Sendy Review – My Thoughts after using it

Looking for Sendy Review? then you are in the right place. In this post, I will let you know what sendy.co newsletter script will offer, what it cannot offer, and a few other things about sendy.

Table of Contents:

About Sendy:

Before going to review, it’s better to know what sendy is all about.

Most of you guys might have already aware of what it is. If you are not, then it is a self-hosted email marketing solution.

This means, instead of using standard email marketing services like Aweber, Mailchimp, etc., we are going to use our own stuff to do similar tasks.

For example, if you are going to use sendy as email newsletter software, then we need – software (here sendy), Amazon SES for sending emails, a domain name for sendy installation, and a server to host sendy script.

In this way, we will have full control over our list and save a lot of money by compromising a few common email marketing features which you can find on any other email marketing solution but not on sendy.

In short, sendy.co is a PHP script that offers a platform to send email newsletters to users by using our own server and Amazon SES platform.

I Tried Below Service Before Using Sendy

Before getting my hands on the sendy platform, I tried Aweber and MyMail WordPress Plugin. I like both the service, but both of them won’t properly suit my needs.

Here Why I Moved Away from Aweber..

1. Cost:

Aweber is a hosted email marketing platform that offers very nice features, but when it comes to the cost-it is pretty costly, and it’s recurring too. As per my business needs, Aweber seems to be pretty costly, moreover, I rarely used to send the newsletter to my subscribers. So Aweber is not the right solution for my business needs.

2. Scalability:

Aweber is good for users with small subscribers list, if your list starts growing then you will end up paying more than your website server cost! so in the long run Aweber won’t be a perfect solution at all.

To give you an idea, If you have 5,001+ subscribers in your list then you have to pay $69 monthly to maintain that list whether you send mails or not it won’t matter.

3. Use it or not, you have to pay full: 

This is the one feature that I don’t like about Aweber. I’m not a regular email sender, but still, we need to pay the full amount for maintaining that email list.

These are the few things which I don’t like about Aweber. I mentioned Aweber here because I used only this service. It usually applies to all most all hosted email marketing solution.

Why I Moved Away from Mymail/Mailster Newsletter Plugin for WordPress:

After trying Aweber I did lot of research online to find solution to my newsletter problem. The solution that I found is, MyMail plugin. When I came across this MyMail plugin, I immediately bought and started integrating on my wordpress blog. 

MyMail plugin is an excellent plugin, and it is also having lots of features. I loved it until I started facing some problems. The problem that I met with MyMail plugin is, It stopped handling bounce and complaints.

I did not notice that MyMail is not handling any bounced email address until I got a mail from Amazon SES saying-your account has been suspended due to a high bounce rate.

That’s the time I realized there is a problem with MyMail plugin in handling bounced mail. I contacted the developer regarding this, and he also failed to fix the problem.

It happened because, MyMail uses Gmail account to handle bounce and complaints, and Gmail recently introduced new security feature which is stopping MyMail plugin to login to Gmail account to handle bounce and complaints. That’s the time I started looking for other solution.

The next solution that I came across is Sendy.

Sendy Review

What I like About Sendy Newsletter Script:

When I started using sendy on my domain the first thing I noticed is a very nice user interface, little setup required to get started into the system and lightweight script.

After using the sendy newsletter script with Amazon SES, this is what I feel about that script.

1. Very Nice and Simple Design:

The first thing that I love about sendy is-its design. Sendy script comes with an Awesome user interface, you don’t find any much-complicated option, colors with this script. I simply love that minimal design.

2. Saves Hell lot of Money:

As I said earlier before I start using sendy I was with Aweber. When I was with Aweber my expenses are like 69$ Per month to maintain that list, and Now with sendy, my cost went to $1 per month, that too If I send a newsletter/emails or else I could save that money too.

For your information, I never calculated Server (I use Digital Ocean) and Domain cost here because I hosted sendy on the same server where my other domains are hosted.

3. Your list, Your Rules:

Some email marketing companies have strict rules regarding email lists. For example, some companies won’t allow you to bulk import your email list. Your list is always in control of someone else, you have to obey their rules or they will kick anytime.

