Don't just write your newsletter. Program it.

Buttondown has a pleasant REST API to let you supercharge your newsletter.

Buttondown is a tool that's unabashedly proud of being technical — without demanding a technical user.

Part of being technical means having a great, ergonomic API.

Now, you shouldn't have to use the API. The interface and integrations like Zapier should get the job done for the vast majority of use cases.

But if you've got a special connection you have in mind (like wanting to programmatically build and deliver emails for your SaaS, or to integrate with your own analytics stack) — or, hell, because you're just a nerd and prefer sending your newsletter from the comfort of emacs rather than Chrome or Safari, Buttondown is the tool for you.

Buttondown makes it as easy as possible to tailor your newsletter to your specific needs, with endpoints for the following resources:

1. Subscribers, so you can programmatically pull, update, or create subscribers
2. Emails, so you can send emails without ever having to log into the interface
3. Newsletters, so you can programmatically build newsletters for your customers and users without having to fiddle around with any of the internals yourself
4. plus drafts, scheduled emails, and a couple other more esoteric use cases.

Some of examples of what you can do with just a few lines of code:

Generate and pull subscribers

1import requests
2
3headers = {
4  "Authorization": f"Token {BUTTONDOWN_API_KEY}"
5}
6BASE_URL = "https://api.buttondown.email"
7ENDPOINT = "/v1/subscribers"
8
9# Pull your subscribers to sync them with your database!
10
11requests.get(BASE_URL + ENDPOINT, headers=headers).json()

Programmatically generate emails

1import requests
2import json
3
4headers = {
5    "Authorization": f"Token {BUTTONDOWN_API_KEY}"
6}
7base_url = "https://api.buttondown.email"
8endpoint = "/v1/emails"
9data = {
10    "subject": "We've published a new dataset!",
11    "body": "...",
12    "status": "draft" # Remove to send a live email
13
14requests.post(
15    base_url + endpoint,
16    headers=headers,
17    data=json.dumps(data)
18).json()

Build an ecosystem

1import requests
2import json
3
4headers = {
5    "Authorization": f"Token {BUTTONDOWN_API_KEY}"
6}
7base_url = "https://api.buttondown.email"
8endpoint = "/v1/newsletters"
9data = {
10    "username": "amandagreen02",
11    "name": "Amanda Green",
12    "description": "Newsletter for updates from Amanda's Ghost blog"
13}
14
15requests.post(
16    base_url + endpoint,
17    headers=headers,
18    data=json.dumps(data)
19).json()

Kind words from happy writers