Sendy Review: Self-Hosted Email Marketing for $59

Why Lifetime Deals for Email Marketing Are Risky

Email marketing is one of those categories where lifetime deals tend to disappoint. The reason is straightforward: sending emails has a real, recurring cost. Every message that leaves a server costs money, and that cost scales with your list size. When a company offers an LTD for an email tool, they're essentially betting they can absorb those growing costs indefinitely — and that bet doesn't always pay off.

At the time of this review, both SendFox on AppSumo and Moosend through Lifetime Deal Fans were generating a lot of buzz. Both are solid tools, but the underlying economics of email LTDs should give you pause. You either end up with upsells down the road or a company that simply can't keep the lights on.

Sendy takes a completely different approach. Instead of a recurring subscription or a risky lifetime deal, you pay a one-time fee of $59 for the software and then pay Amazon SES directly for the emails you send. That separation of software cost from sending cost is what makes the model sustainable.

What Sendy Is (and What It Isn't)

Sendy is a self-hosted PHP application that you install on your own web server, much like you'd install WordPress. It connects to Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) to handle the actual delivery of your emails, which is why sending costs stay so low — roughly $0.10 per 1,000 emails.

The feature set is more capable than you might expect for a $59 tool. You get campaign management, autoresponders, list segmentation, subscriber management, bounce tracking, custom fields, and white-label multi-brand support for agencies. There's also integration with Zapier, WooCommerce, and Magento.

That said, Sendy is not a replacement for a full marketing automation platform like ActiveCampaign or Mautic. If you need complex automation workflows, website activity tracking, deep tagging systems, or conditional logic based on subscriber behavior, this isn't your tool. Sendy is purpose-built for sending newsletters and basic drip sequences — and it does that job well.

Installation and Server Setup

Getting Sendy running requires a bit of technical comfort. You'll need a web server with PHP and MySQL, an FTP client like FileZilla to upload the files, and the ability to configure DNS records. It's not difficult if you've ever set up a WordPress site manually, but it's definitely a step up from signing into a SaaS dashboard.

The recommended approach is to spin up a dedicated VPS. Cloudways is a solid option that simplifies server management considerably — you create a custom PHP application, and it provides the database credentials you need for Sendy's config file. The monthly cost for a basic VPS starts around $11.

The installation process has about five steps: edit the config.php file with your database credentials and app URL, upload all files (including the hidden .htaccess file — easy to miss on Mac), set folder permissions to 777 on the uploads directory, run the web installer, and connect your Amazon SES credentials. One gotcha to watch for: if you're on a Mac, hidden files like .htaccess won't show by default. Press Shift+Command+Period to reveal them before uploading via FTP.

Setting Up Amazon SES

Amazon SES is the engine behind Sendy's email delivery, and setting it up involves a few steps inside the AWS console. First, you need to verify your sending domain by adding TXT, CNAME, and MX records to your DNS settings. This confirms to Amazon that you actually own the domain you want to send from. You'll also want to enable DKIM signing for better deliverability.

Next, verify the specific email address you'll be sending from. Amazon sends a confirmation link — click it and you're set. Then head to the IAM section of AWS to create a user with programmatic access. This generates the Access Key and Secret Access Key that Sendy needs to communicate with SES.

Amazon SES starts you in a sandbox with a daily sending limit (typically around 10,000–50,000 emails per day). If you need more, you can request a limit increase through AWS support. The generous free tier means you likely won't see any charges for your first batch of emails, and after that the per-email cost is negligible for most use cases.

Creating Brands and Managing Clients

Sendy's multi-brand architecture makes it genuinely useful for agencies. Each brand gets its own logo, sender name, email address, and optionally a custom domain for tracking links. Clients can log in to their own siloed interface without seeing any other brands on the system.

The agency features go deeper than simple white-labeling. You can set client privileges to control access to campaigns, templates, lists, subscribers, and reports. There's even a built-in billing system — you can charge clients a delivery fee and a per-recipient cost, with payments processed through PayPal. Sending limits per brand prevent any single client from burning through your entire SES quota in a day.