In sendy, your list, your rules (excluding Amazon SES policy obviously)

4. Automatically Handles any Complaints, Bounce, and Spam:

When it comes to Email marketing you should take care of handling complaints, bounce and Spam complaints very seriously or else your newsletter won’t reach your subscriber inbox.

Sendy is primarily designed to work with Amazon SES, and they are using the Amazon HTTP protocol notification method to receive such complaints. Once the sendy receives any complaints it automatically handles it.

For example, If you got Hard bounced notification then sendy marks the email Has Bounced email ID and in future, it won’t send any email to that user. Thus you can maintain a good email list.

Few services like MyMail plugin need one separate Gmail account to handle such complaints. I strongly disagree with this type of method. Because of this and a few other features made me switch to this service.

5. Maintain all Email List in One Domain:

When I was using the MyMail plugin, building a List for different domains is a tedious process, and there are a lot of difficulties involved in that. If I start mentioning here, then it will be another big post. So I will avoid pointing all those here.

With Sendy, You can easily collect email leads from as many domains as you want by installing sendy on only one domain.

It will be very easy to manage all your list under one roof than installing domain-specific Plugins like MyMail. This is a perfect solution for the users who are having multiple sites and want to collect and manage your email leads all at one destination.

Isn’t it a cool feature? It is.

6. Save Time and Energy:

Think that you have 10 Domains, and you will install any newsletter plugin for all those 10 domains to collect email IDS. If you go with a premium plugin then you may need to buy a separate license for each domain.

Moreover, if you need to send the newsletter to any of those 2 domains then you need to go to a specific domain, then login to your site, go to the plugin page, and create a new campaign.

It takes some time to do all those steps. How about managing all those different Domains Newsletter tasks under one roof? sendy perfectly suits for this job.

Previously I installed newsletter plugin on each domain, and I was spending most of my time just navigating here and there to schedule newsletter. After moving to sendy, my newsletter task is managed all under one roof. This feature helps a lot for most of them.

7. Nice Support from Developer: (No support these days)

In some cases we need support. Sendy is a developer who is offering excellent support through Sendy Forum and by mail as well. Most of my queries are answered by the developer within 24 hours. I love their support.

8. Multiple Brand:

In sendy, brands are nothing but different domains. This means you can collect email subscribers from different domains by creating separate brands here.

Currently, I used to create different brands per domain.

For example, I created PushIncome.com as one brand to collect email leads for this domain. This is how multiple brand feature is going to work in sendy script.

sendy brands

This is really nice feature. By using this feature we can easily collect and manage all email list at one place instead of installing sendy for each and every domain.

10. Allow Client to Send Newsletter:

Sendy allows you to add your clients to send newsletter. You can use this option by clicking on “Edit” link on Brands page. This feature might not be helpful for everyone, but definitely it will be useful someone who manages clients.

In client manage page you can provide the client login email id, password, campaign Fees, set monthly limit and other option here. All the payments made by your clients will directly sent to your paypal account.

sendy client settings

11. Multiple List for Each Brands:

Sendy allows you to create multiple lists for each brand, by this way you can build as many email lists as you want for that particular brand or domain.

For example, If I created PushIncome.com as a brand, in that brand I can easily create Blog subscribers as one list who receives all blog post updates and special offers alert as one more list where users only receive special offers alerts. Both the list will have different subscription forms to collect subscribers. This is how you can make use of different lists in sendy.

sendy view all list

If you wish to see more information about that list, then just click on that list name. It will take you to the detailed stats about that list subscribers. Here you can import all the subscribers to list, delete any subscribers, mass unsubscribe users or you can also export all the subscribers easily as well.

sendy list page

12. Custom Filed:

Need to collect More information from subscribers? then you can make use of custom field option which comes under list. Here you can create as many fields as you wish. For example if you wish to collect your subscriber Date of birth, then you can do it by using this option.

13. Autoresponders:

If you need to send Autorepsonders for any particular list, then you can set by going to that particular list and by clicking on that Autoresponders option.

14. Subscribe Form:

With Subscribe Form you can place a subscription form on any domain or page to start collecting subscribers. Just copy that HTML code and paste it on any web page to start collecting subscribers.

