Hehe, the post is full of referral links to Sendy.
Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
71–80 of 91 posts
Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
#72Earlier 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/
It's been 3 years, but there was word from MailChimp that that is ok: "Yes - you can use Mandrill for newsletters"
Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or you could avoid doing business with Sendgrid and use mailgun or mailjet.
Finally someone mentioning these! I've used Sendgrid, but I love Mailgun.
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.
Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
#74We'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.
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
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
Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clearly it depends on your business and how you measure the value. I've worked for companies that spent over $5k/mo on Mailchimp and thought it quite worth it.
Right. How much is it to have someone on staff (or available for calling up in an emergency) who knows how to configure mail servers? Far more than 5k/month.
If that's their only job, sure. I know mail servers. I also know the rest of our stack, and that's my primary job.
Or, as noted throughout this thread, just use SES (or Mandrill if SES's deliverability scares you, but IMO it shouldn't).
Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
#76The 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.
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.
Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
#77The 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.
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 "…
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.
Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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".
Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 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
Looks nice, but it's even more expensive than Mailchimp unless you have your own mail server.
Re: Create your own MailChimp clone for $5 a month with Sendy
#80Checkout Converkit by Nathan Barry (he's in HN quite frequently). http://convertkit.com Great alternative (sort of like aweber with good design & active development + a focus on building autoresponders).
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."