Luxe Themes
Ghost vs Buttondown: Full Comparison
Buttondown is minimalist email. Ghost is email, website, and memberships in one. Compare pricing, features, and what each platform includes.
Minimalist Email vs Full Publishing Platform
Buttondown and Ghost both take 0% of your subscription revenue. Both are independent, founder-driven products built against the VC-backed newsletter trend. But they solve fundamentally different problems.
Buttondown is a minimalist email newsletter tool built by a single developer, Justin Duke. It sends emails. It has a Markdown-first editor, a full REST API, and a deliberately simple feature set. There is no website, no CMS, no blog, and no SEO tools. If you need a website alongside your newsletter, Buttondown requires a separate platform.
Ghost is a full publishing platform. Write a post and it publishes to your website and sends to subscribers’ inboxes in one action. It includes a CMS, email newsletters, paid memberships, SEO tools, and a professional theme system.
Buttondown is for writers who want the cleanest possible email tool and nothing else. Ghost is for publishers who want everything in one place.
Newsletter Features
Buttondown
Buttondown’s strength is simplicity with developer appeal:
- Markdown-first editor with Python-Markdown parsing (also offers WYSIWYG)
- Full REST API — everything in the UI is accessible programmatically
- Sequence-based automations triggered by time intervals or subscriber events
- Privacy-first design — analytics are off by default, GDPR-compliant
- RSS-to-email for automatic content syndication
- Surveys and comments on emails
- Custom sending domain support
Buttondown explicitly positions itself against feature bloat. The editor is clean, the workflow is straightforward, and the product stays focused on email delivery.
Ghost
Ghost’s email is integrated with its publishing platform:
- Multiple newsletters per site with independent subscription lists
- Segmentation by membership tier, label, or newsletter subscription
- Three modes: publish and email, publish only, or email only
- Custom email design: fonts, colors, buttons, header images
- Post-send link editing (update links in already-delivered emails)
- Custom sending domain on Publisher plan+
- Per-post analytics: opens, clicks, individual link performance
Ghost’s email is less customizable at the template level than dedicated email tools but more powerful for integrated publishing. The one-action publish-and-send workflow is the key differentiator.
Website and Content
Buttondown
Buttondown has no website capability. No landing pages, no blog, no CMS. Newsletter archives can be hosted on a custom domain (as a paid add-on at $29/month), but these are email archives, not a content website.
If you use Buttondown and want a blog, you need WordPress, Squarespace, Ghost, or another platform alongside it. Your content lives in two systems with no native connection between them.
Ghost
Every Ghost post is a permanent, SEO-optimized web page on your domain:
- Auto-generated XML sitemap
- Schema.org structured data on every page
- Custom meta titles and descriptions per post
- Canonical URLs (auto-set, overridable)
- Clean semantic HTML with fast load times
This is the most significant structural difference. Buttondown content lives in inboxes and disappears. Ghost content lives on the web permanently, ranking in search and driving traffic for years.
Design
Buttondown
Buttondown’s design options are intentionally minimal. No drag-and-drop builder. No custom themes. No visual email builder. You can adjust basic styling through CSS, but the platform prioritizes content over visual customization.
The email archive pages use a simple, clean layout. There is no way to create a branded website experience through Buttondown alone.
Ghost
Ghost’s theme system provides complete visual control over your publication:
Our Luno theme shows what a purpose-built publishing theme delivers: 6 hero layouts, table of contents, membership pages, and dark mode — a publication with its own visual identity.
Monetization
Buttondown
Buttondown supports paid newsletters through Stripe integration with 0% platform fee. The paid subscriptions feature costs an additional $9/month on top of the base plan.
However, Buttondown’s monetization is limited to paid newsletter subscriptions. There are no membership tiers with different content access levels, no per-post paywalling, and no digital product sales. It is strictly pay-to-subscribe-to-the-newsletter.
