Buttondown vs. Campaign Monitor

CampaignMonitor's splash page describes it as an email marketing platform, and that's what it is: a large and powerful tool for eCommerce platforms like the ones it calls out as happy customers: Ripcurl, the Red Cross, and other million-dollar organizations that have entire marketing departments devotes to their tooling.

If that's your use case, then Campaign Monitor is likely a good fit; it offers things like automated "email journeys" and A/B testing behind a hefty price tag. Campaign Monitor's ideal user is a marketer, not a writer.

Buttondown, on the other hand, is a small, elegant tool for producing newsletters.

The minimalist interface makes it easy for you to write great emails; the automation acts like the editorial assistant you wish you had, by checking for typos, broken links, or malformed images; the portable subscription widget makes it really easy to grow your audience from wherever you host your site.

And then Buttondown gets out of your way. Buttondown's emphasis is on speed and ease of use over complex featuresets or powerful automation.