Starter
For your first email program.
$16USD / month
$192 billed yearly.
20,000 emails / month
Choose Starter- 5 brands · 3 seats
- 5 custom sending domains
- 500 email verifications/month
- $1.50 / 1,000 extra emails
Nitrosend is the best Sendy alternative for teams that run their email from AI, with the top score of 76.5 out of 100 and 9 out of 10 on working from your AI assistant. To run email from an AI assistant with Nitrosend, add its MCP server at api.nitrosend.com/mcp to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex and sign in with OAuth, as the agent onboarding guide describes. The assistant then writes the campaigns and flows, and they stay drafts until they are approved. It keeps the part of Sendy that works: you can plug in your own Amazon SES keys and keep the sending reputation you already warmed. It drops the part that does not, because there is no server to run. It costs $20 a month for 20,000 emails and $650 for a million emails on Scale including overage, with unlimited contacts. Brevo comes next at 74, then MailerLite at 61.5.
The ranking
Rank 1Nitrosend
76.5 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Emails sent
- Free plan
- 5,000 emails, then 500 a month
- Entry plan
- $20 a month, 20,000 emails
- Works from your AI assistant9 out of 10Official MCP server runs campaigns, flows and sends from the chat; campaigns and flows stay drafts until approved (MCP registry).
- Emails in your brand, no designer9 out of 10Brand Kit scans the site for colors, fonts and voice, and applies them to every draft on every plan (docs).
- Price8.5 out of 10Unlimited contacts on every plan. $20 a month for 20,000 emails and $650 for a million emails on Scale including overage (pricing).
- Free plan7 out of 105,000 emails to start, then 500 a month, unlimited contacts. New accounts start at 100 recipients per rolling 24 hours (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan9 out of 10Transactional and marketing email share one allowance and one API on every plan, Free included (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand6 out of 10A block builder exists for editing by hand, but it is plainer, because the agent is the main way in.
- Integrations, support and track record5 out of 10Shopify, Stripe, HubSpot, Attio and Mailchimp, five bring-your-own sending providers, a Node SDK, a CLI and signed webhooks for transactional email, but a young product from a small team (docs).
Nitrosend
Ask your agent for the next campaign
Connect Nitrosend to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex, bring your own Amazon SES keys on Pro, and describe the email. Contacts are unlimited on every plan.
Free: 5,000 emails to start, then 500 a month. No credit card.
Start free
Rank 2Brevo
74 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Emails sent
- Free plan
- 300 emails a day, 100,000 contacts
- Entry plan
- $9 a month, 5,000 emails
- Works from your AI assistant7 out of 10Official MCP server manages campaigns, contacts and templates, but lists no module for automations (Brevo developers).
- Emails in your brand, no designer7 out of 10Brand library fetches logo, colors, fonts and links from your site into the editor, not voice (Brevo help).
- Price6 out of 10Priced by emails sent. $69 a month for 20,000 on Standard, $32 on Starter without automation, and $999 for a million on Professional (pricing).
- Free plan8 out of 10300 emails a day, up to 100,000 contacts, transactional email included, free forever (Brevo help).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan9 out of 10Every plan, Free included, has transactional email by API and SMTP in the same volume (pricing FAQ).
- Editor for building by hand8 out of 10Drag-and-drop editor and templates, 4.5 of 5 across 2,722 reviews, Ease of Use the top tag (G2).
- Integrations, support and track record8 out of 10150+ integrations, SMS, WhatsApp and a CRM in one account, phone support on Professional (pricing).
Rank 3MailerLite
61.5 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Subscribers
- Free plan
- 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month
- Entry plan
- $12 a month, 500 subscribers
- Works from your AI assistant8 out of 10Official MCP server with
create_campaign,schedule_campaignandcreate_automationtools (MailerLite help). - Emails in your brand, no designer7 out of 10Brand styles pull logo, colors, fonts and links from your site's URL, but not voice (MailerLite help).
- Price3 out of 10Priced by subscribers. $89 a month at 10,000 on Comfort, and a quote above 200,000, where Comfort is $819 (pricing).
- Free plan5 out of 10250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, with 3 automations and knowledge base support (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan5 out of 10Transactional email is MailerSend, a separate product the pricing table links out to (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand8 out of 10Three editors on every plan, drag-and-drop included, and 4.6 of 5 across 1,113 reviews (G2).