Custom domains for brands cost $12 per license, with volume discounts available ($50 for five). GDPR compliance features are built in, including consent tracking, opt-in enforcement for campaigns and autoresponders, and reCAPTCHA support to keep bots off your signup forms.

The Campaign Editor and Templates

Sendy's campaign editor is functional rather than flashy. You get a WYSIWYG editor with standard formatting tools, image uploads, personalization tags (subscriber name, email, etc.), and the ability to switch into raw HTML mode. The HTML editor is a major advantage over tools like SendFox, which lacked this feature at the time of review.

Templates don't come pre-loaded, but there's an active ecosystem around them. The Sendy forum maintains a resource list with links to free templates on GitHub, premium template packs on ThemeForest, and even drag-and-drop email builders designed specifically for Sendy. Once you find or build a template you like, save it and reuse it — the duplicate button on campaigns makes it easy to clone a previous newsletter and just update the content.

Sending options include both immediate delivery and scheduling for a future date and time. There's a test email feature so you can preview exactly how your newsletter will look in an inbox before committing to a full send. The emails come through clean — no Sendy branding, no forced logos, no upgrade nags.

Autoresponders and Drip Sequences

Autoresponders require their own cron job to function, which is a quick setup in Cloudways or cPanel. Once that's running, you can build drip sequences triggered by subscription events. Each email in the sequence can be timed in minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months after the subscriber joins the list.

The autoresponder builder uses the same editor as regular campaigns, so you're not losing any functionality. You create each email individually and set its delay relative to the subscription date. The interface for adding new emails to a sequence isn't immediately obvious — you need to navigate back to the autoresponder list view to add additional messages rather than looking for a button within the editor.

The limitation here is tracking and conditional logic. You can't branch your drip sequence based on whether someone opened a previous email or clicked a specific link. For that level of sophistication, you'd need to bring Zapier into the mix — for example, removing someone from a list after they complete a purchase, or moving subscribers between segments based on engagement.

Getting Subscribers onto Your Lists

Sendy provides multiple ways to build your lists. The simplest is a ready-to-use hosted signup page with a unique URL you can share anywhere — though it does carry Sendy's branding. More practically, there's an embeddable HTML form that you can drop into any website. When embedded in WordPress, it automatically inherits your site's styling, which means no extra design work.

For WordPress users, there are dedicated integrations worth knowing about. ConvertPro, a popular popup builder, has a direct Sendy integration. The Sendy Elements plugin connects Sendy to Elementor Pro's form widget. And for ecommerce, there's a WooCommerce plugin ($15 on Envato) that automatically adds customers to a Sendy list when they make a purchase.

CSV import is available for migrating existing lists from other platforms. The format is straightforward — two columns with name and email — but formatting needs to be exact or the import will silently fail without throwing an error. List management includes segmentation by signup date, country, and custom fields, plus housekeeping tools to identify bounced emails, unconfirmed subscribers, and inactive contacts.

Final Verdict: Who Should Use Sendy?

Sendy earned a 7.9 out of 10 in this review, and that score reflects genuine surprise at how capable it is. The segmentation features, autoresponders, agency tools, and scheduling weren't expected from a $59 one-time purchase. The biggest gap is the lack of built-in automation — having to route subscriber management through Zapier rather than handling it natively is the main thing holding Sendy back from being a complete email marketing solution.

The ideal Sendy user is a content creator sending weekly or biweekly newsletters, a small business running event announcements, or an agency managing straightforward email campaigns for multiple clients. If your email strategy is primarily "write content, send to list, track opens and clicks," Sendy handles that beautifully at a cost that's almost impossible to beat.

The total cost of ownership is worth calculating honestly. You're looking at $59 for the software, roughly $11/month for a VPS, and pennies per thousand emails through Amazon SES. Compare that to stacking three or four SendFox codes at $200+ or paying monthly for MailChimp. The tradeoff is that you're responsible for your own server, your own updates, and your own troubleshooting. If you're comfortable with that level of ownership — or excited by it — Sendy is an excellent choice.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.