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Comparison · Mkt Auto
Buttondown vs Sulu
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Buttondown and Sulu — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Buttondown vs Sulu: at a glance
What is Buttondown?
Buttondown ships something almost every day, and most of it is somebody's bug report.
Buttondown publishes a dated entry nearly every day, and the mix is dominated by small fixes credited to named users. The feature work in this window is narrow but real: filtered blocks for audience-specific email sections, Mermaid diagram rendering, and enhanced Bluesky link cards. Nothing here changes the product's shape.
What is Sulu?
Sulu ships 2.6 and 3.0 in lockstep, and the 3.0 line still reads like a maintenance branch.
Sulu is a Symfony-based CMS for developer-built sites, and its release process is a synchronised pair: every 3.0.x patch ships within a minute of the matching 2.6.x patch, carrying largely the same pull requests. Six releases in five months — 3.0.8/2.6.25, 3.0.7/2.6.24, 3.0.6/2.6.23 — are almost entirely fixes, editor upgrades and framework compatibility work. A security advisory was patched across both branches in March.
Buttondown vs Sulu: editorial side-by-side
Buttondown
5.0MKT AUTO
Buttondown ships something almost every day, and most of it is somebody's bug report.
◆ Current state
Buttondown publishes a dated entry nearly every day, and the mix is dominated by small fixes credited to named users. The feature work in this window is narrow but real: filtered blocks for audience-specific email sections, Mermaid diagram rendering, and enhanced Bluesky link cards. Nothing here changes the product's shape.
◆ Where it's heading
The cadence is the strategy - a steady stream of small corrections keeps the surface tidy rather than betting on a large release. Recent additions cluster around how a publication looks off-platform: Bluesky cards, archive fonts, recognized social links, image handling. Segmentation is the one direction with real room to grow, and filtered blocks is its first visible step.
◆ Prediction
Filtered blocks is the piece most likely to expand, since per-audience content inside a single send invites conditional logic beyond one block type. The daily fix cadence should continue at its current rate.
Sulu
5.0MKT AUTO
Sulu ships 2.6 and 3.0 in lockstep, and the 3.0 line still reads like a maintenance branch.
◆ Current state
Sulu is a Symfony-based CMS for developer-built sites, and its release process is a synchronised pair: every 3.0.x patch ships within a minute of the matching 2.6.x patch, carrying largely the same pull requests. Six releases in five months — 3.0.8/2.6.25, 3.0.7/2.6.24, 3.0.6/2.6.23 — are almost entirely fixes, editor upgrades and framework compatibility work. A security advisory was patched across both branches in March.
◆ Where it's heading
Three threads run through the pairs. Editor upkeep is constant, with CKEditor moving to 47 LTS and then 48 and the fallout — table widgets, webpack font builds — fixed release by release. Framework compatibility is the second: Request->get calls replaced for Symfony 8, PHPUnit 13 and PHPStan kept green on lowest dependencies. The third and most interesting is data-model cleanup on the 3.0 side, where tags migrated from names to IDs behind a newly added DoctrineMigrationsBundle, with smart-content filters reworked to match. What is not visible is any capability that exists on 3.0 and not on 2.6 — a major version that is not yet behaving like one.
◆ Prediction
Expect the paired-release rhythm to continue with more Symfony 8 preparation and CKEditor 48 fallout. The open question is when 3.0 starts receiving work that is not upmerged from 2.6; until then the major version number is not buying users anything.
Alternatives to Buttondown and Sulu
Other Mkt Auto products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Buttondown or Sulu.
Eleventy
The v4 canary line is being renamed Build Awesome while 3.x is kept on pure maintenance.
Hugo
Steady feature-then-patch cadence, with security reports rising because AI tools are finding them
ClickFunnels
Measurement gets granular while the API quietly opens ClickFunnels up to outside agents
n8n
n8n's daily patch train hides the real work: hardening its MCP server into a proper auth resource.
OneSignal
OneSignal is arguing a new category into existence before showing the product behind it.
See all Buttondown alternatives → · See all Sulu alternatives →
Recent activity from Buttondown and Sulu
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoButtondownFiltered blocks show email sections to one audience only
- 2d agoButtondownFix: share image picker scroll arrows after preview load
- 3d agoButtondownShare image picker gains scroll arrows and arrow-key nav
- 4d agoButtondownBluesky archive links render as enhanced link cards
- 5d agoButtondownAccessibility fix for settings links; API key date fix
- 7d agoButtondownButtondown renders Mermaid diagrams in emails and archives
- 15d agoSuluSulu 3.0.8 validates selection filter params at build time
- 15d agoSuluSulu 2.6.25 adds a redirect after SSO login
- 2mo agoSuluSulu 3.0.7 fixes smart-content filtering and speeds up indexing
- 2mo agoSuluSulu 2.6.24 upgrades CKEditor to version 48
- 2mo agoSuluSulu 3.0.6 migrates tag names to IDs with Doctrine migrations
- 2mo agoSuluSulu 2.6.23 moves to CKEditor 47 LTS and preps Symfony 8
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Buttondown and Sulu?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Buttondown and Sulu are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 5.0 vs 5.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Buttondown better than Sulu?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Buttondown and Sulu are shipping at a similar cadence (velocity 5.0 vs 5.0, both within Sparkpulse's "active" band). For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Mkt Auto products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Buttondown?
Top Buttondown alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Buttondown alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/buttondown for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Sulu?
Top Sulu alternatives in Mkt Auto are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Sulu alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/sulu for the full list with editorial commentary on each.