Buttondown vs. Upscribe

Upscribe's value proposition is very similar to Buttondown's: they want to "make building your newsletter a breeze"!

There are a couple reasons why you might want to reconsider going with them, though:

• The product has not received any updates in over a year, and is not actively maintained. (You can also see from their Twitter account, which has stopped all activity since mid-2021!)
• Their pricing is fairly prohibitive for new newsletters — they charge $19/month for less than a hundred subscribers, compared to Buttondown's price of, well, free.
• They lack many of the features that make Buttondown great: there's no easy interface to write emails, they don't have an API, and their paid subscriptions integration is bare-bones.

It's hard to make a case to use Upscribe in many circumstances: their pricing and responsiveness makes it a difficult sell for new newsletters, and their lack of high-end functionality and feature work makes it a risky bet to go with if you're a larger blogger or publisher.

Buttondown, on the other hand, is a lightweight, modern, and actively maintained product. It's free for your first hundred subscribers, and has a very reasonable pricing structure for larger newsletters.