NOTHING IS GETTING MORE EXPENSIVE.
Sorry for the all-caps, but... just wanted to get that out of the way. We know that blog posts with the phrase "pricing update" rarely presage good news.
We're in fact doing the opposite: two of our core features are getting cheaper:
- Automations are now available to everyone paying at least $29/month (down from $79/month);
- API access is now available to everyone (down from $9/month).
Why the changes? To answer that, let's take a very solipsistic step back and talk about why and how we price things. (You may also enjoy a similar essay from two years ago.)
Buttondown's pricing is grounded in a few core principles:
- We want to, whenever possible, make sure we make more money than we spend on every single user. (This might sound weird, but it's a good way to make sure that our incentives are aligned with everyone using Buttondown, and we don't run into odd situations where certain cohort of users are loss leaders for others.)
- We want our users to never feel like they got a bad deal, which is why we avoid things like Black Friday sales or other artificial discounts.
- As much as we can, we want to align our pricing with the financial value we provide to folks using Buttondown. It makes sense to gate features that are useful for businesses but not for individuals behind more expensive plans.
- The single biggest unit cost Buttondown has is "sending the emails"; the biggest fixed cost Buttondown has is "paying the engineers who build the app."
Beyond that, we like to keep things simple, and avoid situations where people have to suddenly start paying substantially more just to get one or two features. (We won't exactly pretend that this is selfless — the more features you use, the more subscribers you'll get, which is great for you but also great for us!)
So, with that in mind — why make API and automations cheaper? Two big reasons:
- It's clear that both of these features, while largely envisioned for businesses and more advanced use cases, have been tremendously useful for smaller and newer users, too. (We've had an informal policy of "if someone writes in asking for free access to the API, we'll grant it" — this just makes it more formal.)
- We've invested a lot in both of these features. The API is (if you don't mind a bit of boasting) the best email/newsletter API on the market, and our automations are strong enough to be a core area of investment for 2025. We want as many folks as possible to be able to use them!
We're excited to see what folks build with these features, and we're looking forward to seeing what you all build in 2025.