9 Best Sendy Alternatives in 2026 (Hosted, Self-Hosted & SES-Powered)

Last updated: September 2026 | Pricing checked on September 28, 2026 | 10 min read

Sendy’s pitch is hard to argue with. You pay $69 once and send through Amazon SES at about $1 per 10,000 emails. For a big list that’s cheaper than any hosted platform. The bill arrives in other ways. You run the server, the PHP updates, the backups and the SES account. If your bounce or complaint rate spikes, Amazon can pause your sending before anyone on your team notices.

This guide splits Sendy alternatives into three groups, because people leave Sendy for different reasons. Some want to keep SES pricing without running a server. Some want to stay self-hosted with a more capable tool. Some are done with infrastructure and want a fully hosted platform at a price that still feels Sendy-like. Our pick for that last group, and for most teams, is Mailercloud. It’s free for 1,000 contacts, then $10/month for 5,000 contacts with unlimited sends, and it includes the automation, deliverability tools and support that Sendy leaves to you.

Why People Look for Sendy Alternatives

• You’re the IT department. Sendy needs PHP and MySQL hosting, cron jobs, SSL and backups. When something breaks at 9pm before a launch, there’s no one to call.
• SES account risk. Amazon puts an account under review at a 5% bounce rate or a 0.1% complaint rate, and can pause sending at 10% and 0.5%. One old imported list can do that.
• Limited automation. Sendy has autoresponders and segments, but no visual workflow builder with branching, goals or behaviour triggers.
• No deliverability visibility. You see opens and bounces. You can’t see whether mail landed in the inbox, Promotions or spam.
• Upgrades and licences. Each licence covers one installation domain, and updates are free only within the same major version.

None of this makes Sendy bad. It makes Sendy a developer tool. A lot of the people using it are marketers who picked it for the price.

The Real Cost of Sendy

People compare Sendy’s $69 with a monthly subscription. That isn’t a like-for-like comparison. Here’s what Sendy costs a list of 10,000 subscribers emailed weekly (about 43,000 emails a month):

In pure dollars Sendy wins at this size, and it keeps winning as your list grows. The honest question is whether your time and your sender reputation are worth more than the difference.

Sendy Alternatives at a Glance

1. Mailercloud — Best Hosted Sendy Alternative

Mailercloud is the best Sendy alternative for teams that want Sendy-level pricing without running a server. The free plan covers 1,000 contacts and 12,000 emails a month. Premium is $10/month for 5,000 contacts with unlimited sends, and 10,000 contacts cost $50/month on the pricing page. Annual billing takes 30% off.

What you get that Sendy doesn’t: a visual automation builder for welcome series, drips and re-engagement, and Inbox Tracker to show whether campaigns reached the inbox or spam at Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo. There’s also a built-in email verifier to clean a Sendy list before its first send, plus hosted infrastructure with support you can reach. The trade-offs are real. It costs more than Sendy + SES once your list grows past 10,000 contacts. Its integration library is smaller than MailerLite’s. And you don’t get Sendy’s multi-brand white-labelling.

Key features

• Hosted sending on managed infrastructure; no server or SES account
• Visual automation builder: welcome, drip, re-engagement, date and behaviour triggers
• Drag-and-drop editor, template gallery and custom HTML editor
• Segmentation, A/B testing and AI subject lines (Premium)
• Inbox Tracker for placement at Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo
• Built-in email verifier and signup form builder

Pricing: Free for 1,000 contacts; Premium from $10/month for 5,000 contacts, unlimited sends.

Best for: Small businesses and creators who chose Sendy for the price and now want automation and support without the upkeep.

2. EmailOctopus — Best Way to Keep Using Amazon SES

EmailOctopus has the most natural history for ex-Sendy users. It started as a hosted interface on top of Amazon SES, and its Connect product still lets you bring your own SES account. You keep SES’s low per-email cost, and EmailOctopus runs the software, updates and hosting. It’s the closest thing to “Sendy, but someone else maintains it”.

If you’d rather not deal with SES at all, the standard hosted product is one of the most generous free plans on the market: 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month. Pro starts at $9/month billed yearly. The editor is clean, and there are templates, forms, landing pages and simple automations for welcome and drip sequences.

The limits show on the free plan and in automation depth. Free emails carry EmailOctopus branding, reports are kept for 30 days only, and you get one landing page, one form and one user. Automations are straightforward sequences rather than the branching workflows you’d get on Mailercloud or MailerLite.

Key features

• Connect: hosted interface on your own Amazon SES account
• Free plan: 2,500 subscribers, 10,000 emails a month
• Drag-and-drop editor, templates, forms and landing pages
• Simple automation sequences

Best for: Sendy users who want to keep SES but stop maintaining a server.

