We've got about 12,000 people on our announce list. I switched us over to Sendy three months ago.
It doesn't have the slick, "just works" appeal of MailChimp, but it also doesn't carry the big monthly price tag.
We've had the same open and clickthrough rates with Sendy as before, and I haven't encountered any problems getting marked as spam. That said, our entire list is people who actively came to the site and signed up for updates.
If price were no object, we'd go back to MailChimp in a heartbeat. But they were charging us $125/month just to keep our mailing list on the service, whether we sent anything that month or not. Just not a good use of funds for us at this stage. Sendy is great at our current size.
We switched to Sendy too, because MailChimp's pricing leaves a lot to be desired. We have a list of about 10k subscribers, and we only send a campaign every 2-3 months. I have no idea why this is priced way higher than someone with 1k subscribers would sends 4 campaigns a month.
Sendy has worked perfectly for us. The UI could do with a lot of love, but its functionally fine.
The Sendy codebase is horrifying. It's not good. Buyer beware.
EDIT
I realized I made a blanket claim and didn't provide any details. So I'll try to explain.
No framework, little shared code between files. Warnings and deprecations ignored, poor variable names, db queries mixed right in with html output, user id's imploded from array and stored into a single database field, etc.
This isn't software to be used for analysis. Sendy is f-in awesome! I've used it for a list of over 25k and it hasn't failed me once. Like others have said, it's not as brain dead as Mailchimp, but I wasn't expecting it to be. The developer is great and it just works(tm). The price is awesome too.
I looked through the source and thought, sure, it's not computer science that was built on the latest "Framework X", but it worked fine. To me it signaled, they we're just getting shit done. God, I'm so over the days of analysis paralysis "proper framework" development (that's for another rant I guess).
Please, pay no mind to the parent post. If you're looking for an alternative to AWeber (I'm not saying it's got as many features as Aweber) or Mailchimp, then Sendy is awesome.
I've been hosting mine on a Digital Ocean 1GB server for about 7 months and it's worked flawlessly. Their 2.0 upgrade went without a hitch. Couldn't recommend this app more.
While I can't provide an accurate basis for this, from the sounds of it, I imagine that Sendy wasn't originally intended for "traditional marketing" emails.
I built SimplerSES for the same reason - a cheaper alternative to MailChimp using AWS SES. It's built as a hosted service so theres no server costs, and you only pay for the emails you send out.
Ideas: since you are competing on the price. add a graph showing emails/payment growing with you and mail-chimp/other strong competition side by side. next to it say "lowers is,of course, better." then you have to attack the main objection(IMHO), lower delivery rate. not sure how but you need to think about the "no one ever got fired for chosing IBM" affect and counter it. you can say something reassuring about SES. or have a quote from a user or two.
This looks like a great value. We were considering using Campaign.js, but actually getting it up and running on a server to fire out campaigns seemed like a pain (as does using sendy). Combining the affordability of SES with some symbolance of the UX of mailchimp seems like a killer value proposition.
This looks great. The biggest pain we had with MailChimp was dealing with unsubscribes from our website (i.e. anything other than an unsubscribe link in the email). How does your API handle unsubscribes? Do you simply upload a complete list of users each time and those not in the file are removed?
Nice solution to save money, but for a company that is making money, $75 or $100 a month to MailChimp is well worth it. Beyond the time it will take you setup a server, configure it, and install Sendy, there is a huge limitation with SES:
10,000/24hrs at a rate of 5 emails per second.
If your list is decent sized, say 50,000 it would take over 2.5 hours to send your newsletter. Beyond that, MailChimp deals with IP whitelisting, blacklisting, scalability, SPF, DKIM, and the bevy of other e-mail sending nightmares.
If you're looking for a hosted alternative to Sendy, please take a look at a project I've been working on for the last year or so: https://emailoctopus.com
We're not currently charging anything (still working out a pricing model!) so you only have to pay your SES fees. And as it's hosted on EC2 instances, you'll still get your first 62,000 emails a month under Amazon's free tier.