- Integrations, support and track record7 out of 10100+ integrations, sites and landing pages built in, and 24/7 live chat on Power (pricing).
Rank 4Elastic Email
57.5 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Contacts, on the marketing plans
- Free plan
- 1,000 contacts, 3,000 emails a month
- Entry plan
- $29 a month, 2,500 contacts
- Works from your AI assistant6 out of 10Official MCP server with tools to create a campaign and send bulk email, but you run it yourself with an API key a person creates (GitHub).
- Emails in your brand, no designer3 out of 10An AI template designer takes a set number of prompts a month. Nothing reads your brand from your site (pricing).
- Price5 out of 10$89 a month on Starter for 10,000 contacts, and $1,650 for 550,000 contacts, the step that covers 500,000 (pricing).
- Free plan5 out of 101,000 contacts and 3,000 emails a month, with no time limit (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan8 out of 10The marketing plans include the Email API and SMTP relay on the same account and bill (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand7 out of 10Drag-and-drop designer, a template gallery, a raw HTML editor, landing pages and forms on every plan (pricing).
- Integrations, support and track record6 out of 10Official client libraries in ten languages, a CLI, 24/7 email support, and private IPs from $40 a month (pricing).
Rank 5listmonk
54 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Free software, you pay your own sending and server
- Free plan
- Open source under AGPLv3
- Latest version
- v6.2.0, June 2026
- Works from your AI assistant2 out of 10No official MCP server or assistant app. An agent can only reach it through the API on a server you run (GitHub).
- Emails in your brand, no designer2 out of 10Templates are yours to write in Go templating, HTML, Markdown or the visual builder. Nothing learns your brand (listmonk).
- Price10 out of 10The software is free. Sending through Amazon SES on Essentials is about $3.20 for 20,000 emails and $160 for a million, plus your server (SES pricing).
- Free plan5 out of 10Free and open source with no send limit of its own, but every email costs whatever your SMTP or SES account charges (listmonk).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan8 out of 10Campaigns and a transactional API run from the same install, over any SMTP or SES account you connect (listmonk).
- Editor for building by hand6 out of 10A visual drag-and-drop builder, a rich text editor, Markdown and raw HTML, in a plain admin interface (listmonk).
- Integrations, support and track record4 out of 10Open source since 2019 with a large following on GitHub, community support only, and no vendor to call (GitHub).
Rank 6EmailOctopus
50.5 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Subscribers
- Free plan
- 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails a month
- On your own SES
- Connect, from $9 a month
- Works from your AI assistant1 out of 10No first-party MCP server or connector, and the v2 API's campaign endpoints only read, so no route can create or send a campaign (API docs).
- Emails in your brand, no designer6 out of 10Template designs generated automatically in your colors and styles, not voice (EmailOctopus).
- Price7 out of 10Connect, which sends through your own Amazon SES account, is $33.50 a month at 10,000 subscribers and $645 at 500,000, plus the SES fees (pricing).
- Free plan8 out of 10Free for 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with no time limit (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan1 out of 10No transactional email. All emails are created and sent from the dashboard (help).
- Editor for building by hand7 out of 10Drag-and-drop builder, custom HTML and 100+ templates, 4.2 of 5 on G2 (pricing, G2).
- Integrations, support and track record6 out of 10Over 1,000 direct and third-party integrations, plus landing pages and forms (EmailOctopus).
Rank 7Amazon SES
49.5 out of 100Total
- Priced by
- Emails sent
- Free plan
- None, AWS credits for new customers
- Rate
- $0.10 per 1,000 a la carte, $0.16 on Essentials
- Works from your AI assistant5 out of 10AWS's own managed MCP server can call SES to send, but SES has no campaigns, lists or automations, so an agent sends one message at a time (AWS).
- Emails in your brand, no designer2 out of 10Stored templates are HTML and text you write yourself. There is no brand setup (pricing).
- Price10 out of 10$3.20 for 20,000 emails and $160 for a million on Essentials, the default for new accounts, or $2 and $100 a la carte (pricing).
- Free plan4 out of 10No standing free plan. New AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits that apply to SES (pricing).
- Receipts and newsletters on one plan3 out of 10A sending service with contact lists and subscription management, but no campaign builder or automation flows (pricing).
- Editor for building by hand1 out of 10No visual editor at all. Templates go in through the API or the console as code (pricing).
- Integrations, support and track record6 out of 10Running at Amazon scale since 2011, inside every AWS tool, with support sold as a separate AWS plan (pricing).
