Sendy Pricing Review: Self-Hosted Email Marketing Cost Analysis

Remember when email marketing was simple? You’d sign up for a service, pay your monthly fee, and send your newsletters. Then your list grew. And grew. Suddenly you’re looking at a $500 monthly bill and wondering how you got here. That’s where Sendy comes in — a self-hosted email platform that costs just $69. Once. No monthly fees eating into your budget every time your subscriber count goes up.

Here’s the thing: Sendy works differently than Mailchimp or ConstantContact. Instead of paying based on how many subscribers you have, you pay Amazon SES about $1 for every 10,000 emails you actually send. For businesses with big lists or those who don’t email constantly, this can mean saving literally thousands of dollars a year.

Sendy Pricing Overview

Let me break down how Sendy’s pricing actually works, because it’s nothing like what you’re probably used to. You buy the software once for $69, install it on your own server, and then you only pay Amazon when you send emails. That’s it. No subscription tiers, no surprise charges when you hit 2,001 subscribers.

The math gets pretty wild when you compare it to traditional services. Say you’ve got 50,000 subscribers and you email them twice a month. With Mailchimp? You’re looking at around $350 monthly. With Sendy? Maybe $15 in Amazon fees plus whatever your hosting costs. We’re talking about saving 95% or more on your email marketing.

Of course, there are some costs to consider. You’ll need web hosting (usually $5-20 a month), and major software updates might cost an extra $29.

Sendy Monthly Pricing

This is where things get interesting: Sendy doesn’t have monthly pricing. You pay once, and you’re done. The only recurring costs come from wherever you host it and what Amazon charges you for sending emails.

Most people spend between $5 and $30 monthly on hosting, depending on their setup. Then there’s the Amazon SES fees — but at $0.10 per thousand emails, you’d have to send a million emails to hit $100. Compare that to traditional platforms where sending 100,000 emails might cost you a grand. One user mentioned switching from MailChimp saved them $1,200 a month. That’s not a typo.

The best part? No billing surprises. You know exactly what you’ll pay based on what you send. No jumping to a higher tier because you added 50 new subscribers. No paying for people who haven’t opened an email in six months.

Sendy Monthly Plans

While Sendy itself is a one-time purchase, some hosting companies offer managed Sendy hosting with monthly plans. These bundle everything together — though you still need to bring your own license or buy one.

Free Plan

There’s no free plan with Sendy. You’ve got to buy it upfront. I know that sounds like a downside, especially when Sender gives you 2,500 subscribers free forever. But here’s the thing — once you grow past those free tier limits, Sendy becomes the cheaper option fast.

Think of it like buying versus renting. Sure, renting seems cheaper at first. But if you’re in it for the long haul, owning saves you money. That $69 license fee pays for itself the moment you would’ve hit your second month of paid service elsewhere.

Starter Tier

The managed starter plans run about $49 monthly for up to 200,000 subscribers. You get decent sending speeds (10-15 emails per second), and most providers throw in help setting up Amazon SES. That last part’s actually pretty valuable if you’ve never dealt with email authentication before.

They usually charge a setup fee around $20, but you can often get two months free if you pay annually. So you’re really looking at about $41 per month. For small businesses moving away from the big expensive platforms, this works out great. You get professional sending capabilities without the professional price tag.

Professional Tier

At $89 per month, the professional tier handles up to half a million subscribers. No setup fees this time, and you get better server resources so your campaigns don’t slow down when you’re sending to everyone at once.

What I find interesting is that Mailchimp would charge you $299 or more for similar capabilities. Pay yearly and you’re down to about $74 monthly with those two free months. The math just makes sense if you’re sending regularly to a decent-sized list. You also get things like custom domain hosting and better security, which matters more than you’d think.

Enterprise Tier

Enterprise starts at $169 monthly for a million subscribers, going up to $490 for two million plus. At this level, you’re getting dedicated IPs, custom configurations, and actual humans who answer when you need help.

Even at these prices, you’re still saving massive amounts compared to traditional platforms. We’re talking thousands of dollars monthly for similar capabilities elsewhere. And the scalability is real — you can adjust as needed without having to migrate to a whole new platform. Pretty solid for growing businesses that don’t want to rebuild their email setup every year.

Sendy Pay-as-you-go Plan

Every Sendy user is basically on pay-as-you-go through Amazon SES. You send emails, you pay for them. You don’t send emails, you don’t pay. Simple as that.

The savings are kind of ridiculous. Amazon charges $0.10 per thousand emails. MailChimp’s pay-as-you-go? About $200 for the same amount. That’s 0.5% of the cost. No wonder people switch.

This setup really shines for seasonal businesses or anyone with irregular sending patterns. E-commerce stores with huge customer lists but only occasional campaigns? Perfect fit. No penalties for having a big list, no charges for inactive subscribers. You just pay for what you actually use.

Sendy Transactional Emails Pricing

Sendy wasn’t really built for transactional emails — you know, order confirmations, password resets, that stuff. But people have figured out workarounds using the autoresponder features. Set it to “send immediately” and you’ve got a hacky transactional system.

These emails cost the same as everything else: basically nothing. We’re still talking $0.0001 per email. The setup’s a bit weird though. You create separate lists for each type of transactional email, then use the API to trigger them. It works, but it’s not exactly elegant.

If you need serious transactional capabilities, you might want to pair Sendy with something else for those emails. Compared to Sender, which includes transactional features in their regular plans, Sendy requires more technical juggling. But if you’re sending tons of transactional emails? The cost savings might be worth the extra setup hassle.

Sendy SMS Pricing

Here’s what Sendy doesn’t do: SMS. At all. It’s an email platform, period. If you need text messaging, you’re looking elsewhere.

This is where services like Sender have an edge — they bundle SMS credits right into their packages. With Sendy, you’d need to set up something separate like Twilio or MessageBird for texts. More tools to manage, more accounts to juggle.

Just know going in that Sendy is email-only, and plan accordingly.

Final Thoughts on Sendy Pricing

After digging through all the numbers, Sendy’s pricing model is kind of amazing if you’re sending serious volume. That $69 license fee seems like nothing when you realize you could save thousands yearly. Businesses sending 100,000+ emails monthly? We’re talking 95% savings or more.

But let’s be real — it’s not for everyone. You need to be comfortable with technical stuff. Setting up hosting, configuring DNS, dealing with Amazon SES… it’s not rocket science, but it’s not exactly plug-and-play either. There’s no fancy drag-and-drop builder, and support is basically forums and documentation.

Who wins with Sendy? Email agencies managing multiple clients love it. E-commerce stores with huge customer lists save fortunes. Newsletter creators who’ve built real audiences can keep most of their revenue instead of handing it to their email provider.