
Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy - davekiss
http://davekiss.com/create-your-own-mailchimp-clone-for-5-a-month-with-sendy/
======
jaysonelliot
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.

~~~
JonoBB
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.

~~~
jhammer
I am obviously biased [1], but if you want a nicer (native) UI than Sendy, you
might want to check out our app Direct Mail:
[http://directmailmac.com](http://directmailmac.com)

It has a built-in delivery service, but can also plug into SES or any other
SMTP service for a one-time fee.

[1] I am a developer of the aforementioned app

~~~
jaysonelliot
Looks nice, but it's even more expensive than Mailchimp unless you have your
own mail server.

------
jmhobbs
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.

Just lots and lots of rough PHP.

~~~
equalarrow
Gimmie a break...

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.

~~~
onion2k
A poor codebase makes it hard to audit it to make sure there aren't bugs or
exploits. In the case of Sendy, how would a user _know_ that a spammer isn't
able to exploit it to send spam to everyone in Sendy's MySQL database? That's
potentially _very_ damaging to a business (especially if you're running Sendy
on behalf of a client).

Sending email to a list is easy. Sending email to a list _securely_ is harder.

------
rbinv
This is ridiculous. You don't only pay MailChimp for the software, you pay for
their deliverability.

~~~
davekiss
Sendy uses Amazon SES as the delivery service, not a PHP installation. Highly
deliverable and much more cost effective.

~~~
coderdude
Amazon SES rocks from a pricing standpoint but deliverability isn't its strong
suit. There are too many spammers using it. ISPs seem to barely trust mail
sent from their servers and I get a lot of bounces. I stopped using it for
critical email and rely on it only for bulk-type emails where missing that one
email isn't the end of the world.

MailChimp for newsletters and SendGrid for everything else. That's a winning
combo.

~~~
moe
_Amazon SES rocks from a pricing standpoint but deliverability isn 't its
strong suit._

Huh?

Are you sure you have configured it correctly, including DKIM?

We're using SES a lot (both transactional and campaigns) and never had a
problem with deliverability.

 _There are too many spammers using it._

That seems unlikely considering the default sending limit is a mere 10k
mails/day (iirc) and I doubt Amazon lets you raise that when your complaint-
inbox is overflowing...

~~~
coderdude
I didn't configure DKIM for SES. I configured it for SendGrid right out the
gate but it was made more obvious that it was an important next step. I wasn't
even aware that SES supported DKIM at the time of testing. It's an important
factor that I admittedly overlooked.

------
desheikh
_shameless plug_

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.

~~~
raphar
dont be ashamed!

All the OP links have affiliates codes. (namecheap, digital ocean, sendy).

~~~
desheikh
Haha, thanks. I've been growing pretty well organically, but still feel a
little odd pitching my service online.

I should just set up a referral program myself and let others do it for me :p

------
nodesocket
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.

~~~
bhouston
You can apply to get higher send limits. It just starts at 10000. They have
limits to frustrate spammers.

------
jonathanbull
_another shameless plug_

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](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
This looks awesome! Do you have bounce handling built into this?

~~~
jonathanbull
Thanks! Yes, we have full bounce and complaint handling.

------
wallflower
> 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.

------
joelrunyon
Checkout Converkit by Nathan Barry (he's in HN quite frequently).

[http://convertkit.com](http://convertkit.com)

Great alternative (sort of like aweber with good design & active development +
a focus on building autoresponders).

~~~
angelbob
If these guys are worried about the price of MailChimp, ConvertKit is likely
to give them conniptions.

It's designed for "full featured" more than "cheap."

------
yahelc
This can be $0/month if you host your Sendy install on Heroku instead of
DigitalOcean (as I do).

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
Does hosting on heroku scale well? Have you written on this - would be
interested in learning more about your setup.

------
gotrythis
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.

~~~
gotrythis
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.

------
xux
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.

------
Someone1234
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.

~~~
_neil
It's using Amazon SES for delivery.

------
Zaheer
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:

My referral link:
[http://www.sendyhosting.com/?utm_source=tagsforlikes&utm_med...](http://www.sendyhosting.com/?utm_source=tagsforlikes&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=referral)

link: [http://www.sendyhosting.com](http://www.sendyhosting.com)

------
bhouston
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.

~~~
_neil
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.

