Have you thought about moving – or already moved – to Buttondown? Does it seem appealing, or not worth the effort? Would you like Substack to include any of Buttondown's features?
I wish them all the best, but the newsletters I've subscribed to that have moved to Buttondown seem to have lost the design elegance that they had when they were on Substack. A lot of the links don't work (and show a bunch of code) in my email reader.
I think that competition is always good, so am glad to see other entrants to the space. But the Buttondown -vs- Substack post is incorrect.
- It says that Substack doesn't provide analytics, but Substack does
- It says that Substack doesn't allow email scheduling, but every post I write is scheduled to go out sometime in the future. I never immediately publish.
- It says that Substack doesn't auto save drafts, but Substack does
These mistakes are a red flag to me.
As for my own newsletter specifically, it would not work. I create 5 discussion threads per week, and according to Buttondown's information, the platform does not support those.
I should have mentioned in the post that Buttondown's comparison was inaccurate about Substack in some respects. (If I were thinking of switching to Buttondown, I'd likely mention these inaccuracies to their support team.)
This doesn't give one a ton of confidence in the company though. If they get basic stuff like this wrong, how else are they incompetent? A platform is a long term relationship and I'm not hitching my wagon to some 2 bit drive by night operation.
Competition is always a good thing, but I keep thinking that Substack's real competition is yet to come. I have a suspicion that if Twitter can get its act together with Revue, we will begin to see a shift in that direction. Until then, it's worth remembering that even before the kerfuffle with paid-writers and whatnot, people were writing on Substack because it works really well. And, above all else, any competitor that really wants to eat Substack's lunch is going to have to make sure their tools work better or offer something Substack doesn't. Until then, who knows?
Newsletters available via and with the branding of Twitter (or Facebook) would certainly present competition! I'd like to see what Substack would do in response.
I wish them all the best, but the newsletters I've subscribed to that have moved to Buttondown seem to have lost the design elegance that they had when they were on Substack. A lot of the links don't work (and show a bunch of code) in my email reader.
I think that competition is always good, so am glad to see other entrants to the space. But the Buttondown -vs- Substack post is incorrect.
- It says that Substack doesn't provide analytics, but Substack does
- It says that Substack doesn't allow email scheduling, but every post I write is scheduled to go out sometime in the future. I never immediately publish.
- It says that Substack doesn't auto save drafts, but Substack does
These mistakes are a red flag to me.
As for my own newsletter specifically, it would not work. I create 5 discussion threads per week, and according to Buttondown's information, the platform does not support those.
I should have mentioned in the post that Buttondown's comparison was inaccurate about Substack in some respects. (If I were thinking of switching to Buttondown, I'd likely mention these inaccuracies to their support team.)
Perhaps he wrote that comparison page a long time ago and just hasn't updated it. (Buttondown is made by a solo dev -- https://twitter.com/jmduke)
Wow, it's a side gig! And the dev's main gig is at Stripe, which is Substack's payment processor! This is getting more interesting...
This doesn't give one a ton of confidence in the company though. If they get basic stuff like this wrong, how else are they incompetent? A platform is a long term relationship and I'm not hitching my wagon to some 2 bit drive by night operation.
Competition is always a good thing, but I keep thinking that Substack's real competition is yet to come. I have a suspicion that if Twitter can get its act together with Revue, we will begin to see a shift in that direction. Until then, it's worth remembering that even before the kerfuffle with paid-writers and whatnot, people were writing on Substack because it works really well. And, above all else, any competitor that really wants to eat Substack's lunch is going to have to make sure their tools work better or offer something Substack doesn't. Until then, who knows?
Newsletters available via and with the branding of Twitter (or Facebook) would certainly present competition! I'd like to see what Substack would do in response.