Why I switched my newsletters from Substack and Mailchimp to Buttondown
created: ; modified:In September 2021, I randomly split all email subscribers to guzey.com in 3 groups, each of about 1,100 subscribers, and sent my updates via Substack, Buttondown, and Mailchimp.
Although Buttondown is not perfect, I’m going with it for now because:
- its open rates and click rates are great and this is ultimately what I care about the most
- it looks very good and allows to have quotes and tweet embeds
- it’s pleasant to use, in contrast to Mailchimp, and costs almost exactly as much
Key stats and my thoughts on each platform below:
Substack:
- 39% open rate
- 54% of openers clicked a link
- looks very nice and tweet embeds look great
- user interface is great
- can’t remove branding
- free (because it has lots of VC money and because they try very hard to convert your newsletter into a paid one, from which they would earn a 10% commission)
- If Substack’s open rate wasn’t terrible, I would go with it
Buttondown:
- 46% open rate
- 53% of openers clicked a link
- looks very nice, a tiny bit worse than Substack (twitter embeds though behave somewhat worse, so my Best of Twitter newsletter stays with Substack)
- user interface is great
- $5/month/1k subscribers (with Buttondown branding and without custom domain)
- add $29/month for removing Buttondown branding and custom domain that does not work
- price at 4k subscribers when not removing Buttondown branding and not sending from custom domain: $20/month
- price at 4k subscribers when removing Buttondown branding: $49/month
- kinda buggy. For example, it very annoyingly fails to send emails from my domain despite my account’s settings claiming that everything is set up correctly and Buttondown simply ignored several of my support emails about this 🙄
Mailchimp:
- 48% open rate
- 37% of openers clicked a link (I think this is because Mailchimp’s links are black rather than blue and it’s easy to miss them)
- looks ok
- user interface is trying to kill you and editor is a giant pain in the ass (e.g. it literally does not have ability to insert quotes or embed tweets). Using Mailchimp is very unpleasant.
- unclear pricing but starts free for <2000 subscribers with Mailchimp branding
- minimum price at 4k subscribers (allows to remove Mailchimip branding): $53/month
Have you considered Ghost.org by any chance? I'd be curious about any thoughts you might have on it.
ghost isn't free
I have not. I really like Hugo and have no plans of trying other platforms.
Hi Alexey -- can you confirm whether you split the subscribers equally into the three groups, and the number of subscribers-per-group at start of experiment? (this post is being debated in an online newsletter group and we're v curious about the parameters)
I did. I loaded all current subscribers into an Excel file, created a rand() column, sorted, and split at 1/3rd and at 2/3rds of the list. Each sub-list had about 1,100 subscribers.
Thanks v much! Another question, if you're willing: just to confirm, the Substack emails were being sent from an @substack.com domain? How about the mailchimp ones?
thanks! I can't upvote without logging in but really appreciate it
I've recently switched from Mailchimp to Revue.
The UI of Mailchimp felt like a real catastrophe; incredibly complex and unintuitive. Worse, the text editor was a real nightmare to use and embeds were not great at all.
Revue is MUCH simpler, has an excellent and easy to use editor, good-looking embeds (links, tweets), also the possibility to create a paid newsletter. In addition, Revue has native integration within Twitter, which is very nice and helps with growth. Revue isn't as powerful as Mailchimp and others around analytics and other features, but I don't mind at this stage.
re: Ghost.org, they consider themselves an alternative to Substack.
Those open rates tell you less about deliverability and more about their pixel tracking flaws. Some of those guys count when the mail server processes the email, checking for spam. Others count clicks that are run by phishing detectors, etc. If you think that number means that it's because your email is reaching more mailboxes, you will be disappointed.
I can't speak for the usability of Buttondown, never used it. I have used Mailchimp, and will echo others in that it's a pile of crap. Substack 'works'. Revue is user-friendly but not a single one of them offers decent analytics. They're all half-baked.
Depends on what you do. Personally, I use substack for my personal blog and self-host corporate stuff where I have more control over analytics.
Deliverability is an issue, but it's more than just servers fighting over priority. It's also how the pixel tracking is designed.
it’s pleasant to use, in contrast to Mailchimp, and costs almost exactly as much
This is an interesting take. Thank you!