Replies and tracked replies have been a long-standing source of confusion for authors and subscribers alike. There wasn't any one big reason for this — more like a constellation of small, uninteresting issues that we finally sat down and fixed. Two big things changed:

Automatic reply tracking for sending domains

If you have a sending domain set up with Buttondown, we now automatically listen for incoming emails to any address on that domain and forward them to you. Under the hood, we've set up MX records pointing to Postmark for inbound email processing — any incoming email gets stored in your inbox and relayed to you.

If you're using managed domain delegation, this is rolling out automatically — you don't need to do anything. If you set up your domain manually, head to your sending domain settings and add the new MX records listed there.

We've also simplified the email address that Buttondown uses on your behalf: it's now just your username@buttondown.com. All outgoing emails come from this address, and any replies flow right back to you. This functionality is entirely free.

Reply tracking is now always on

We've also removed the ability to opt out of reply tracking.

We gave this a lot of thought. To be clear: the emails and replies we track on your behalf never leave our servers and are never shared with or sold to third parties.

We got rid of the opt-out because it was genuinely confusing to a lot of people, and there was no safe way to model what happens when you want to turn off tracked replies but still receive incoming email from a domain we don't control. The reply-to address in your general settings won't be visible to subscribers — we use it to forward incoming emails to you, which preserves your privacy and guards against spam.