How they compare
How each one scores
Scores out of 10, September 26, 2026| What we compared | Nitrosend | Brevo | MailerLite | Elastic Email | listmonk | EmailOctopus | SES |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Works from your AI assistant20 points | 9 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 8 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 | 2 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 | 5 out of 10 |
| Emails in your brand, no designer10 points | 9 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 3 out of 10 | 2 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 | 2 out of 10 |
| Price20 points | 8.5 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 | 3 out of 10 | 5 out of 10 | 10 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 10 out of 10 |
| Free plan10 points | 7 out of 10 | 8 out of 10 | 5 out of 10 | 5 out of 10 | 5 out of 10 | 8 out of 10 | 4 out of 10 |
| Receipts and newsletters on one plan10 points | 9 out of 10 | 9 out of 10 | 5 out of 10 | 8 out of 10 | 8 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 | 3 out of 10 |
| Editor for building by hand15 points | 6 out of 10 | 8 out of 10 | 8 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 1 out of 10 |
| Integrations, support and track record15 points | 5 out of 10 | 8 out of 10 | 7 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 | 4 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 | 6 out of 10 |
| Total scoreout of 100 | 76.5 out of 100,1st | 74 out of 100,2nd | 61.5 out of 100,3rd | 57.5 out of 100,4th | 54 out of 100,5th | 50.5 out of 100,6th | 49.5 out of 100,7th |
Here are the seven yes-or-no questions Sendy users usually ask before they move. A tick means the service does it, as described on its own pages today. A dash means the answer is not a clean yes or no.
7 services, side by side
Checked September 26, 2026QuestionNitrosendBrevoMailerLiteElastic EmaillistmonkEmailOctopusSES
NitrosendBrevoMailerLiteElastic EmaillistmonkEmailOctopusSESSend a campaign from the chatCan an agent send a marketing campaign without anyone opening the web app?Nitrosend: Yes.Brevo: Not a yes or no.MailerLite: Yes.Elastic Email: Yes.listmonk: No.EmailOctopus: No.SES: No.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Yes. Yes, through the MCP server. Campaigns stay drafts until approved. |
| Brevo | Not a yes or no. Its MCP server creates and manages email campaigns. Its docs list no module for automations. |
| MailerLite | Yes. Yes. Its MCP server can create and schedule campaigns. |
| Elastic Email | Yes. Yes, through its MCP server, once a person has set it up with an API key. |
| listmonk | No. No. Only through its API on a server you run. |
| EmailOctopus | No. No first-party route. Only third-party API wrappers. |
| SES | No. No. SES has no campaigns to send. |
Official MCP serverIs there a first-party MCP server for marketing email?Nitrosend: Yes.Brevo: Yes.MailerLite: Yes.Elastic Email: Yes.listmonk: No.EmailOctopus: No.SES: No.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Yes. Yes. Listed as com.nitrosend/nitrosend on the official MCP registry. |
| Brevo | Yes. Yes, remote-hosted, with 27 modules. |
| MailerLite | Yes. Yes. It can also build automations, with create_automation. |
| Elastic Email | Yes. Yes, a self-hosted server published on its GitHub. |
| listmonk | No. No. |
| EmailOctopus | No. No. |
| SES | No. No SES MCP product, only a sample server and the general AWS one. |
Brand kit from your siteDoes it pick up your logo, fonts and colors from your website?Nitrosend: Yes.Brevo: Yes.MailerLite: Yes.Elastic Email: No.listmonk: No.EmailOctopus: Not a yes or no.SES: No.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Yes. Yes. Brand Kit reads colors, fonts and voice from your site. |
| Brevo | Yes. Yes. The brand library fetches logo, colors, fonts and links. |
| MailerLite | Yes. Yes. Brand styles pull logo, colors, fonts and links. |
| Elastic Email | No. No. An AI template designer, not a brand scan. |
| listmonk | No. No. You write the templates. |
| EmailOctopus | Not a yes or no. Template designs are generated in your colors and styles. |
| SES | No. No. Templates are HTML you write. |
Rarely emailed contacts are freeDoes holding a contact you rarely email cost nothing?Nitrosend: Yes.Brevo: Yes.MailerLite: No.Elastic Email: No.listmonk: Yes.EmailOctopus: No.SES: Yes.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Yes. Yes. Contacts are unlimited on every plan. |
