Sendy Review 2024 (100X Cheaper Email Marketing)

Sendy is a self-hosted email marketing software that lets you send 100X cheaper emails via Amazon SES. So if you are looking for an affordable email marketing, here is my complete Sendy review with pros and cons.

If you are here and reading this article, I am sure you know about Email Marketing. If you own a website or a blog, you must be building your email list (If you are still not, you should definitely start building your email list now). Email marketing is, simply sending emails to your subscriber’s list on a regular basis regarding your products or updates.

In the beginning, you can start with some of the free email marketing services (which we all do when we start with) but there will be some limitations in terms of features and they will put their own branding in your email as well. Later once you cross the subscribers limit they will start charging you. The problem here is, when your email list starts growing, it becomes really difficult to afford the cost of email marketing cost.

There are many email marketing software and services but to use their services you really need to invest lots of money. They are really good but they are more suited for bigger companies or if your email list generates enough revenue for you.

What if you can get a (much) cheaper option to send hundreds or thousands of emails to your subscriber’s list? That’s what Sendy can do for you.

Quick Disclaimer: I am using Sendy on my business website to send regular emails to the 10000+ subscriber list. On this particular website/blog, I am still using the Mailchimp, As I am still in their free tier limit.

Sendy can save you $100+ every month on your email marketing cost. Here in this Sendy Review, I will talk about everything that I have experienced while using it. From installation on a shared server to moving to VPS and then using it to send regular emails to my subscriber’s list, I will share all my experiences, so that you can take your decision better while finalizing the email marketing software for your business.

About Sendy

Sendy is a self-hosted application, which means you need to install Sendy on your own domain and hosting. Emails will be sent via Amazon SES.

Amazon SES (Simple Email Services) is a cloud-based email sending service by Amazon that lets you send marketing, notification, and transactional emails to your subscriber’s list. Though using Sendy, you can send emails via any SMTP service provider; but it’s specifically designed to send emails via Amazon SES.

Sendy Review 2024

To get started with Sendy, you need to buy a Sendy license. Do note that the Sendy license is for a specific domain only, which means you can install one Sendy license on one particular domain name, though you can change the domain name when needed.

In case if you would like to test it on another domain or on local hosting, you can not install it all together as the license is for one specific domain.

Here, I have divided my Sendy review into various sections, where I will be discussing it’s pricing, features, installation, and setup and also the pros and cons. So that you can have a better idea if it suits your requirement or not.

Sendy Pricing

Sendy Software costs $59 (one time, lifetime) you can buy the license from the official website. Though you only get the support and updates until the next major update. Later once there is a major update (which they don’t release very often) you can renew the license at a discounted price.

Once you get the Sendy license for $59, you need to get a domain name (costs $10 for a year) and hosting (costs $5 per month) then you need to pay Amazon SES for sending emails (which costs $0.1 for sending 1000 emails).

Let’s see how this pricing stacks up with other web-based email marketing software’s pricing like MailChimp and Campaign Monitor.

As you can see from the screenshot above, if you need to send 10000 emails in a month, it will cost you $1 to send the emails via Amazon SEO, then there is the hosting cost i.e. $5 and also if you divide the domain name costing it will be approx $1 per month.

So for sending 10000 emails every month with Sendy, you need to spend approx $7 per month. Now if you the same screenshot above for sending the same numbers of emails with MailChimp and Campaign Monitor you end up paying $200 and $105 respectively, which are much costlier as compared with Sendy.

Even if we consider the lowest one i.e. Campaign Monitor pricing, you save approx $98 per month. And even if you minus the Sendy license cost from the first-month saving, you still have $39 left. As the license is just a one time cost, so if we calculate yearly, you save $1117 for sending 10000 emails via Sendy as compared Campaign Monitor. Using Sendy you will save $1000+ every year if compared with any other service provider.

Sendy Features

Sendy has got all those features that a good email marketing software should have. Though other web-based email marketing software may have additional features like advanced list segmentation, built-in templates, etc., we never use most of those fancy features. Here is what you get with Sendy.

• Importing and Exporting Email Lists.
• Campaign Creation & Email Scheduling
• Autoresponders (many don’t have this in their base or free plans)
• Automatic Bounce & Complaints Handling
• Reports & Statistics (Opens, Clicks, Bounces, Complaints, Unsubscribe, etc.)
• Option For Single & Double Optin (Complies with GDPR)
• Integration with third-party apps like Zapier, WordPress (there’s a free plugin), etc.

As you can see you get all the features that you need in your email marketing software. Though you don’t get the pre-built email templates (which I personally never use) so it was not a problem with me. You get a visual editor (similar to WordPress) which you can use to create your email campaign and you can save that as a template as well.

The good thing is that you can create multiple brands within the same sendy installation with seperate login access. different brands can use the same software for thier email marketing.

Sendy Installation & Setup

Once you purchase Sendy, you will get the options to download the installation package. You also the detailed installation guide along with the installation package in your email. It’s very easy to install Sendy, it’s almost as easy as Installing WordPress Manually.

They have also given the step-by-step easy guide to install the Sendy on your server and to connect it with Amazon SES. You can find the installation guide here.

In case if you are not comfortable installing and setting up the Sendy Email Marketing Software yourself, here’s you can get help installing Sendy.

What I Like About Sendy

As I have been using Sendy for a couple of years now, I have just explained everything in my Sendy review above. Here are the things that I like about Sendy.

Cost

The first thing I like about Sendy is, it is very cost-effective to send emails via Sendy and Amazon SES. As I have explained above, we save $1000+ every year on our email marketing cost. As a small company, that’s a big saving for us.

Scalability

The problem with the other email marketing services is, you end up paying more and more with every increase in email addresses. While using those services, we used to remove the email addresses that were not very active. With Sendy, as the cost of email marketing is so low, we don’t need to bother now. We send emails to all our users.

Pay Only When You Use

Another big issue that I found with most of those email marketing services is, if you are on a monthly plan, you still need to pay for a month when you have not sent a single email or only sent a few emails. This is not the case with Sendy and Amazon SES, here you only pay for the emails you have actually sent, that helps you save even more.

Some Cons With Sendy

No product is complete, there are some downsides with Sendy as well. It actually does not work properly on shared hosting. Though initially, we were using it on shared hosting, later we started getting issues and then we migrated it to VPS.

It does not have pre-built templates. Though it was never an issue with us, as we actually don’t use the pre-made templates.

As it’s a self-hosted application, you need to manage everything on your own. If you are installing it on a VPS, you need to have a bit of knowledge about managing your server. Also, here you need to take the backups yourself.

FAQs About Sendy (Frequently Asked Questions)

Here are some of the most common and frequently asked questions about Sendy, we thought to cover these questions here so that you can decide if Sendy is right for you. If you have more questions about Sendy, ask them in the comment section below.

Final Conclusion

If you are looking for a cheap and cost-effective email marketing services, Sendy is a good option. You can easily save $1000+ every year on your email marketing costing. Hope you liked this Sendy review, I have tried to include everything in this Sendy review, still, if you have any queries, drop that in the comment section below.

That’s it in this Sendy Review, Last but not least, we are still using Sendy and so far we are very happy. If you want to start with Sendy, check the demo here.