> Forewarning: remember how I asked you earlier if you were feeling bold?
This is going to be the part that scares most people away. But you are ready. You can do this. We're in this together, and with the power of two we can do anything! Besides, all you really need is to be good at following linear instructions.
I really like how you are coaching the reader through the 'instruction manual' stuff.
To buck the trend here, I was using Sendy, and switched (for now) to MailChimp.
I would stick with Sendy, but I could never get the unsubscribe links to work, and it doesn't automatically insert any footers, like a spam compliance. Also, there was no way to edit someone's email who was on multiple lists, without checking each list to see if they were on it, and manually editing, which was taking me hours. Couldn't do it through the API either. Their support is great for what seems like a one-man show.
My Internet marketing friends suggest going with the self-hosted mailing software, OEMPro, and setting it up to work with SendGrid. They say SendGrid vets and ages their IPs before giving them to you, so they provide better deliver rates than MailChimp, though you need to do some custom integration to clean your list of bounces, etc. However, OEMPro has the WORST support I've ever encountered. I was a client with them a decade ago and left in frustration because of their support, and found it to be just as bad in 2015, when it took them 3 months to let me know I wasn't eligible for the upgrade price.
After writing this, I logged in, see there is a version 2 of Sendy, which appears to fix all these problems. Assuming I can get the unsubscribe to work, I'll switch back.
I've used Mailchimp and Sendy extensively. I send about 200k-300k emails a month. Here are the pros and cons:
Mailchimp: if price isn't an issue for you, use Mailchimp. Period. The deliverability and customer service is unmatched. The interface is easy to use. No setup. High customization with merge tags. If you're sending a lot of emails and want them to "just get delivered without any hassle", use this.
Sendy: it's a lighter version of Mailchimp and super cheap. Much less customization. No live support (but the guy responds to his email really fast and always helpful). Configuration is a bit painful (you have to setup SES, wait 1-2 days for domain approval, install Sendy, etc), but once you set it up, it's a breeze to use. I haven't noticed any deliverability issues, but supposedly it's less reliable than more established email senders. If you just run a personal newsletter.
Sending directly from a Digital Ocean VPS? Yeah good luck with that bounce rate.
I use SendGrid free on Azure because Azure VPS too have an extremely high bounce rate. Setting up an SMTP server isn't exactly hard or expensive (regardless of if you're integrating mailing lists or not), it is the good rep' IP address and making it "someone else's problem" to deal with a lot of email related problems (poor reputation, blacklists, random host decides to block you, etc) that you're paying for.
Sendgrid, Mailchimp, and so on primarily exist so you can just hit send and then that's as deep as your involvement goes as far as emails.
> Sending directly from a Digital Ocean VPS? Yeah good luck with that bounce rate.
I do. Gmail spam-flagged the messages for a while, but after a couple of months it learned they're not spam. Surprisingly, other email providers (yahoo, ms, aol) never batted an eye.
I just made sure that the IP address assigned to my droplet is not in any blacklist, and configured proper SPF/DKIM headers (not hard with postfix).
Sendy is awesome and for non-technical people it is even easier and still has enormous cost savings to use a fully managed Sendy hosting provider. I use SendyHosting.com and it's worked great in my 2ish years of use with over 50k subscribers:
I switched away from MailChimp to Sendy and it is way cheaper. MailChimp is stupidly expensive, annoyingly so, and it doesn't add much value over Sendy.
That's a bit over the top. Mail chimp is hugely valuable if you are in their target user base. And for non-technical clients, mail chimp is (imo) a massive step up from other mailing list providers.
I used Mailchimp until I had 4,000 subscribers, and then I switched to my own service, but used their cheap Mandrill service for the actual email sending.
Has nobody here heard of tinyletter[0]. Its a side-service by MailChimp and offers newsletters for upto 5k subscribers for free. It has some basic analytics as well and has a really nice interface. If you just want a small announce mailing list, you might give it a try.