| Brevo | Yes. Yes. The bill follows emails sent. |
| MailerLite | No. No. The plan is set by subscriber count. |
| Elastic Email | No. No. The marketing plans are set by contacts. |
| listmonk | Yes. Yes. The software is free at any list size. |
| EmailOctopus | No. No. The plan is set by subscriber count. |
| SES | Yes. Yes. Charged per email sent. |
Transactional includedAre receipts and resets in the same plan as newsletters?Nitrosend: Yes.Brevo: Yes.MailerLite: No.Elastic Email: Yes.listmonk: Yes.EmailOctopus: No.SES: Yes.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Yes. Yes, on every plan including Free. |
| Brevo | Yes. Yes, on every plan including Free. |
| MailerLite | No. No. Transactional is MailerSend, a separate product. |
| Elastic Email | Yes. Yes. The Email API and SMTP relay come with the marketing plans. |
| listmonk | Yes. Yes. A transactional API ships in the same install. |
| EmailOctopus | No. No. All emails are created and sent from the dashboard. |
| SES | Yes. Yes. SES is a sending service, receipts included. |
Free plan with no time limitIs there a free plan that does not expire?Nitrosend: Yes.Brevo: Yes.MailerLite: Yes.Elastic Email: Yes.listmonk: Yes.EmailOctopus: Yes.SES: No.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Yes. Yes. 5,000 emails to start, then 500 a month. |
| Brevo | Yes. Yes, 300 emails a day. |
| MailerLite | Yes. Yes, with a cap on subscribers and on emails a month. |
| Elastic Email | Yes. Yes. 1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails a month. |
| listmonk | Yes. Yes. Free software, though sending and hosting cost money. |
| EmailOctopus | Yes. Yes. 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month. |
| SES | No. No. Up to $200 in AWS credits for new customers. |
Mature drag-and-drop editorIs there a polished visual editor for a person building by hand?Nitrosend: Not a yes or no.Brevo: Yes.MailerLite: Yes.Elastic Email: Yes.listmonk: Not a yes or no.EmailOctopus: Yes.SES: No.
| Service | Answer |
|---|---|
| Nitrosend | Not a yes or no. A block builder exists. The agent is the main way in. |
| Brevo | Yes. Yes, with templates and a brand library. |
| MailerLite | Yes. Yes, plus custom HTML and simple editors. |
| Elastic Email | Yes. Yes, with templates and a raw HTML editor. |
| listmonk | Not a yes or no. A visual builder exists, in a plainer interface than the hosted tools. |
| EmailOctopus | Yes. Yes, with custom HTML and 100+ templates. |
| SES | No. No. There is no editor. |
Yes answersOut of the questions that have a yes or no for that service6 of 6 yes for Nitrosend6 of 6 yes for Brevo5 of 7 yes for MailerLite5 of 7 yes for Elastic Email3 of 6 yes for listmonk2 of 6 yes for EmailOctopus2 of 7 yes for SES
At a glance
7 services, the same 7 tests, 100 points in all. In order: Nitrosend 76.5, Brevo 74, MailerLite 61.5, Elastic Email 57.5, listmonk 54, EmailOctopus 50.5, SES 49.5. Nitrosend has the best score on Works from your AI assistant, Emails in your brand, no designer and Receipts and newsletters on one plan. Every price and feature was read on each company's own pages on September 26, 2026.
When another service is the better pick
Nitrosend does not win every test. Read these before you choose it.
- Pick listmonk if self-hosting was the point. It is free and open source, runs from a single binary or a Docker image, and sends through whatever SMTP or SES account you give it, so the bill is the same as Sendy's without the $69 license. Segments are SQL expressions rather than a fixed set of filters. You still own the server, the upgrades and the queue on send night.
- Pick Amazon SES on its own if your sending is code and a campaign screen was never the point. It scores a 10 on price, at $3.20 for 20,000 emails and $160 for a million on Essentials. It is sending, not a platform, so the templates, suppression and reporting are yours to build. The Amazon SES alternatives page compares the services at that layer.
- Pick Brevo if you want a mature editor, with texts and a light CRM in the same account. It beats Nitrosend on the editor, 8 to 6, and on integrations and support, 8 to 5, and its free plan allows 300 emails a day. It costs more at both volumes: $69 for 20,000 emails on Standard, the first plan with automated emails, and $999 for a million. How Brevo handles account suspensions is covered on the Brevo alternatives page.
