Updates from January
More stuff for less money
Starting this month, everyone on the free plan has API access. And any account that’s paying at least $29 per month can now use Buttondown’s Automations builder. You’re welcome, internet!
Not a lot of platforms are kicking off the new year by making subscriptions cheaper. If you’re wondering what the catch is…there isn’t one!
Our pricing principles are such that we’re incentivized to make Buttondown better for every user rather than subsidizing a larger group based on the payments of a smaller one. Everyone wins.
Template variables in headers and footers
Yes, we know, you should have always been able to put variables anywhere you damn well please–even in your email headers and footers!
It’s here now and you can add variables ranging from subscriber emails and tags to upgrade URLs and metadata. As always, can’t wait to see what you crazy kids come up with. Head over to the changelog for more info.
From the blog
Sometimes it feels a tad surprising that email is so durable at the consumer level, what with its alphabet soup of SPFs, DKIMs, and DMARCs. Sure, you can offload those problems to a newsletter platform. But knowing how they work is important! After all, an email migration can have a noticeable impact on your deliverability.
Another boon to keeping your newsletters out of spam folders is the all-important double opt-in. Its story is an organic one, arising almost by accident all the way back in the LISTSERV’s of the early 90s.
Unlike perishable items, technology tends to become more ingrained the longer it survives, not less. Remember that the next time you’re debating whether to prioritize your newsletter over social media. You probably want to side with the one that is least likely to face a nationwide ban.
I know, I know, lots of you love TikTok (or, checks notes, RedNote?)! You don’t have to throw out the baby with the bath water. It’s not unreasonable to build a publishing workflow that shares your work with the various algorithms without demanding that you overinvest in them.
Newsletters, for all their simplicity, can still suffer from shiny object syndrome, especially in the developer world. But at the end of the day, the stuff that’s often the most interesting boils down to: What you’re going to ship, what you’ve shipped, and what others have shipped with your tools.
Other stuff
We’ve pulled the MRR graphs out of stuffy board rooms and into your analytics tab.
Peek behind the Buttondown curtain and read about what’s changing in our tech stack in 2025.
HTML nerds can now get their greedy hands on even more divs with the addition of naked mode for transactional emails.
Love comments? Love Buttondown’s classic theme? Now you can have them both!
While there’s no changelog post, it is worth pointing out that we updated the design for the analytics page, check it out!