Why Rian van der Merwe loves Buttondown

Rian's been around the internet long enough to see many, many membership and subscription platforms rise and fall. He's been writing for fifteen years over at Elezea and uses Buttondown to power subscriptions and membership on top of his domain.

Rian's worked on some of my favorite products, including two — Postmark and PagerDuty — that Buttondown relies on! It was a delight to chat with him about how he got into writing and what made Buttondown such a good fit for him.

I'd love to just start with your whole story — how you got into product development and how you got into writing online.

I'm originally from South Africa but moved to the US because I met my wife in Australia, and then we moved to the US. I worked in Silicon Valley for a while, spending four and a half years at eBay, where I started in User Experience Research and then shifted towards the product side. Eventually, my wife and I decided to move back to South Africa, a decision that sparked my interest in starting a blog in 2009 as I transitioned into a product role.

My time at eBay was enriching; being surrounded by brilliant minds made me feel smarter just by osmosis. Moving to South Africa, I noticed the UX and product field was less developed, which made me worry about losing that intellectual growth. Starting a blog seemed like a way to maintain it, even though I doubted anyone would read it. Now, going into its 15th year, the blog has evolved from focusing on product management and user experience to including topics on leadership and internet culture, as well as personal interests like music and books.

In terms of sharing my work, I've always preferred a web-first approach and maintained an RSS feed from the start. After experimenting with various newsletter services and getting caught up in the Substack hype, I realized Substack felt more like a social network than an email newsletter platform. This led me to reconsider my approach and eventually shift back to prioritizing RSS, seeking a platform that could integrate it seamlessly with email newsletters.

I was using Mailchimp for a while, and started liking it less and less because it got expensive really quickly and all of the features they were adding were not really for my use case — it was more for marketing automation stuff.

And then I saw Buttondown a second time and started using it, and fell in love with its simplicity and RSS integration. I love the friendliness of the emails and the copy and all of that — it just felt like a product built for someone like me.

So now, I can just continue to blog as usual and then every week I just magically get the email digest of my writing, just like all of my subscribers. The engagement rate and open rate and all of that is much better, and I was even able to start thinking about adding Dense Discovery-esque memberships/supporters again.

Do you remember how you found out about Buttondown originally?

I remember seeing it a while back — when I was at Postmark, and we were chatting with you about rolling out bulk emails — and thought it was really cool, especially because there was a lot of alignment in terms of shared values.

This alignment, along with receiving more emails from Buttondown, notably from Clive Thompson—a respected author I've long followed who has now transitioned to Buttondown—heightened my awareness and appreciation for the platform. (He runs LinkFest, which is great — I'm a big fan of everything he writes.)

My decision to choose Buttondown was largely influenced by my search for an efficient RSS to email service — since only you and Mailchimp really handle that out of the box. I'm guessing only a minority of your users actually use RSS to email, but the ones who do care about it a lot.

Going back to the open web — can you talk a bit more about why publishing on your own domain and owning your network is so important to you?

It feels odd to say, but I think the younger generation often rolls their eyes at us older folks who advocate for owning your domain and content. I understand the irony but still firmly believe in the significance of this principle. It's a core reason I love the internet, having secured every job I've ever had through my blog, which attracted attention with my writing. Lately, I've observed an increase in link rot and disappearing content, alongside the dilemma of creating content for organizations that then have full control over it.

Despite sounding cliché, I hold a strong belief in the importance of owning your content, a sentiment echoed in the challenges faced when migrating from platforms like Substack. Their network is essentially their product, monetized in a way that complicates leaving, especially when payments are involved.

My passion lies in the internet's ability to showcase unique voices. I've always been drawn to authors, not topics, which is why I follow individuals like Clive Thompson and Ryan from Garbage Day, regardless of their platform.

The internet's enduring spaces, free from central ownership, are RSS and email. These technologies prompted my switch, betting on the most basic, reliable forms of digital communication. Embracing the POSSE model—Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere—resonates deeply with me. This belief in internet fundamentals steered me away from services like Mailchimp towards platforms that align with my values and offer personalized support.