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edbr 22 Junior Poster

i have a mailing list of almost 5000 which i send a newsletter /update monthly. i have grown this over some years and have used a mailer on my site ( pommo) hwever with the size growing it is becoming a chore, with frezez etc. so looking at mail servers but not too impressed with the prices i see of the better known ones. so my question is . has anyone tried sendy? The blurb looks reasonable and seems cheap but I am cautious. words are wind after all :)

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— practical notes if moving from a self‑hosted mailer to a Sendy+SES setup, and what to watch for.

Sendy is a self‑hosted PHP app that hands delivery off to Amazon SES, so the main tradeoff is lower per‑email costs versus more hands‑on ops (server, domain auth, bounce handling). See Sendy for feature details https://sendy.co/. Amazon SES requires domain verification, DKIM/SPF and has sandbox/quotas — follow the SES production and best‑practice guides before large sends https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/best-practices.html.

Migration and setup checklist:

  • Export subscribers with opt‑in status and source metadata. Remove obvious duplicates and hard bounces.
  • Verify your sending domain in SES and enable DKIM/SPF. Add a DMARC policy for reporting: https://dmarc.org/.
  • Install Sendy on a small VPS with SSL and a separate DB. Configure SES credentials and set up SNS notifications so bounces/complaints update Sendy automatically (SES+SNS handling docs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/monitor-sending-activity-using-sns.html).
  • Do a seed test campaign to different providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook). Start with small volumes and warm up sending to avoid throttling or reputation hits.
  • Implement unsubscribe/suppression logic and respect CAN‑SPAM/GDPR rules.

Common pitfalls: new SES accounts start in sandbox and must request production access; failing to handle bounces/complaints quickly damages reputation; hosting a Sendy instance means responsibility for backups, updates and security. If avoiding sysadmin work is a priority, consider hosted ESPs instead. For deliverability hygiene and ramping, follow the SES best practices link above.

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