tinysend vs Buttondown
Buttondown is a clean, markdown-first newsletter tool that indie developers love. Both have a good API, an MCP server, and now a hosted inbox where subscriber replies land and you can reply back from a dashboard. tinysend adds two things Buttondown does not: you write newsletters from your own email client, and an agent can sign up on its own via auth.md instead of a human creating the account first.
Both are honest, no-nonsense tools. Here is where they differ.
| capability | buttondown | tinysend |
|---|---|---|
| send newsletters | yes | yes |
| write from your email client | no | yes |
| hosted inbox for replies | yes | yes |
| subscriber management | yes | yes |
| custom domains | yes | yes |
| open tracking | yes | yes |
| public archive + RSS | yes | yes |
| REST API | yes | yes |
| agent self-signup (auth.md) | no | yes |
Pick Buttondown if you want a polished, markdown-first writing experience in a hosted editor and you do not need email-to-publish or agent self-signup.
Pick tinysend if you would rather write from Apple Mail or Gmail, or want an API and auth.md that lets AI agents sign up and send on your behalf.
Export your subscribers from Buttondown as CSV, create a tinysend list, and import them. Set up your custom domain and you are sending. See managing subscribers and custom domains.