~~~
bhouston
If you have 100,000 users (which we have), MailChimp is really expensive.

Details: [http://mailchimp.com/pricing/high-
volume/](http://mailchimp.com/pricing/high-volume/)

Mailchimp is thus $475.00 per 100K per month ($5700 per year!) That is a lot
to spend on just email.

With Sendy + SES it costs me $10 to do a send to our 100,000 users.

Now I could play around with switching plans all the time at MailChimp to try
and always minimize my costs, but I don't want to play that game. SES + Sendy
keeps my costs linear with the number of emails I send, I don't have to play
any games with changing plans, and it is significantly cheaper that MailChimp.

~~~
robbiemitchell
If I'm reading the FAQ correct, SES maxes out at 10k emails/day, meaning it'll
take you 10 days to email your entire list.

~~~
bhouston
[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/request...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/request-
production-access.html)

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/manage-...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/manage-
sending-limits.html)

------
superflit
Sorry but if you are taking all the trouble to install Sendy you should look
at Mandrill [1].

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/](https://www.mandrill.com/)

~~~
nodesocket
Mandrill is great, we use it at [https://commando.io](https://commando.io),
but it is geared toward transactional emails (notifications), not newsletters.

~~~
superflit
Newsletter is a transaction that occurs every once in a while.

:)

------
arikrak
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.

------
captn3m0
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.

[0]: [http://tinyletter.com/](http://tinyletter.com/)

------
arbuge
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.

------
ankitpr89
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.

------
pdeuchler
_shameless plug_

Or you could just use the free Sendgrid plan for up to 12k emails a month :)

~~~
SuperKlaus
Or you could avoid doing business with Sendgrid and use mailgun or mailjet.

~~~
pbowyer
Finally someone mentioning these! I've used Sendgrid, but I _love_ Mailgun.

~~~
StavrosK
Yeah what the hell, I had to ctrl-f for it. I don't know why so many people
are recommending SendGrid, MailGun is awesome, great UI, a breeze to integrate
and it's pretty much free for a startup (first 10k mails free).

I just love those guys. They even check that you installed everything
correctly for you.

------
brianbarker
Hehe, the post is full of referral links to Sendy.

------
michilehr
We have also switched to sendy months ago and I love it. No problems with spam
reports yet.

------
mplewis
I don't pay MailChimp for the dashboard, I pay them to guarantee my mail is
delivered. DIY mail delivery is a nightmare.

------
SuperKlaus
mailkimp

------
Animats
This article is a spam from a spammer for a spamming tool, aimed at other
spammers.

~~~
IgorPartola
How so?

~~~
Animats
When you see the word "campaign" associated with email, it means "marketing
campaign", which means spam.

Canada is having a crackdown on spam. "CRTC Chief Compliance and Enforcement
Officer issues $1.1 million penalty to Compu-Finder for spamming Canadians"
... "Compu-Finder sent commercial electronic messages without the recipient’s
consent as well as emails in which the unsubscribe mechanisms did not function
properly. The emails sent by Compu-Finder promoted various training courses to
businesses, often related to topics such as management, social media and
professional development."

The next time you consider "informing people about your webinar" via email,
remember that.

[1] [http://news.gc.ca/web/article-
en.do?nid=944159](http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=944159)

~~~
jszymborski
marketing campaign =/= spam.

The Canadian laws (despite being irrelevant in this conversation) prevent
against e-mails _without consent_ and _without unsubscribe mechanisms_.
Coincidentally, those are the same requirements of 99% of all blacklists and
spam tools that differentiate spam from marketing campaigns.

By your definition, MailChimp is a spam tool too.

~~~
snowwrestler
It is a seemingly immutable law of HN that any discussion of email marketing
must include at least one person complaining that all marketing emails are
spam.

~~~
Animats
Unless every recipient explicitly opted into receiving the email as a separate
transaction, not part of some other action, it's spam.

Under Canadian law, it is now illegal to have a "send newsletter" checkbox
checked by default. That's not "consent".

