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Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

davekiss.com

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Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

#51

Post by Freyale »

jtreminio wrote: post #23
pixeloution wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandrill is not "the backend service behind MailChimp". Mandrill came after MailChimp and is a separate thing - they only allow it to be used for transactional email. Sending a newsletter via Mandrill violates its Terms of Service.

I just went through Mandrill's TOS [0] and didn't see anything referencing a ban on emailing lists. From my understanding, and having used Mandrill for some time, it can be used for anything you want (that follows its double opt-in, no spam requirements). [0] https://mandrill.com/terms/

Just to back this person up, on Mandrills account page it states:

"Use Mandrill to send automated one-to-one email like password resets and welcome messages, as well as marketing emails and customized newsletters."

Emphasis on the "as well as marketing emails and customized newsletters" section there.

https://mandrill.com/about/

The difference of Mandril is that is doesn't have all the fancy features of Mailchip that people "would expect" to create a newsletter etc so Mandril is aimed at developers/software etc. That does not mean you can not use it for same uses as Mailchimp though.

Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

#52

Post by JonoBB »

jaysonelliot wrote: post #31

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 signe…

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.

Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

#53

Post by LAMike »

Animats wrote: post #40
IgorPartola wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so?

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 prope…

So is a presidential campaign spam

Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

#55

Post by 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

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.

Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

#56

Post by michaelq »

desheikh wrote: post #9

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.

This looks like a great value. We were considering using Campaign.js, but actually getting it up and running on a server to fire out campaigns seemed like a pain (as does using sendy). Combining the affordability of SES with some symbolance of the UX of mailchimp seems like a killer value proposition.

Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

#57

Post by 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.

Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

#58

Post by gotrythis »

gotrythis wrote: post #57

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…

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.

Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

#59

Post by snowwrestler »

jszymborski wrote: post #41
Animats wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prope…

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.

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.

Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy

#60

Post by 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.
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