How France Insider Uses Buttondown

France Insider uses Buttondown to run a news service with thousands of paid subscribers.

Customer

David Yeates

France Insider

Features

Paid subscriptions

Analytics

David's been running France Insider for the past year, having launched and quickly grown his audience on Buttondown. I caught up with him to learn more about his journey.

Tell me a bit about yourself and your background.

I am a UK national living in the Gers department of south-west France, where I have lived for the past 20 years.

Tell me a little bit about France Insider!

We provide practical advice and information about living in France and French property ownership. Our newsletter covers a range of topics – taxation, buying property, letting property, building and construction, visas, health, consumer and public services.

What inspired you to get started?

I felt there was a gap in the market for a serious journal that offered less hype and more analysis about France. We do not have advertisers, so we are not beholden to them. We are funded entirely by subscriptions.

We went for [low price/high membership] really because of the marketing advantages of having a large number of readers who could spread the word.

I know you’ve experimented a bit with your pricing over the past year or so — how did you end up landing on that 20 euro price point?

We spent ages considering the price point, veering between a high price/low membership strategy or low price/high membership. We went for the latter really because of the marketing advantages of having a large number of readers who could spread the word.

We arrived at €20 because it was about half the price of the regular English newspaper in France that offered far more stories and because we had a low cost base so we knew it would still produce good revenues and margin, provided we could get people to sign up.

I think we got it about right, although there are thousands on our unpaids list who still seem to want something for nothing and that advertisers should pay for their reading.

France Insider is powered by Buttondown's paid subscriptions — prospective readers are exhorted to upgrade to finish reading their article.

Where did you first learn of Buttondown, and what made you decide to give it a try?

We had no wish to develop our own newsletter system, so with colleagues we trawled the market to see what was available. In reviewing the different offers we opted to go for Buttondown as it had a good reputation and appeared relatively easy to use.

The most outstanding benefit has been the service provided by Justin, the founder of Buttondown. He has been a partner in the development of the business.

What are some ways Buttondown has helped you run your publication?

The most outstanding benefit has been the service provided by Justin, the founder of Buttondown. He has been a partner in the development of the business. We did not expect that when we signed up and it has been the outstanding feature of our development.

David takes advantage of Buttondown's whitelabeling & API to build a completely bespoke home page perfectly tailored for his audience.

What are some things you’d be excited to see Buttondown build in the next few months?

I would certainly like to see a more substantial operating guide and one that was user friendly to those of us who are not tech savvy. Also updates sent out on new developments, so that we are aware of them and know how to use them.

What advice would you give to someone starting their own newsletter?

Establish in the first instance that there is demand for the product you are going to offer and work in collaboration with partners who are able to assist you publicise and grown your member base.

How did you verify that demand for France Insider?

We were fortunate enough in having previously published a free newsletter which had establish a substantial database of readers. So we were able to convert a percentage of the free subscribers onto the new newsletter, based on the reputation that had been established by the old one.

We also made sure we were offering a distinct product rather than trying to copy an already crowded marketplace.

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What customers say about Buttondown

I made the transition from MailerLite and I have no regrets. I also like that Buttondown focuses on the essentials by design and keeps me grounded and centered on what really matters.

Arthur Cendrier
Author, Thoughtful Inquiry

Overall, Buttondown has been terrific to work with and I recommend them for anybody who's thinking of starting a newsletter or moving over like I did.

Andy Magnusson
Customer Engineering Leader

Wanna know how good Buttondown as a product experience is? I upgraded to Basic before sending the first email, and then upgraded again two days later.

Zak El Fassi
Founder, Zaigood Labs

Mailchimp lost me due to their inferior product and the nightmarish merry-go-around experience with their overseas support team. Buttondown won me over with their superior product and second to none customer service.

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CEO, Sanico Software

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Very happy with Buttondown, works smoothly, it's very configurable and I love the minimalist design of the UI. It makes me focus on my writing. Plus, I'm super happy to support independent software and I should mention - the support I receive whenever I have a question is warm and quick :)

Martina Pugliese
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I just tested the RSS to Email feature for one of my blogs and it was incredibly easy to set up. It took me about 30 mins to figure out the same feature in Mailchimp.

Nicolas Bernadowitsch
Blogger

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

Kevin Lewis
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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
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You’ve truly built a great product that I feel good about using (vs a monopoly from our tech overlords).

Rachel
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I love how personal Buttondown feels, especially compared to Mailchimp, Convertkit, and services like that.

Simen Strøm Braaten
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This product has been exactly what I’ve needed!

Nathan Bird
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It's already so refreshing compared to the mega companies.

Casey Watts
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Definitely will be using for the foreseeable future. It’s a great service and I feel well cared for. Thank you!

Phoebe Sinclair
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Claudia Nathan
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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
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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
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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
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We need more nice and professional services like yours on the web.

Tobias Horvath
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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
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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
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Enter Buttondown, Justin Duke’s lovely little newsletter tool. It’s small, elegant, and integrates well. And it is also eminently affordable.

Will Buckingham
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Your settings page is a joy to use and everything about Buttondown makes me happy.

Gareth Jelley
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Elizabeth Minkel
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You really do make ALL other customer service look terrible by comparison.

Chris Mead
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Peter Gasston
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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
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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

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Michael Lee

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Alexandra Muck

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Ekfan

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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

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