown | |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
Substack — | Buttondown | |
Substack | Buttondown | |
Remove Buttondown branding | Substack — | Buttondown |
Dedicated IP | Substack — | Buttondown |