Last updated, January 2026
The skinny
After three years using the newsletter platform Beehiiv, I have moved The Third Something over to a new provider, called Buttondown. They’ll be holding the mailing list and firing out my emails. If you signed up to my newsletter on Beehiiv (or Substack before that), I have ported your email address over to Buttondown. My mailing list on Beehiiv will shortly be deleted.
(If you’ve never subscribed before, here is the new signup form!)
The background
It is really important to me that I own not just the words and pictures I create but also their distribution – as much as is possible. I’ve been using social media for 20 years and I know personally the risks that come with letting another company distribute my work. More so, the algorithms of these big platforms have failed in their promise to creators: to connect us with the people who love our work.
So my general policy in life is to be as platform independent as I possibly can: as a matter of principle, I want to own my work. That’s why I built this website myself from scratch and self-host it.
This website is the official home of everything I create. What I need then, is a mailing list provider that lets me tell you about it, simply and effectively — and nothing more. This is surprisingly difficult in 2026!
First, there was Substack. I was an early adopter of Substack when I started this newsletter in 2019. It was a simple platform, it worked and it was free. Over the following years, of course, the platform and its ambitions grew. Today, Substack wants to do everything for you, your words, videos, and podcasts, it wants to own your whole distribution network. That’s not for me. In 2023 I left Substack — ironically just before it boomed.
Then there was Beehiiv. Newer and without the political ick that Substack has, Beehiiv has worked reliably for two-and-a-half years, and my open rates were very high (60-70%). I have decided to leave for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the emails were just a little ugly and their composer was just clunky with too many bells and whistles. And secondly, Beehiiv began stacking on new tools, which I just don’t need. Like Substack, they see their business in publications and professional newsletter writers. I’m an artist who just wants to reach his people.
So why Buttondown?
Buttondown is a much simpler platform that does a small number of things well. It is run by a guy called Justin who answers emails personally. It has few bells and whistles and doesn’t (at least not now) want to consume my ecosystem. That’s a win for me.
Why do you need a mailing list platform anyway?
Email remains the most honest and dignifying way to communicate with people who love your work. Your inbox is not a social media platform, and there is no algorithm ranking or de-ranking your emails. It’s one of the oldest and most reliable technologies of the web. That said, running a mailing list is surprisingly complicated. You can’t just email thousands of people from your Gmail account and running a mailserve computer yourself is just not realistic. Spam filters being what they are, you need a provider who can send emails that are not flagged as suspicious. That is, apparently, a full-time job.
A quick word about your data
By signing up to my newsletter you give me one piece of your data only: your email address. That’s all I know about you, and all Buttondown stores of you. Buttondown emails contain a tracking pixel so I can see how many people read my latest letter. If you choose to unsubscribe, you can do so in one click and your email address is instantly removed from Buttondown.