Amazon SES is one of the most affordable ways to send newsletters. Pricing starts at $0.10 per 1,000 emails.
For context: most big-name email service providers charge based on your total subscriber count and the number of sends per month. That adds up fast. With SES, you’re paying for what you actually send.
SES is a cloud-based email infrastructure service built for high-volume sending. It’s not an email marketing platform with a dashboard and campaign builder. It’s a sending layer. It handles deliverability through tools like a Virtual Deliverability Manager, which tracks inbox placement and can automatically implement improvements to your sending reputation.
SES supports all standard authentication protocols, including DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, which are table stakes for landing in the inbox. It also gives you a reputation dashboard to track bounces, complaints, and other deliverability signals.
One thing worth knowing: new SES accounts start in a sandbox, where you can only send to verified email addresses. To send to the general public, you need to request production access through the AWS console. Approval typically takes a day or two.
The catch? Amazon SES doesn’t include any subscriber management. No lists, no opt-in forms, no unsubscribe handling. You need something to sit in front of it.
That’s where Sendy comes in.
Sendy is a self-hosted email newsletter application that plugs directly into Amazon SES. You install it on your own server, much like WordPress, and it handles everything SES doesn’t: subscriber lists, opt-in forms, campaign management, and reporting.
The license is a one-time purchase, so there are no monthly fees as your list grows. You pay SES for sends, and that’s it.
Sendy supports custom fields, single and double opt-in, custom subscribe and unsubscribe pages, and mass import of subscribers. It also handles bounce and complaint processing automatically, pruning invalid addresses from your list in real time.
Campaign reports show opens, clicks, bounces, complaints, and geographic data, and you can export segments for retargeting.
It’s a popular combination for a reason: Sendy does the heavy lifting on the front end, and SES handles delivery at rock-bottom cost.
If running your own server isn’t something you want to deal with, check out SendyBay. It’s a fully managed hosting service built specifically for Sendy. You get all the benefits without the setup and maintenance headaches.