15. List Settings:

In List settings you can enable whether that list should have single opt-in or double opt-in, you can also configure subscription and unsubscription confirmation page, subscription and unsubscription message for each list.

16. Beautiful Reports:

In Reports tab you can see the detailed reports of each campaign that you sent.

sendy newsletter reports tab

To see detailed reports of any email campaign or newsletter, just click on that campaign and it will display full report of that particular campaign. In that report you can see stats like Which Link on that email got most clicks, last 10 emails opened users, last 10 unsubscribed users, last 10 bounced email, last 10 marked as spam users, which are all Country users opened your email.

sendy newsletter full report

 17. New Campaign Tab:

sendy new campaign tab

In “Create new Campaign” tab is the place where we are going to create new email campaign on sendy script. Currently Sendy newsletter script won’t come up with any newsletter template by default. So if you want to send any beautifully designed newsletter, then you have to do your research online to get the sendy newsletter template and use it here or else just send with bare design.

Sendy supported essential html tags are listed below the page. Use the tags which are required on your email campaign. Don’t forget to add unsubscribe tag, because sendy won’t do this automatically.

Currently sendy supports Plain text email and HTML email. But the thing is, sendy send or show plain text email only when user client won’t supports for HTML emails.

18. Sendy Settings:

Under sendy settings here we will configure some mandatory sendy configuration like Adding amazon SES details like AWS Access Key ID, AWS Secret Access Key and your amazon SES region.

If you are someone who have client and wish to receive to payments form clients, then you can add your Paypal email ID in this page.

sendy settings page

These are the features you currently get on sendy newsletter script.

Things Sendy Is Missing…

Sendy is a beautiful email marketing script, but it still missing some important features in it. Below is the list of feature which I felt was missing on Sendy.

1. Force to add “Unsubscribe” link in all Campaigns: 

Sometimes we may miss adding Unsubscribe link manually on every mail that we send. I think developer should make sendy to alert when we try to send newsletter without Unsubscribe link.

2. No Template support:

I think this is one of the main features which is currently lacking in Sendy script. Currently, sendy don’t come up with newsletter template support in it. If you need to add a template in sendy, then you need to Copy paste the HTML code on the editor.

3. No support for other then Amazon SES:

Sendy is built to use it with Amazon SES. If you wish to use sendy with other providers like a mandrill, then sendy won’t support it. You can use sendy with Mandrill as well, but the problem is sendy won’t handle bounce, complaints.

 4. No RSS to Email:

If you are a blogger then you might miss this feature a lot. Currently, sendy won’t automatically compile our latest blog post and send it to our subscribers.

5. No Advance Segmetation:

If you look at any premium email marketing solution like an active campaign, you will see a segmentation option. Sendy also offers segmentation, but its segmentation feature is useless.

6. Lead Scoring:

There is no such lead scoring option in sendy.

7. Not for Advanced Email marketing users:

If you are goal is just to collect, send some autoresponder (not advanced), send broadcast emails, and save some money, then sendy is the right fit for you.

If you are looking for an advanced email marketing feature, then I highly recommend an active campaign for sure.

Sendy Bonus:

If you are interested in buying sendy.co newsletter script, then you can buy from my link and get the below sendy bonus.

1) Sendy Autoresponder Webhook Script:

The sendy script cannot move subscribers from one list to another after all the autoresponder emails have been sent.

Let’s consider you have two lists. One list is Welcome Sequence, and another is LIVE List Sequence.

After all the autoresponder emails are sent on Welcome Sequence, if you need to move a subscribers to a new list called LIVE List Sequence, then you need a webhook script to do this functionality to achieve this feature. I have written a webhook script to do this feature.

You can learn more about this script here.

How to Get my Sendy Bonus:

1) Clear your Brower Cookies. I may miss the sale credit if you click on any other link so.

2) Visit sendy.co by clicking here and buy the sendy newsletter script

3) Send your sendy receipt to arun [at] pkarun.com

4) Once I receive the sale credit, I will give access to the sendy webhook script

Conclusion:

Sendy is an excellent script for email marketing. But it is not for everyone. Because sendy uses Amazon SES service, which means all the newsletter you send should adhere to their policy or else you will be suspended or banned from using Amazon SES service.

