The cheapest clean way to run a paid newsletter on your own domain, with flat prices and 0% of your revenue, but it has no discovery network and you pay for each extra feature.
What it is
Buttondown is an independent, self-funded newsletter tool with a Markdown or rich-text editor, sending from your own domain, hosted archives and privacy-first defaults. Free for the first 100 subscribers. Paid plans are priced by active subscribers: Basic $9 a month up to 1,000, Standard $29 up to 5,000, Professional $79 up to 10,000 and Advanced $139 up to 20,000, assuming at most one email a day to the whole list. Features are add-ons: paid subscriptions, tagging, analytics and RSS-to-email are +$9 a month each, automations, multiple newsletters and archives on a custom domain +$29, and teams or whitelabeling +$79. Paid subscriptions run through your own Stripe account and Buttondown takes no share of revenue. Non-profits get 50% off. Prices checked November 13, 2026 on buttondown.com/pricing.
Best for
- Writers who want a simple paid newsletter at a flat price
- Developers and technical writers who like Markdown and an API
- Small lists that will stay mostly text
What we like
- Paid newsletter from $18 a month at 1,000 subscribers (plan plus the $9 add-on), with 0% revenue share
- Custom sending domain and hosted archives included in the base price
- Charges only for active subscribers
- Markdown editor and a full API
What to watch
- No discovery or recommendation network to grow the list
- Every extra feature is a paid add-on
- Simple archive pages, not a full website or CMS
- Prices assume one email a day; sending more needs a custom quote
Where Buttondown ranks
Alternatives and head-to-heads
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