Buttondown vs. Substack

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

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.

Buttondown is more of a tool than a publisher, which means you have more more control over your newsletter — and your business.

Migrate from Substack in mere minutes

Buttondown has a step-by-step guide for migrating from Substack to Buttondown! Here's the deal: if it takes you more than ten minutes, you get a free month of Buttondown.

Give it a shot

Feature	Buttondown	Substack
Free for your first hundred subscribers
Archives
Embeddable widget
Analytics
Markdown support
Drag and drop image uploading
Email scheduling
Free RSS support
Clean, usable design
Smart embeds
Autosaving
First-party API
Paid subscriptions
Third-party integrations
Privacy-first
Multiple newsletters
'Pay what you want' mode
Discussion threads

Kind words from happy writers

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 experience 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. 💯