Buttondown

Buttondown is a simple, easy way to start a newsletter that I've personally enjoyed for several months now.

It has monetization capability built-in (great for a side-project), has a clean interface, and allows for writing in markdown (if you're into that like me).

I'm so very glad that Buttondown is a partner because I had planned on using the product for this campaign anyway.

Justin, the founder, has been supportive. Well before this campaign started, when I had questions about using the product, he's always been very helpful.

Here are a few things I've come to love about Buttondown:

For what I'm doing with Ship 21 in 2021, this feature is tremendously useful. The idea of having to swap between different providers seems painful, especially in my case.

I want every product to have a proper newsletter and Buttondown makes this possible. It's a great feature for folks like me who start something on the side but can't code.

Mentioned this already but highlighting again because I consider it a big deal. In general, I believe that the days of cookies and pixels are dying (especially for projects like what I'm starting).

Instead, privacy-first products just feel better to me. There's a time and place for each, but for me it's this.

This is a movement that matters to me, and Justin obviously caring about it means a lot.

Connecting with blogs, builders, and Zapier are all awesome features. Scrapping projects together means it's important they play well with each other.

The extra: writing in Notion, is also easily transferred to Buttondown. It formats automatically in Markdown. Saves me a ton of time when I can repurpose my content this way. I can go from journal → website → blog → email in just a few minutes without having to reformat anything.

Buttondown doesn't take a percentage of revenue from paid newsletters.

Means I won't have to switch later when Substack's 10% isn't sustainable anymore.

In general, I just don't like paying a % if I don't have to. Maybe that's just me.

Being able to add this in is a very nice touch. It saves me the trouble of having to be stuck with something I don't like on the subscriber page or the archive.

Best of all, since I already use a little CSS here and there for my websites, I'm starting to learn this new skill (which makes me happy). I'm not a coder, but I can manage this.

Email is here to stay, and it's amazing for me to partner with a company like Buttondown and a founder like Justin. He builds in public, gives back to open-source projects he uses and is just a great example of building an amazing project.

I'd love to be on his level.

Of course, I recommend Buttondown.