I also migrated away from mailchimp recently. Similar situation - I had a list with around 3000 subscribers, growing around 1,000 per month. In the end I went even cheaper than the author and chose PHPlist. Free and also works with Amazon SES. Working out the correct settings took some trial and error but it works like a charm now.
A well written post by Dave. But for a marketer, technology part is tricky, when it comes to installing Sendy the right way with Amazon SES server. I have been using EasySendy service for past few months and they are absolutely wonderful Sendy managed hosting service.
[+] [-] jaysonelliot|11 years ago|reply
It doesn't have the slick, "just works" appeal of MailChimp, but it also doesn't carry the big monthly price tag.
We've had the same open and clickthrough rates with Sendy as before, and I haven't encountered any problems getting marked as spam. That said, our entire list is people who actively came to the site and signed up for updates.
If price were no object, we'd go back to MailChimp in a heartbeat. But they were charging us $125/month just to keep our mailing list on the service, whether we sent anything that month or not. Just not a good use of funds for us at this stage. Sendy is great at our current size.
[+] [-] JonoBB|11 years ago|reply
Sendy has worked perfectly for us. The UI could do with a lot of love, but its functionally fine.
[+] [-] cglee|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmhobbs|11 years ago|reply
EDIT I realized I made a blanket claim and didn't provide any details. So I'll try to explain.
No framework, little shared code between files. Warnings and deprecations ignored, poor variable names, db queries mixed right in with html output, user id's imploded from array and stored into a single database field, etc.
Just lots and lots of rough PHP.
[+] [-] equalarrow|11 years ago|reply
This isn't software to be used for analysis. Sendy is f-in awesome! I've used it for a list of over 25k and it hasn't failed me once. Like others have said, it's not as brain dead as Mailchimp, but I wasn't expecting it to be. The developer is great and it just works(tm). The price is awesome too.
I looked through the source and thought, sure, it's not computer science that was built on the latest "Framework X", but it worked fine. To me it signaled, they we're just getting shit done. God, I'm so over the days of analysis paralysis "proper framework" development (that's for another rant I guess).
Please, pay no mind to the parent post. If you're looking for an alternative to AWeber (I'm not saying it's got as many features as Aweber) or Mailchimp, then Sendy is awesome.
I've been hosting mine on a Digital Ocean 1GB server for about 7 months and it's worked flawlessly. Their 2.0 upgrade went without a hitch. Couldn't recommend this app more.
[+] [-] joshmn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbinv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davekiss|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WA|11 years ago|reply
The delivery rates of the big ones could be overrated.
[+] [-] desheikh|11 years ago|reply
I built SimplerSES for the same reason - a cheaper alternative to MailChimp using AWS SES. It's built as a hosted service so theres no server costs, and you only pay for the emails you send out.
[+] [-] ofir_geller|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raphar|11 years ago|reply
All the OP links have affiliates codes. (namecheap, digital ocean, sendy).
[+] [-] michaelq|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Moto7451|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nodesocket|11 years ago|reply
10,000/24hrs at a rate of 5 emails per second.
If your list is decent sized, say 50,000 it would take over 2.5 hours to send your newsletter. Beyond that, MailChimp deals with IP whitelisting, blacklisting, scalability, SPF, DKIM, and the bevy of other e-mail sending nightmares.
[+] [-] bhouston|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonathanbull|11 years ago|reply
If you're looking for a hosted alternative to Sendy, please take a look at a project I've been working on for the last year or so: https://emailoctopus.com
We're not currently charging anything (still working out a pricing model!) so you only have to pay your SES fees. And as it's hosted on EC2 instances, you'll still get your first 62,000 emails a month under Amazon's free tier.
[+] [-] ashray|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wallflower|11 years ago|reply
This is going to be the part that scares most people away. But you are ready. You can do this. We're in this together, and with the power of two we can do anything! Besides, all you really need is to be good at following linear instructions.