- Pick MailerLite if you are finished with infrastructure and the newsletter has to look good. Its editor scores 8 and its MCP server can create and schedule campaigns. You pay by subscriber, so a large list you rarely email costs money every month, and you cannot bring your own SES account.
- Pick EmailOctopus if you want a plain hosted front end on your own SES account. Its Connect plan sends through your SES keys, at $33.50 a month for 10,000 subscribers plus the SES fees. It has no transactional email and no official MCP server.
- Pick Elastic Email if you want campaigns and an email API on one hosted bill, closer to raw sending prices. The marketing plans include the Email API and SMTP relay, and its MCP server can create a campaign. Run an inbox test before you commit a list to a shared low-cost pool.
What each one costs in 2026
Sendy is a $69 license, paid once, plus Amazon's rate for every email you send. Sendy's own site describes that as $1.6 per 10,000 emails, which matches Amazon's Essentials plan at $0.16 per 1,000. Amazon's SES pricing page also lists a la carte sending at $0.10 per 1,000, which is what most older accounts are on, and since July 21, 2026 new accounts start on Essentials. The table prices every other option at the same two volumes.
What sending costs
List prices, USD, monthly, September 26, 2026| Service | 20,000 emails a month | 1,000,000 emails a month |
|---|---|---|
| Nitrosend (pricing page) | $20Starter, contacts unlimited | $650Scale, contacts unlimited, including overage |
| Brevo (pricing page) | $69Standard, the first plan with automation. Starter is $32 without it | $999Professional. Standard stops at 500,000 emails |
| MailerLite (pricing page) | $89Comfort, 10,000 subscribers | Ask salesEnterprise, by quote. Published tiers stop at 200,000, $819 on Comfort |
| Elastic Email (pricing page) | $89Starter, 10,000 contacts, with one automation | $1,650Starter, 550,000 contacts |
| listmonk (pricing page) | $3.20Lowest. Free software plus SES Essentials. Your server is extra | $160Lowest. Free software plus SES Essentials. Your server is extra |
| EmailOctopus (pricing page) | $36.70Connect at 10,000 subscribers, $33.50, plus $3.20 in SES fees | $805Connect at 500,000 subscribers, $645, plus $160 in SES fees |
| SES (pricing page) | $3.20Lowest. Essentials, or $2 a la carte. No campaign tools | $160Lowest. Essentials, or $100 a la carte. No campaign tools |
At 20,000 emails a month, Nitrosend is $20. Self-hosting is cheaper on the invoice, at $3.20 in SES fees for listmonk or Amazon SES on its own, plus a server. EmailOctopus Connect is $36.70 with the SES fees, Brevo $69 on Standard, the first plan with automated emails, and MailerLite and Elastic Email $89 each, because both charge by contacts.
At a million emails a month, Nitrosend is $650. EmailOctopus Connect is $805 with SES, Brevo $999 and Elastic Email $1,650, and MailerLite quotes above 200,000 subscribers. Only self-hosted sending costs less, at $160 in SES fees, and that is the trade Sendy users already know.
The difference is what the $20 buys. Nitrosend's plans carry campaigns, automated flows, receipts and resets on one allowance, contacts are unlimited on every plan, and on Starter and above you can bring your own sending keys for Amazon SES and keep the account you warmed. Price the hours you spend on the server before you compare the two bills.
How we scored
Every service gets a score out of 10 on the same seven tests. Each test is worth a set number of points, 100 in all. These are the same tests and points used on every email marketing comparison on this site. Working from your AI assistant and price are worth the most, 20 points each. The editor and the integrations, support and track record, where the older tools are strongest, share 30 points, so a service that is better there gets full credit for it.
Each test is a question with one answer per service, checked against the service's own pages on September 26, 2026. A 10 means it does the job fully on its normal plans. A 5 means it does part of it, or only on a higher plan or in a second product.
Works from your AI assistant, 20 points. Can an agent inside Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex compose a marketing campaign, test it, and send it, with no person opening the web app between the prompt and the send? An approval step the person answers in the chat counts as inside the agent. Moving into the web app to finish does not. Scored on one written rule for every vendor: a first-party server the vendor runs and that can send counts fully; a third-party wrapper (Zapier, Composio, Kanopi, community servers) counts for less; a server that only drafts or reads counts for less than one that sends.