3. Mailcoach — Best Pay-Per-Email Option With Your Own Provider

Mailcoach comes from Spatie, the Belgian team behind many popular Laravel packages. It charges by emails sent rather than by contacts, the pricing model closest to Sendy’s. Hosted Mailcoach costs €9.99/month including 2,000 emails, then €0.001 per email. If you connect your own sending provider (Amazon SES, Postmark, Mailgun, Brevo or any SMTP server), the per-email fee drops further.

Contacts, lists and automations are all unlimited, so a large, lightly mailed list doesn’t cost more just for existing. There’s a proper automation builder for welcome series and drips, templates written in Markdown or HTML, and API access. Developers who want to stay on their own servers can use Mailcoach Self-Hosted, a Laravel package, instead of the hosted app.

It feels built by developers for developers. The editor is plainer than mainstream marketing platforms, and there’s no annual discount because billing is usage-based.

Key features

• €9.99/month base with 2,000 emails, then €0.001 per email
• Bring your own provider: SES, Postmark, Mailgun, Brevo or SMTP
• Unlimited contacts, lists and automations
• Hosted app or self-hosted Laravel package

Best for: Developers and technical founders who like Sendy’s economics but want automation.

4. BigMailer — Best for Multi-Brand Senders

BigMailer copies the Sendy feature people miss most after switching: brands. You can run several brands or client accounts from one login, each with its own lists, senders and templates. That’s how many agencies and multi-site publishers used Sendy. It also lets you connect your own Amazon SES account to keep sending costs low, or send through BigMailer’s own infrastructure.

According to BigMailer’s published comparison, plans start from $5/month for 5,000 contacts, which makes it one of the cheapest hosted options for multi-brand use. It covers the core email marketing features: drag-and-drop editor, segmentation, automation and reporting.

It’s a small company with a much smaller user base than MailerLite or Brevo, so there’s less third-party documentation and fewer integrations.

Key features

• Multiple brands under one account, like Sendy’s brands
• Connect your own Amazon SES, or use BigMailer’s sending
• Drag-and-drop editor, segmentation and automation
• From $5/month for 5,000 contacts (per BigMailer)

Best for: Agencies and multi-brand businesses that relied on Sendy’s white-label brands.

5. MailerLite — Best Easy Hosted Platform

MailerLite is where many ex-Sendy marketers land, because it’s the easiest mainstream platform to learn. The drag-and-drop editor is polished. Landing pages, a website builder and signup forms are built in. The Growing Business plan includes 50 automations with a visual workflow builder. It also has a large integration library and AI writing help.

It’s not a budget tool any more, though. MailerLite costs $50/month at 5,000 subscribers (Mailercloud: $10) and $80 at 10,000 on monthly billing, with 10% off annually. The free plan has shrunk to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month, so it’s no longer a real long-term free option.

Key features

• Polished drag-and-drop editor, landing pages and website builder
• 50 automations with a visual builder on Growing Business
• Large integration library
• AI writing assistant and A/B testing

Best for: Marketers who want the most familiar, polished interface. (See our MailerLite alternatives if price is the sticking point.)

6. Brevo — Best for Pricing by Emails, Not Contacts

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) prices by emails sent, with unlimited contacts on every plan. If you liked that Sendy never charged you for list size, Brevo’s model will feel familiar. It also bundles channels Sendy never had: SMS, WhatsApp, a sales CRM and live chat, all in one account.

For a large list you only mail monthly, Brevo can be cheap: Starter begins around $9/month for 5,000 emails. The free plan allows 300 emails a day, fine for testing but not for a real newsletter. Advanced automation, send-time optimisation and A/B testing sit on the higher Business tier.

Key features

• Unlimited contacts; pay by email volume
• SMS, WhatsApp, CRM and live chat
• Transactional email API included
• Free plan: 300 emails a day

Best for: Businesses with large, lightly mailed lists. Our Brevo alternatives post covers its limits.

7. listmonk — Best Free Self-Hosted Alternative

If you like self-hosting and just want something better than Sendy, listmonk is the obvious upgrade. It’s free and open-source (AGPLv3), ships as a single binary with a PostgreSQL database, and is very fast. Its developers report sending 7 million+ emails using a fraction of one CPU core and about 57 MB of RAM.

It sends through multiple SMTP servers at once, so you can spread load across SES, Postmark or your own mail servers. It supports millions of subscribers, SQL-based segmentation, Go templating with logic, a media library on S3-compatible storage, a transactional API, and SSO with role-based permissions. There’s a WYSIWYG, Markdown, HTML and drag-and-drop editor.

It’s still a server you run, like Sendy. And automation is minimal: there’s no visual workflow builder for multi-step journeys.

Key features

• Free and open-source (AGPLv3); single binary plus PostgreSQL
• Multiple SMTP queues, including Amazon SES
• SQL segmentation, templating, transactional API
• SSO and role-based permissions

Best for: Technical teams who like self-hosting but have outgrown Sendy.