Ghost
Ghost’s monetization is subscription-based with 0% platform fee:
- Multiple membership tiers with custom pricing
- Per-post content access rules (free, paid, specific tier)
- Server-side content gating — paywalled content never reaches the browser without authentication
- One-time payments and tips (Ghost 6.0)
- Revenue dashboard: MRR, churn, customer LTV
- Direct Stripe connection — you own the billing relationship
Ghost offers significantly more monetization flexibility. Different posts can be gated to different tiers, and the paywall is enforced server-side (not client-side JavaScript that can be bypassed).
Pricing
Buttondown (as of February 2026)
Buttondown uses subscriber-based pricing with add-on features:
| Plan | Price | Active Subscribers |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | Up to 100 |
| Basic | $9/mo | Up to 1,000 |
| Standard | $29/mo | Up to 5,000 |
| Professional | $79/mo | Up to 10,000 |
Most features are sold as monthly add-ons on top of the base price:
| Add-On | Monthly Cost |
|---|---|
| Analytics | +$9/mo |
| Tagging and segmentation | +$9/mo |
| Paid subscriptions | +$9/mo |
| Automations | +$29/mo |
| Multiple newsletters | +$29/mo |
| Custom domain archives | +$29/mo |
| Whitelabeling | +$79/mo |
A Basic plan user ($9/month) who wants paid subscriptions, analytics, segmentation, and automations would pay $9 + $9 + $9 + $9 + $29 = $65/month — for email only, with no website.
Ghost(Pro) (as of February 2026)
| Plan | Monthly (annual billing) | Members | Staff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $15/mo | 1,000 | 1 |
| Publisher | $29/mo | 1,000 | 3 |
| Business | $199/mo | 10,000 | 15 |
All plans: unlimited email sends, SSL, CDN, backups, free custom domain. Publisher includes paid memberships, custom themes, analytics, and custom sending domain.
The Math
For a newsletter creator with 1,000 subscribers who wants paid subscriptions, analytics, segmentation, and a website:
Buttondown Basic + add-ons + separate website:
- Buttondown: $9 + $9 (paid subs) + $9 (analytics) + $9 (segmentation) = $36/month
- Separate website (WordPress hosting): ~$30/month
- Total: ~$66/month for email + website (two separate systems)
Ghost Publisher:
- $29/month — email + website + memberships + analytics + SEO + custom themes
- Total: $29/month (one system, everything included)
Ghost costs less than half the price and includes significantly more, all in one platform.
At 5,000 subscribers, Buttondown Standard alone is $29/month — matching Ghost Publisher’s price — but still requires add-ons for most features and a separate website. The gap widens with scale.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Ghost | Buttondown |
|---|---|---|
| Newsletter | Built-in, unlimited sends | Core product |
| Website/blog | Full CMS with themes | No |
| Paid memberships | 0% fee (Publisher plan) | 0% fee (+$9/mo add-on) |
| Content gating | Per-post, server-side | Newsletter-level only |
| SEO tools | Full toolkit | None |
| Design control | Full theme system | Minimal |
| Analytics | Built-in (Publisher+) | Add-on (+$9/mo) |
| Automations | Basic (welcome emails) | Add-on (+$29/mo) |
| Markdown editor | No (block editor) | Yes (primary) |
| API | Admin API (Publisher+) | Full REST API (all plans) |
| Self-hosting | Yes (MIT license) | No |
| Business structure | Nonprofit foundation | Bootstrapped solo founder |
Who Should Choose Buttondown
- You want the simplest possible email newsletter tool
- Markdown editing is essential to your workflow
- You’re a developer who values API-first design
- You already have a website and just need email
- Privacy-first analytics matter to you
- You prefer bootstrapped, anti-bloat software
Who Should Choose Ghost
- You want a website, newsletter, and memberships in one platform
- Your content should rank in search engines
- Per-post content gating and multiple membership tiers are part of your model
- Full design control over your publication matters
- You want an open-source platform you can self-host
- Total cost matters — Ghost includes what Buttondown charges extra for
Design That Defines Your Publication
Both Buttondown and Ghost are independent, founder-driven products. The difference is scope. Ghost gives your publication a complete web presence with professional design, while Buttondown focuses purely on what lands in the inbox.
Our themes are built for Ghost publishers who want their brand reflected in every touchpoint, starting at $69.
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