Sendy Self-Hosted Newsletters via Amazon SES

Sendy is a self-hosted email newsletter application. You buy it once, install it on your own PHP and MySQL web server, and send campaigns through Amazon Simple Email Service. Because SES charges very little per email, sending costs can be far lower than with hosted platforms.

A licence costs $69 as a one-time payment, and Sendy also offers an installation service for $148 if you prefer not to set it up yourself. Licences are tied to a domain, which can be changed later with your licence key. The current version is 7.1.6. Sendy quotes sending costs through Amazon SES of $1.6 per 10,000 emails, and it also works natively with several other SMTP providers.

Sendy covers the core features of a newsletter tool. A drag and drop editor sits alongside WYSIWYG and HTML editors for building templates. Live reports show opens, clicks, bounces, complaints and locations as a campaign sends. Autoresponders run drip sequences at intervals you set, or send annual and one-off emails on a given date. Segments can be built from any conditions you define and included or excluded from campaigns. Rules and webhooks automate actions, such as unsubscribing someone from one list when they join another. List tools cover mass import and delete, custom fields, single or double opt-in and custom confirmation pages.

Sendy groups products or clients into brands. You can give clients access, set pricing, control permissions and set sending limits, which makes white labelled client accounts possible for agencies. An optional AI assistant can generate newsletters and subject lines and summarise campaign data.

Running Sendy means you are responsible for hosting, Amazon SES setup and deliverability. For people comfortable with that, it can cut costs significantly on large lists. Support is by email, with a troubleshooting page and getting started guide on the site.