Emails in your brand, no designer, 10 points. Does the product learn your logo, colors, fonts and voice from your own site and apply them to every email it drafts, on the plan most small teams start on?
Price, 20 points. What does email cost each month at 20,000 emails, a 10,000-contact list emailed twice, and at 1,000,000, a 500,000-contact list emailed twice? Scored on list prices in US dollars, paid monthly, at the cheapest plan that holds the contacts, covers the sends and includes automated emails such as a welcome series. Every ranking on this site uses the same fixed scale. At 20,000 emails, $20 or less scores 10, then $25 scores 9, $32 scores 8, $40 scores 7, $50 scores 6, $70 scores 5, $100 scores 4 and $140 scores 3. At 1,000,000, $500 or less scores 10, then $625, $800, $1,000, $1,250, $1,750, $2,500 and $3,500 step down the same way. Anything dearer, or a price given only by quote, scores 2. A free product scores 10. The score is the average of the two.
Free plan, 10 points. How far can a team get on the free plan before it has to pay: contacts, total sends, and the daily ceiling.
Receipts and newsletters on one plan, 10 points. Can receipts, password resets and newsletters go out from one account, on one bill, through one API?
Editor for building by hand, 15 points. For a person who wants to build the email themselves: how mature are the visual editor and the template library?
Integrations, support and track record, 15 points. How many tools does it plug into, what support comes with the plan, and how long has it been doing this at scale?
One thing is not scored: inbox placement. None of these services publishes a comparable deliverability number, and on three of them the inbox result depends on an SES account you run.
Sendy itself is not ranked, because this page is about what replaces it. On the same tests it scored 46 out of 100 on the Nitrosend and Sendy comparison, with a 10 on price and a 2 on working from your AI assistant. Sendy does sell an optional AI Assistant that writes newsletters and subject lines inside Sendy. That is AI working in the tool, not your own assistant running it, which is what this test measures.
Why people leave Sendy
The arithmetic is the reason people buy Sendy, and it is real. The license is $69 once, there is no monthly fee, and nothing on this page beats self-hosted SES on the cost of each email. People usually leave because the hours around it started to cost more than the invoice.
Start with what Amazon hands you. SES publishes two enforcement lines in its sending review FAQ and both are yours to stay under: a bounce rate of 5% puts the account under review and 10% can pause your sending, and a complaint rate of 0.1% triggers review while 0.5% can pause you. A new account is also held to 200 messages per 24 hours, to verified recipients only, until Amazon grants production access, and the request form has you confirm that you have a process for handling bounce and complaint notifications. That grant is not automatic. A widely read r/aws thread on October 31, 2025 describes production access refused four times with no explanation.
None of the suppression, engagement scoring or list hygiene that keeps you under those lines ships with SES. Sendy gives you some of it. You own the rest.
George Hartley, Nitrosend's co-founder, sees that missing layer as the part worth building. On The Breakout CEO in August 2026 he described Nitrosend's aim as "let's build the best smart pipes for them to kind of communicate." SES and Sendy give you the pipe at the lowest price there is; the question is whether your hours are cheaper than the layer around it.
Then the software. On r/AskMarketing on May 4, 2026 a Sendy user summed up the trade: the economics are great, but the setup is a PHP server, MySQL, DNS, DKIM and SPF. On August 28, 2026 a thread on r/emaildeliverability documented Sendy 7.1.4 campaigns stuck in Preparing after a PHP 8.2 change broke the cron script, with 35,297 subscribers waiting behind it. Sendy sat at 1.7 out of 5 on Trustpilot across 21 reviews on September 7, 2026, with support the main complaint. That is a small sample, and it fits a one-time license with no recurring revenue paying for a support desk.
On Sendy, that process runs on your server. Sendy sets up bounce and complaint handling through Amazon SNS, so Amazon posts every bounce and complaint to two scripts on your own machine, and Sendy's troubleshooting page lists a firewall that blocks Amazon's incoming connections as one reason they never arrive. Amazon does not keep them for you. By default SNS retries an HTTP endpoint three times, 20 seconds apart, treats any error other than a 5XX or 429 as permanent, and then discards the message unless a dead-letter queue is attached. SES also cannot hand you a list of the addresses that bounced if you missed the notifications. So a server outage on send night does more than delay a campaign. The bounces from it are lost, those addresses stay on the list, and the next campaign mails them again, which is how a self-hosted list drifts toward the 5% review line without anyone touching it. Ask any replacement who receives those notifications. With your own SES keys connected to Nitrosend, the SES integration provisions the SNS topic and configuration set for bounces and complaints in your AWS account, and the endpoint they post to is Nitrosend's to run, not yours.
