What a successful SaaS uses to run its business in 2025

Every piece of for-profit software that Buttondown relies on

Note that some links may be affiliate links, and kudos to Cushion for the inspiration behind this page. (All costs are monthly; I list one-time purchases as having an ongoing cost of "$0".)

(Interested in the open source software we use and maintain? Check out the open-source software page.)

StripeStripe
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Monthly cost
$8,000.00
Heroku DynosHeroku Dynos
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Monthly cost
$2,100.00
PostmarkPostmark
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2018
Monthly cost
$1,450.00
Better StackBetter Stack
Genre
Operations
Started
2022
Monthly cost
$600.00
Amazon Relational Database ServiceAmazon Relational Database Service
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2020
Monthly cost
$500.00
PlainPlain
Genre
Operations
Started
2024
Monthly cost
$450.00
VercelVercel
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2022
Monthly cost
$350.00
Blacksmith
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2025
Monthly cost
$275.00
SparkPostSparkPost
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2023
Monthly cost
$200.00
GustoGusto
Genre
Finance
Started
2024
Monthly cost
$200.00
CursorCursor
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Monthly cost
$200.00
LinearLinear
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Monthly cost
$165.00
Amazon Simple Storage ServiceAmazon Simple Storage Service
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Monthly cost
$160.00
SentrySentry
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2018
Monthly cost
$115.00
Redis Enterprise CloudRedis Enterprise Cloud
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2023
Monthly cost
$100.00
TupleTuple
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Monthly cost
$90.00
DigitalOceanDigitalOcean
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2024
Monthly cost
$80.00
Google SuiteGoogle Suite
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2018
Monthly cost
$72.00
SlackSlack
Genre
Productivity
Started
2017
Monthly cost
$50.00
PulumiPulumi
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2025
Monthly cost
$40.00
CleanShotCleanShot
Genre
Productivity
Started
2025
Monthly cost
$40.00
SendgridSendgrid
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2025
Monthly cost
$40.00
DNSimpleDNSimple
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Monthly cost
$39.00
HEXHEX
Genre
Operations
Started
2025
Monthly cost
$36.00
TailscaleTailscale
Genre
Operations
Started
2025
Monthly cost
$30.00
AHrefsAHrefs
Genre
Marketing
Started
2021
Monthly cost
$29.00
IframelyIframely
Genre
Data
Started
2022
Monthly cost
$29.00
CleantalkCleantalk
Genre
Data
Started
2017
Monthly cost
$28.00
MailgunMailgun
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Monthly cost
$20.00
1Password1Password
Genre
Productivity
Started
2019
Monthly cost
$20.00
OpenAIOpenAI
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2023
Monthly cost
$20.00
GranolaGranola
Genre
Productivity
Started
2025
Monthly cost
$18.00
CloudflareCloudflare
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2023
Monthly cost
$15.00
ImprovMXImprovMX
Genre
Operations
Started
2024
Monthly cost
$5.00
MimestreamMimestream
Genre
Productivity
Started
2023
Monthly cost
$5.00
Have I Been PwnedHave I Been Pwned
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2025
Monthly cost
$4.00
GitHubGitHub
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2017
Monthly cost
PosticoPostico
Genre
Productivity
Started
2018
Monthly cost
ThingsThings
Genre
Productivity
Started
2018
Monthly cost
Twitter APITwitter API
Genre
Miscellany
Started
2020
Monthly cost
GitHub ActionsGitHub Actions
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2020
Monthly cost
Mono LisaMono Lisa
Genre
Miscellaneous
Started
2021
Monthly cost
Google Web Risk APIGoogle Web Risk API
Genre
Data
Started
2023
Monthly cost
PayPalPayPal
Genre
Operations
Started
2023
Monthly cost
KoloKolo
Genre
Productivity
Started
2024
Monthly cost
MercuryMercury
Genre
Finance
Started
2024
Monthly cost
BunnyBunny
Genre
Infrastructure
Started
2025
Monthly cost

FAQs

Why do you use so many services?

The most important resource I have is my energy, and being able to trade X dollars (where X is any number less than a hundred) for even trivial amounts of energy is an absolute no-brainer.

Why so many ESPs?

When I launched Buttondown, AWS Simple Email Service was notoriously low-quality and Postmark did not support broadcast emails. Mailgun was the choice I went with, and there are still many customers using Mailgun’s rails who have custom domain records set up that I don’t have the heart (or incentive) to migrate.

I like having redundancy — if one provider were to go down or drastically change rates it would be trivial for me to migrate — but if I were starting Buttondown from scratch I would likely just have everything run through Postmark.

Why don't you use something for X?

Some specific choices I made to roll my own:

  • Auth: I know it's increasingly trendy to outsource auth to a paid vendor but I'm not a fan of the lock-in and I like having full control over the experience.
  • Feature flags: rolled my own for performance reasons. Plan on open sourcing it at some point.

Changelog

DateChange
2025-05-14

Started using Vista Social to manage social media accounts and Tailscale to manage the server storing internal docs. Stopped using Trotto (in favor of Tailscale's own OSS version).

2025-04-01

Replaced Depot with Blacksmith (faster, cheaper)

2025-01-09
2024-07-10

Started using Depot to speed up GitHub Actions

2024-07-09

Started using Fivetran and Metabase to analyze data and construct a (janky, but useful!) WBR

2024-04-03

Started using Mercury as a banking solution

2024-03-28

Added Pika, Cloudflare, and a handful of other tools; churned from Texts, Sketch, Bear, and Imgix.

2024-03-14

Added Audiogest to the stack. It's a nice little tool!

2023-10-13

Had to bump up my Imgix plan from $75 to $200/mo because of traffic. Time to find something cheaper!

2023-08-22

Added val.town

2023-08-01

Add PopSQL (which technically I've been using for a while but forgot about)

2023-07-25

Migrated off of Heroku Redis and onto Redis Enterprise Cloud, which means saving $70/mo for five minutes of switching environment variables.

2023-07-24

Onboarded to Calibre.

2023-07-23

Purchased a reserved instance for my big ol' RDS database, saving $110/mo.

2023-07-20

Initial launch of this page.

Buttondown is the last email platform you’ll switch to.