behind the scenes

What a successful SaaS uses to run its business in 2024

Every piece of for-profit software that Buttondown relies on

Note that some links may be affiliate links, and kudos to Cushion for the inspiration behind this page. (All costs are monthly; I list one-time purchases as having an ongoing cost of "$0".)

(Interested in the open source software we use and maintain? Check out the open-source software page.)

Number of services used
56
Estimated monthly cost
$5,579
Est. total expenditure
$336,900
Postmark
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2018
Ended
0
$1,450.00
Stripe
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Ended
0
$1,100.00
Heroku Dynos
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Ended
0
$450.00
Amazon Relational Database Service
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2020
Ended
0
$500.00
Depot
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2024
Ended
0
$200.00
Buttondown
Genre
Marketing
Started
2017
Ended
0
$139.00
Vercel
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2022
Ended
0
$250.00
Sentry
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2018
Ended
0
$115.00
DigitalOcean
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2024
Ended
0
$80.00
Helpscout
Genre
Marketing
Started
2022
Ended
0
$100.00
Notion
Genre
Productivity
Started
2018
Ended
0
$150.00
Redis Enterprise Cloud
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2023
Ended
0
$100.00
Twitter API
Genre
Miscellany
Started
2020
Ended
0
$100.00
Metabase
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Ended
0
$90.00
Better Stack
Genre
Operations
Started
2022
Ended
0
$80.00
Amazon Simple Storage Service
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Ended
0
$64.00
Slack
Genre
Productivity
Started
2017
Ended
0
$50.00
Fathom
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2020
Ended
0
$45.00
Google Suite
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2018
Ended
0
$65.00
Quickbooks
Genre
Finance
Started
2022
Ended
0
$30.00
Zapier
Genre
Productivity
Started
2022
Ended
0
$30.00
AHrefs
Genre
Marketing
Started
2021
Ended
0
$29.00
Iframely
Genre
Data
Started
2022
Ended
0
$29.00
Cleantalk
Genre
Data
Started
2017
Ended
0
$28.00
Pagerduty
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2020
Ended
0
$25.00
1Password
Genre
Productivity
Started
2019
Ended
0
$20.00
Mailgun
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Ended
0
$20.00
OpenAI
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2023
Ended
0
$20.00
Savvycal
Genre
Operations
Started
2022
Ended
0
$20.00
Twitter Blue
Genre
Marketing
Started
2022
Ended
0
$16.00
Cloudflare
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2023
Ended
0
$15.00
Dmarc Digests
Genre
Operations
Started
2022
Ended
0
$14.00
Supermaven
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Ended
0
$10.00
Resend
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2024
Ended
0
$10.00
Valtown
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2023
Ended
0
$10.00
DNSimple
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Ended
0
$39.00
icon.horse
Genre
Data
Started
2023
Ended
0
$9.00
Loom
Genre
Productivity
Started
2023
Ended
0
$9.00
Audiogest
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Ended
0
$8.00
Discord
Genre
Marketing
Started
2023
Ended
0
F5Bot
Genre
Marketing
Started
2022
Ended
0
Fivetran
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2024
Ended
0
GitHub
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Ended
0
GitHub Actions
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2020
Ended
0
GitHub Issues
Genre
Productivity
Started
2017
Ended
0
Google Web Risk API
Genre
Data
Started
2023
Ended
0
Kolo
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Ended
0
Mercury
Genre
Finance
Started
2024
Ended
0
Mimestream
Genre
Productivity
Started
2023
Ended
0
Mono Lisa
Genre
Miscellaneous
Started
2021
Ended
0
PayPal
Genre
Operations
Started
2023
Ended
0
Postico
Genre
Productivity
Started
2018
Ended
0
Things
Genre
Productivity
Started
2018
Ended
0
Trotto
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Ended
0
VS Code
Genre
Productivity
Started
2021
Ended
0
Amazon Simple Email Service
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2021
Ended
2023
Bear
Genre
Productivity
Started
2023
Ended
2023
Calibre
Genre
Miscellaneous
Started
2023
Ended
2023
CircleCI
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Ended
2020
DNSHelper
Genre
Miscellaneous
Started
2022
Ended
2024
Feedbin
Genre
Productivity
Started
2020
Ended
2024
FullContact
Genre
Data
Started
2017
Ended
2019
Github Copilot
Genre
Productivity
Started
2022
Ended
2024
Golinks
Genre
Productivity
Started
2022
Ended
2024
Heroku Postgres
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Ended
2020
Heroku Redis
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2018
Ended
2023
imgix
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2023
Ended
2023
Ivory
Genre
Marketing
Started
2023
Ended
2023
Jasper
Genre
Marketing
Started
2023
Ended
2023
PhysicalAddress
Genre
Miscellaneous
Started
2018
Ended
2022
Pika
Genre
Design
Started
2024
Ended
2024
PopSQL
Genre
Productivity
Started
2021
Ended
2024
Screen Studio
Genre
Productivity
Started
2023
Ended
2024
Ship
Genre
Productivity
Started
2018
Ended
2020
Sketch
Genre
Design
Started
2019
Ended
2023
Statuspage
Genre
Operations
Started
2019
Ended
2024
Texts
Genre
Productivity
Started
2021
Ended
2024
Typefully
Genre
Marketing
Started
2022
Ended
2023
Tuple
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Ended
0
$60.00

FAQs

Why do you use so many services?

The most important resource I have is my energy, and being able to trade X dollars (where X is any number less than a hundred) for even trivial amounts of energy is an absolute no-brainer.

Why so many ESPs?

When I launched Buttondown, AWS Simple Email Service was notoriously low-quality and Postmark did not support broadcast emails. Mailgun was the choice I went with, and there are still many customers using Mailgun’s rails who have custom domain records set up that I don’t have the heart (or incentive) to migrate.

I like having redundancy — if one provider were to go down or drastically change rates it would be trivial for me to migrate — but if I were starting Buttondown from scratch I would likely just have everything run through Postmark.

Why don't you use something for X?

Some specific choices I made to roll my own:

  • Auth: I know it's increasingly trendy to outsource auth to a paid vendor but I'm not a fan of the lock-in and I like having full control over the experience.
  • Feature flags: rolled my own for performance reasons. Plan on open sourcing it at some point.

Changelog

  • 2024-07-10 Started using Depot to speed up GitHub Actions
  • 2024-07-09 Started using Fivetran and Metabase to analyze data and construct a (janky, but useful!) WBR
  • 2024-04-03 Started using Mercury as a banking solution
  • 2024-03-28 Added Pika, Cloudflare, and a handful of other tools; churned from Texts, Sketch, Bear, and Imgix.
  • 2024-03-14 Added Audiogest to the stack. It's a nice little tool!
  • 2023-10-13 Had to bump up my Imgix plan from $75 to $200/mo because of traffic. Time to find something cheaper!
  • 2023-08-22 Added val.town
  • 2023-08-01 Add PopSQL (which technically I've been using for a while but forgot about)
  • 2023-07-25 Migrated off of Heroku Redis and onto Redis Enterprise Cloud, which means saving $70/mo for five minutes of switching environment variables.
  • 2023-07-24 Onboarded to Calibre.
  • 2023-07-23 Purchased a reserved instance for my big ol' RDS database, saving $110/mo.
  • 2023-07-20 Initial launch of this page.
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