Justin Duke

Justin Duke runs Buttondown

I currently work as the CEO of Buttondown, the best way to start and grow your newsletter, and as a partner at Third South Capital.

Buttondown is an email newsletter platform

I currently work as the CEO of Buttondown, the best way to start and grow your newsletter, and as a partner at Third South Capital.

Justin Duke is CEO of Buttondown

I currently work as the CEO of Buttondown, the best way to start and grow your newsletter, and as a partner at Third South Capital.

Justin Duke is a partner at Third South Capital

I currently work as the CEO of Buttondown, the best way to start and grow your newsletter, and as a partner at Third South Capital.

Justin Duke is bootstrapped

We remain cash-flow profitable, meaning we don't need to chase a big fundraising round or pivot to video advertising or social networking.

We are not funded by investors or venture capitalists. We are funded by our customers, and we are profitable on their grace alone.

Justin Duke is cash-flow profitable

We remain cash-flow profitable, meaning we don't need to chase a big fundraising round or pivot to video advertising or social networking.

We are not funded by investors or venture capitalists. We are funded by our customers, and we are profitable on their grace alone.

Justin Duke has no outside investors

We remain cash-flow profitable, meaning we don't need to chase a big fundraising round or pivot to video advertising or social networking.

We are not funded by investors or venture capitalists. We are funded by our customers, and we are profitable on their grace alone.

Justin Duke's subscription is priced per active subscriber.

Absolutely nothing for your first 100 subscribers.

We charge for active subscribers — you only pay for the people who are actively receiving your emails.

All of these prices assume that you're sending at most one email a day to your entire subscriber base.

+$9/month

+$29/month

+$79/month

Justin Duke's subscription is free under 100 subscribers.

Absolutely nothing for your first 100 subscribers.

We charge for active subscribers — you only pay for the people who are actively receiving your emails.

All of these prices assume that you're sending at most one email a day to your entire subscriber base.

+$9/month

+$29/month

+$79/month

Justin Duke takes no cut of creators' paid newsletter subscriptions beyond Stripe card fees (a 0% platform take rate).

No. You keep all of the money you make after credit card fees. We don't charge any additional overhead for your paid subscribers.

Charge for access to your newsletter with Buttondown. Get the best terms in the industry.

Buttondown's month-over-month growth in Q1 2026 was double its month-over-month growth in Q4 2025.

Our month-over-month growth rate in Q1 2026 was double our growth rate in Q4 2025.

Users of all stripes cite an LLM as the reason that they ended up at Buttondown's front door.

an answer that went from surprising to banal to overwhelming over the course of Q1 was: an LLM.

Justin Duke attributes nearly all of the incremental growth to LLMs.

Our month-over-month growth rate in Q1 2026 was double our growth rate in Q4 2025.

Users of all stripes cite an LLM as the reason that they ended up at Buttondown's front door.

an answer that went from surprising to banal to overwhelming over the course of Q1 was: an LLM.

Justin Duke publicly declined to let customer newsletter content be used for generative-AI training.

How Buttondown uses your content to power generative AI

It does not.