I really like how you are coaching the reader through the 'instruction manual' stuff.
[+] [-] joelrunyon|11 years ago|reply
http://convertkit.com
Great alternative (sort of like aweber with good design & active development + a focus on building autoresponders).
[+] [-] angelbob|11 years ago|reply
It's designed for "full featured" more than "cheap."
[+] [-] yahelc|11 years ago|reply
Worth noting that with Amazon SES, if you want to send more than 10,000 emails in a day, you'll need to apply (to Amazon) for approval.
[+] [-] Zaheer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gotrythis|11 years ago|reply
I would stick with Sendy, but I could never get the unsubscribe links to work, and it doesn't automatically insert any footers, like a spam compliance. Also, there was no way to edit someone's email who was on multiple lists, without checking each list to see if they were on it, and manually editing, which was taking me hours. Couldn't do it through the API either. Their support is great for what seems like a one-man show.
My Internet marketing friends suggest going with the self-hosted mailing software, OEMPro, and setting it up to work with SendGrid. They say SendGrid vets and ages their IPs before giving them to you, so they provide better deliver rates than MailChimp, though you need to do some custom integration to clean your list of bounces, etc. However, OEMPro has the WORST support I've ever encountered. I was a client with them a decade ago and left in frustration because of their support, and found it to be just as bad in 2015, when it took them 3 months to let me know I wasn't eligible for the upgrade price.
[+] [-] gotrythis|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xux|11 years ago|reply
Mailchimp: if price isn't an issue for you, use Mailchimp. Period. The deliverability and customer service is unmatched. The interface is easy to use. No setup. High customization with merge tags. If you're sending a lot of emails and want them to "just get delivered without any hassle", use this.
Sendy: it's a lighter version of Mailchimp and super cheap. Much less customization. No live support (but the guy responds to his email really fast and always helpful). Configuration is a bit painful (you have to setup SES, wait 1-2 days for domain approval, install Sendy, etc), but once you set it up, it's a breeze to use. I haven't noticed any deliverability issues, but supposedly it's less reliable than more established email senders. If you just run a personal newsletter.
[+] [-] Someone1234|11 years ago|reply
I use SendGrid free on Azure because Azure VPS too have an extremely high bounce rate. Setting up an SMTP server isn't exactly hard or expensive (regardless of if you're integrating mailing lists or not), it is the good rep' IP address and making it "someone else's problem" to deal with a lot of email related problems (poor reputation, blacklists, random host decides to block you, etc) that you're paying for.
Sendgrid, Mailchimp, and so on primarily exist so you can just hit send and then that's as deep as your involvement goes as far as emails.
[+] [-] _neil|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geoka9|11 years ago|reply
I do. Gmail spam-flagged the messages for a while, but after a couple of months it learned they're not spam. Surprisingly, other email providers (yahoo, ms, aol) never batted an eye.
I just made sure that the IP address assigned to my droplet is not in any blacklist, and configured proper SPF/DKIM headers (not hard with postfix).
[+] [-] Zaheer|11 years ago|reply
My referral link: http://www.sendyhosting.com/?utm_source=tagsforlikes&utm_med...
link: http://www.sendyhosting.com
[+] [-] bhouston|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _neil|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mudil|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superflit|11 years ago|reply
I use their python api, hooked a Django project with Html editor (ckeditor) and bang.
Magic Formula = Django + Mandrill app + django-ckeditor
Sending more than 1 000 000 mails by month (reaching 1.7M now).
It is fast, it works. The main problem: to reach the support you should use twitter and talk to the monkey.
[1] - https://www.mandrill.com/
[+] [-] nodesocket|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arikrak|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] captn3m0|11 years ago|reply
[0]: http://tinyletter.com/
[+] [-] arbuge|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ankitpr89|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdeuchler|11 years ago|reply
Or you could just use the free Sendgrid plan for up to 12k emails a month :)
[+] [-] SuperKlaus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ing33k|11 years ago|reply