Subscribe
Sign in
Buttondown
p/buttondownA small, elegant tool for producing newsletters.
Start new thread
Iheanyi Ekechukwu

Buttondown - The easiest way to send simple newsletters

by•

Buttondown is a simple, powerful tool for building and sending newsletters and emails. I struggled with other tools that were either too complex and expensive or too simple and unwieldy, so I created an alternative: an elegant interface that lets you write and edit quickly while providing all the amenities a modern email app needs.

Add a comment

Replies

Best
Justin Duke
Maker
Hey PH (and thanks to Iheanyi for hunting this!) Buttondown was born from a frustration with a lot of existing newsletter tools: I wanted something more lightweight than, like, Mailchimp, but wasn't a huge fan of Tinyletter or any of the other existing solutions. I wanted a tool that had, IMO, a bunch of table stakes stuff for 2017 (Markdown support, proofing, email scheduling, analytics) and was pleasant to use. Nothing really existed, so I decided to make it 😅 It's been a lot of fun to make, and just as much fun to use. I hope you check it out and I'd love to answer any questions you might have!
Csaba Kissi
Does it support autoresponders ?
Justin Duke
Maker
@csaba_kissi Hey Csaba! There's no support for autoresponding and general automation yet, but it's definitely on the table for future development. What level of configuration would you be hoping for?
Tom Flemming
magically minimal. Brilliant.
Vasily Kuznetsov
Wow, what a great job, Justin! Awesome product. I just wonder what the pricing will be. I could not find any info on that. I have 4000 subscribers, should I switch from Mailchimp? :)
Loralee Hutton
@vasily_kuznetsov Pricing looks really straight forward. and reasonable https://buttondown.email/pricing/
Ian Mikutel
What was the hardest part of making this?
Justin Duke
Maker
@ianmikutel Great question! From an implementation perspective: getting per-email analytics sussed out was/is a weird little misadventure, due to some quirks with Mailgun (which we use for the raw email delivery). From a design perspective: nailing drafts (which now work kind of similarly to Twitter's: you manually save a draft and can resume it at any time) took a couple iterations. Originally, they were automatically saved, which was great for some workflows but some testers *hated* it. (@jedmund was the one who originally proposed the prompt for the latest draft, which I really think brought the whole thing together.)
Thack ☁️
STUNNING job.
Dovid Yudkowitz
Nice and clean
Chuma

Love the tool, and Justin is the best at feedback!

Pros:

Super easy to use, can see which subscriber opened the letter, can track links clicked

Cons:

None really, leaving the app seems to turn off scheduled letters

Ildi Xhaholli
Great job Justin! I have tried many newsletter tools and I can testify that Buttondown makes it extremely easy to get going vs the competition. I was able to put together a sweet short newsletter in less than 5 minutes. However, image(s) (I tested several) that I placed at the top of my email are not showing up centered when viewing my newsletter on an iPhone 6 (dimensions 722px x 299px). The image shows up perfectly centered when I view the email inside a browser. Most subscribers will view my emails on their mobile phone through their email client, so this is a big issue for me. Also, I think you should consider adding a page, tab, or pop-up (anything would work) that a Buttondown user can refer to when considering the use of markdown. This option could provide users with quick tips on how to customize/style their own newsletter. This would add a bit of fun to the whole package, and allow someone to effortlessly experiment with all of the available markdown options. The tint color feature is a bit confusing because the custom colors only appear when viewing the newsletter in a browser. Is this a bug, or is there something preventing this from working the way it should inside mobile email clients? Lastly, I believe in order to truly compete with some of the better/simple newsletter tools out there, you need to offer the option for someone to use their own custom domain instead of www.buttondown.email/yournewslet.... For me, this would seal the deal. I do see this idea listed on your public roadmap but it says "custom domains for subscribing pages". Does this mean individual email urls cannot be custom? Hope this feedback is useful, congrats again on the launch and I'm excited to see how you improve on this version. Cheers!
Justin Duke
Maker
@madebyildi Ahhhh this is great feedback! Point by point: 1. That definitely sounds like a strange issue, as email formatting can be a fickle beast 😅. Would you mind forwarding the given email to me at justin@buttondown.email, so I can take a look? 2. Adding a Markdown reference is a *great* idea. This is something I think I have a blind spot in, just since I've been writing in it for so long: I'm adding it to the backlog! 3. Neither a bug nor anything preventing it: just an oversight on my part. Great call. 4. Yup, I could have phrased that better. It'd be the whole shebang, including individual emails and the public archive.
MachineBox.io
As someone who just spend three days trying to figure out Sendgrid to send a single e-mail to our customers, I can really appreciate a much lighter touch. I'd love to see how TextBox could integrate into this app, making it really easy to generate key words, extract e-mails etc. (https://machinebox.io/docs/textbox)
Camila Rubio Varón
Product looks great but I'm in need of multiple lists, is that something that's coming soon? Hope so!
Jean MacDonald

The pricing is quite reasonable, especially considering how powerful it is.

Pros:

This is the nicest user interface and experience I've seen. I hope more developers have a look at how simple something can be to use.

Cons:

It helps to know Markdown. In my opinion, it's as easy as it can be without using design widgets that make email design more clunky.