In general, if your planning to send “Buy this, Buy That” (only promotional or Spam sort mail) type of newsletter, then its better to stay away from sendy. If you are someone who is offering valuable content to your subscriber, then sendy will perfectly fit for your use case.

 

Visit: Sendy.co | Digital OceanAmazon SES | Aweber |Mailster Plugin | Active Campaign

P K Arun
 

I'm Arun, the guy behind this blog. I'm a full-time internet marketer and I love it. Here in this blog, I share about Affiliate marketing, SEO and other internet marketing stuff. If you are in the internet marketing industry then don't forget to subscribe to this blog.

Click Here to Leave a Comment Below 26 comments
wmc - November 26, 2015

Wow, what an excellent post, thank you, thank you, thank you! I bought SENDY today because I wanted a better solution than the typical suspects; aweber, getresponse, mail chimp and the like. Those services are so overpriced in my opinion; I wanted to go a different route.

Your post was so helpful in explaining how to think about SENDY. That’s one of the cons of SENDY, not much documentation or education. It’s assumed you are experienced at e-mail marketing. However, I feel much better after reading your post. I was a little confused with terminology; brands, lists, campaigns etc…

There is a learning curve with SENDY, however I think in the long run it will be more than worth the effort.

I could not find much of anything searching online for SENDY tutorials and the like. I am so happy I found your post.

-wmc

Reply
Martin - February 9, 2016

One other Sendy con is that it only runs on the Apache server. It is actually the only reason that I cannot switch to Nginx server which is a lot lighter and easier to maintain. It’s a petty that Sendy’s author does not plan to support Nginx, which is already running on close to a third of all servers – according to http://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/web_server/all

Reply
Agnes - April 8, 2016

I am browsing tools, searching for a solution that would 1> integrate nicely with wordpress (signups, post delivery, autoresponders) 2> use a good third party mailer
I was onto MyMail, and very disappointd to see here that bounce handling is faulty. Sendy seems interestting, but the lack of WP integration an d “No RSS to Email:” really turns me off. Any other one?

Reply
    Arun Kumar - April 8, 2016

    To be frank I never came across any such solution. MyMail is good, but I also felt some problem with that and moved to sendy. As I mentioned in this article, it lacks few features like RSS, WP integration etc..,

    I Still didn’t came across any better solution. Aweber work will for autoresponder, RSS feed (post delivery) but it’s costly.

    Reply
kose - March 11, 2017

Hello,
Do you think MyMail still can not handle bounce and complaints? MyMail is still in my mind.
As i see they made some changes and improvements.

What do you say brother?

Reply
    Arun Kumar - March 11, 2017

    Sorry. I’m not using it. Better ask their support team itself.

    Reply
Alex - March 29, 2017

I was using sendy.co for a long time. Really wish they had all modern features that other platforms have like esend.io, mailchimp.com. A/B testing, segmentation, better reporting.

Reply
Pat - May 3, 2017

I’ve been using Sendy for about 2 years now. It does all the basics and works well. The API unfortunately is VERY weak and I don’t see the developer making any additions to it any time soon.

Reply
Anantha Raman - August 23, 2018

Well explained article about sendy. Very useful in understanding. I am about to purchase my copy.

Reply
sush - June 10, 2019

So Does that mean we cannot use aws for affiliate marketing campaigns?

Reply
    Arun Kumar - June 10, 2019

    I guess so. Please check the updated terms and conditions of Amazon SES once.

    UPDATE: No problem with affiliate marketing emails. Just make sure you don’t have too many spam complaints. I’m using it without any issues.

    Reply
Tom - October 6, 2020

Hello Arun, an excellent AND very informative review of Sendy. Thank you. I was possibly interested in your bonus, but there is a problem, you state, “Use my link to buy a Sendy newsletter script and get the below sendy bonus” but I can’t find a link anywhere. It is really more for me to learn a possible different writing style as I like your review, but I am not growing a blog, so direct use to me is limited. Still, I would like to see what you are offering.