Getting a visible From domain fully authorized on SES is its own piece of work too, and a DMARC policy only does anything once it moves past p=none to p=quarantine. The email authentication page has the records.
What does self-hosting Sendy cost each month?
The invoice is $69 once, a small server, and Amazon's rate: $0.16 per 1,000 on Essentials, or $0.10 a la carte if your account is older. At 500,000 emails a month that is $50 to $80 of sending plus perhaps $20 of hosting. The part that is not on the invoice is your time: SES production access and quota increases, DKIM and DMARC on every sending domain, bounce and complaint notifications, application and database upgrades, and someone watching the queue on send night. If an hour of your time is worth anything, that is the number that decides this.
Can I keep my Amazon SES account and change everything else?
Yes, and it is usually the right move, because your SES account holds the sending reputation you spent months building. listmonk and EmailOctopus Connect both send through your own SES credentials. Nitrosend takes them as a bring-your-own sending key on Starter and above, so campaigns, flows and reporting move while the sending stays exactly where it is. What you cannot do is carry that reputation into a platform that only sends from its own shared pool, which is how MailerLite, Brevo and most contact-priced tools work.
How to move off Sendy without hurting deliverability
- Export engagement, not just addresses. Sendy stores opens, clicks and bounces, and those decide who goes in your first sends.
- Check what you exported. A self-hosted list that has never been cleaned is the most common reason a first send on a new platform goes badly. The email blacklist checker shows what you are carrying.
- Decide the sending question first. If you are keeping your SES account, shortlist only tools that accept your own keys.
- Authenticate the new sender if you change sending. Keep both senders in one SPF record during the overlap.
- Ramp up rather than switching in one send. How to warm up an email domain has the schedule.
- Keep Sendy running, read-only, for a month. You will want a report out of it that you forgot to export.
Sendy alternatives FAQ
Nitrosend, with the top score in this review, 76.5 out of 100. It takes your own Amazon SES keys on Starter and above, so you keep your sending reputation, removes the server, and lets an AI assistant write and send the campaigns, from $20 a month for 20,000 emails with unlimited contacts. Pick listmonk if you want to stay self-hosted at the same cost as Sendy, or MailerLite or Brevo if you want a mature editor and nothing to run.
For most self-hosters, yes, and it is free. It handles large lists more comfortably, its segments are SQL expressions rather than a fixed set of filters, it ships a transactional API, and it deploys as a single binary or a Docker image. There is no vendor to call, so the trade is support, not capability.
The license is $69 once, with no monthly fee. Sending is billed by Amazon, which Sendy's own site describes as $1.6 per 10,000 emails, the same as Amazon's Essentials plan at $0.16 per 1,000. Amazon's a la carte rate, which most older accounts are on, is $0.10 per 1,000. Your server is extra.
Not as a transactional API. Sendy is a newsletter tool with an API for managing lists and campaigns. Receipts, password resets and one-off notifications belong on a transactional service, which is the layer the transactional email page covers.
Yes. On Starter and above you add your SES credentials as a bring-your-own sending key and keep sending through your own account and its warmed reputation, while campaigns, flows, segments and reporting run in Nitrosend. Nitrosend's own managed sending also runs through Amazon SES, so the underlying delivery behaves the same either way.
Nitrosend, with 9 out of 10 on working from your AI assistant. Its official MCP server lets Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Codex build campaigns and flows from the chat, and creating a campaign and sending it are separate steps: in the worked examples in Nitrosend's docs the compose call returns a draft, approval and the live send are a later call, a send to every contact needs an explicit confirmation flag, and Safe Mode can still block a live or scheduled send. Sendy's own API works the other way: one key from Settings covers the install, and the same create-campaign call sends the campaign once send_campaign is set to 1, so an assistant wired to it is one parameter from your whole list. MailerLite scores 8, because its MCP server can create and schedule campaigns and build automations. Brevo scores 7, because its MCP server lists no module for automations. Elastic Email scores 6, because you run its MCP server yourself. Amazon SES scores 5, because AWS's own MCP server can send through it one message at a time but SES has no campaigns. listmonk scores 2 and EmailOctopus 1, with no official MCP server for campaigns, and Sendy itself scores 2 on the same test.
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