Thanks again for a nice, thorough review.

P.S. to add one more possible con to your list, I can’t find anywhere whether Sendy offers A/B testing or not. I suspect not. So manual it is.

Reply
    P K Arun - October 6, 2020

    Hey, I’m sorry you couldn’t notice my sendy affiliate link. I will update the content later to avoid such issues happening with other users.

    Anyway, here the steps you need to perform to claim my sendy bonuses.

    1) Click this link to buy sendy ==> https://pkarun.com/sendy
    2) Forward order receipt to [email protected]
    3) Allow up to 48hrs to get your bonuses

    Yes. Sendy doesn’t offer A/B testing and all… It’s not for advanced users. But still sendy servers it’s purpose. I still use sendy and love it.

    Reply
Anja - February 2, 2021

Hello Arun,

I have purchased Sendy via your affiliate link.
Then I sent you an email ca. 1 week ago in order to get the bonus theme – as you described it here.
I sent another email 2 days ago, but also got no answer.
Did this emails reach you?

Would you please answer me and send me the promised theme?

Bbest regards,
Anja

Reply
    P K Arun - February 11, 2021

    Hi,

    Sorry for the late reply.

    I checked my inbox, and I didn’t receive any mail from your end.

    You told me you bought from my link, but it looks like I haven’t received any sale credit. It seems like you clicked another link while purchasing the product.

    May you can speak to the sendy team once to double-check on sale credit.

    Reply
Ralph - November 16, 2022

Hello Arun

Thank you for your article on Sendy. I am trying to set up an affiliate marketing campaign and availed myself with Get Response’s free 30 days email and autoresponder. I was not able to complete setting it up as I had a lot of problems. Each time that I got in touch with the person who sold me the affiliate marketing course to rectify the problem, it would take him at least two days to respond as he is really busy. Eventually, the free period ran out and right now, I can’t afford to pay the Get Response fees for a year. Would I be able to use Sendy for affiliate marketing knowing that I would need an effective autoresponder?

Many regards
Ralph

Reply
    P K Arun - November 16, 2022

    Sendy can handle autoresponder sequences, but you only get basic features. You don’t get any advanced features. In my opinion, it should be sufficient to get started. Sendy is not for non-techie people.

    Reply
Ralph - November 16, 2022

Hi Arun,

Can I use Sendy autoresponder for affiliate marketing? I’m trying to set up a funnel etc. through an affiliate marketing course which I purchased.

Regards
Ralph

Reply
    P K Arun - November 16, 2022

    Yes.. you can use it. If you spam people with your emails, Amazon SES will block your account, which is required for the sendy platform.

    I would recommend you to try flodesk, which doesn’t require any technical setup and offers unlimited subscribers and emails, but only 2 domains are allowed.

    Reply
Vince - March 29, 2023

I purchased this software today and never received the key. Is this company still working? No response from anyone. Typicalling you get a key right away. Hopefully, you might know. Thank you 🙂

Reply
    P K Arun - March 30, 2023

    The software is still working fine for me.. not sure about the support staff. Try reaching them through all possible channels.

    For the license key, make sure to check the spam folder once.

    Reply
      Yoram - April 18, 2023

      I tried all possible channels (well, there’s only [email protected], no social media) and NEVER got a reply, although I ofered to pay. Please a warning to your blog post readers

      Reply
Yoram - April 18, 2023

Thank you for the excellent review. I bought Sendy, configured it and started working. However, it is FULL OF BUGS and NO ONE replies. They (it’s probably just a “he”) deleted my forum posting and never replied to email support requests, although I offered to pay. The Cron job is not working, the lists were deleted twice for no reason (not by me, for sure) and the templates were deleted. I had to recover everything from the DB. Tons of error messages which ide bugs and as I wrote, no support plan whatsoever. I would recommend anyone considering it, don’t buy if you can’t get support. I didn’t finf any way to get any support, even paid. A script without suport and QA is worthless

Reply
    P K Arun - April 18, 2023

    Never noticed BUGS. I’m still actively using it.

    Support wise.. maybe you are right.

    Reply

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