8. MailWizz — Best Self-Hosted Tool With More Features

MailWizz is a self-hosted PHP application, like Sendy, but far more configurable. It’s sold as a one-time licence (around $86 on CodeCanyon, according to BigMailer’s roundup). It supports multiple delivery servers and bounce servers, customer accounts, and pricing plans. That’s why some agencies run it as their own white-label email service and resell sending to clients.

You get segmentation, autoresponders, a template builder and an API. The trade-off is complexity. MailWizz has many more settings than Sendy, and setting it up well (cron jobs, delivery servers, bounce handling) takes real sysadmin time.

Key features

• One-time licence, self-hosted
• Multiple delivery and bounce servers
• Customer accounts and pricing plans for resellers
• Segmentation, autoresponders, templates and API

Best for: Agencies building their own sending service.

9. Mautic — Best Open-Source Marketing Automation

Mautic is a full open-source marketing automation platform, closer to HubSpot than to Sendy. It has a visual campaign builder with branching, lead scoring, forms, landing pages, dynamic content and CRM-style contact records that track website visits. It sends through any SMTP or API provider, including Amazon SES.

It’s free to use, but it’s much heavier than Sendy. You’ll need a capable server, a database that grows with tracking data, and someone comfortable maintaining PHP applications and upgrades.

Key features

• Visual campaign builder with branching
• Lead scoring, forms, landing pages and dynamic content
• Website visitor tracking on contact records
• Sends through SMTP or API providers

Best for: Teams that want HubSpot-style automation and have developers to run it.

Sendy Alternatives Cost Compared

Monthly cost for 5,000 and 10,000 contacts, before annual discounts.

The Mailercloud View: When You Should Stay on Sendy

We’d rather you pick the right tool than switch for the sake of it. Stay on Sendy if all three of these are true: you have a developer who looks after the server, your list is clean and permission-based (bounces under 2%, complaints well under 0.1%), and you mostly send broadcasts rather than automated journeys. At 25,000+ subscribers that setup is very hard to beat on price.

Move to a hosted platform if a marketer, not a developer, owns email. The same goes if you need behaviour-triggered automation, or if you’ve ever had an SES review notice. At 5,000 contacts, Mailercloud’s $10 is roughly what Sendy costs once hosting is counted, and the upkeep disappears.

How to Migrate From Sendy

1. Export your lists from Sendy as CSV, including custom fields and unsubscribes. Import unsubscribes as suppressed so you never mail them again.
2. Verify the list before its first send. Run it through an email verifier to remove addresses that have gone bad since they signed up.
3. Authenticate your sending domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC on the new platform. Gmail and Yahoo both require it for bulk senders (see Google and Yahoo sender guidelines). Our SPF, DKIM and DMARC guide walks through the records.
4. Rebuild autoresponders as automations, and add the branching Sendy couldn’t do.
5. Warm up gradually. Send to your most engaged segment first, then widen over one to two weeks, watching your domain reputation in Google Postmaster Tools.

For a fuller checklist, see our guide to switching email marketing platforms.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best alternative to Sendy?

Mailercloud is the best Sendy alternative for teams that want low pricing without running a server. It’s free for 1,000 contacts and $10/month for 5,000 contacts with unlimited sends, plus automation and Inbox Tracker. EmailOctopus Connect and Mailcoach are best if you want to keep sending through Amazon SES, and listmonk is the best free self-hosted option.

Is Sendy really cheaper than hosted platforms?

Yes in dollars, especially above 10,000 subscribers: Sendy costs $69 once plus about $1 per 10,000 emails on Amazon SES, plus hosting. Once you count hosting, maintenance time and the lack of deliverability tools, a hosted platform like Mailercloud ($10/month for 5,000 contacts) costs about the same at smaller list sizes.

Is there a hosted version of Sendy?

No. Sendy is self-hosted only; you install it on your own PHP and MySQL server. Sendy offers a paid installation service ($79), but you still host and maintain it. EmailOctopus Connect and BigMailer are the closest hosted products that still use your own SES account.

Can I keep using Amazon SES without Sendy?

Yes. EmailOctopus Connect, Mailcoach, BigMailer, listmonk and MailWizz can all send through your own Amazon SES account. That keeps the low per-email cost while swapping Sendy’s interface for a hosted or more capable one.

What is the best free Sendy alternative?

listmonk is the best free self-hosted Sendy alternative, and Mailercloud’s free plan (1,000 contacts, 12,000 emails a month) is the best free hosted option. EmailOctopus’s free plan covers 2,500 subscribers but carries its branding.

Does Mailercloud work with Amazon SES?

No. Mailercloud sends through its own managed infrastructure, so there’s no SES account to set up or risk. If keeping SES matters to you, EmailOctopus Connect or Mailcoach are better fits.

Final Verdict

Sendy is still the cheapest way to send a lot of email if you’re comfortable running it. Most people searching for alternatives aren’t, and they don’t need to be. Mailercloud gives you Sendy-like pricing at small and mid-sized lists ($10/month for 5,000 contacts), with automation, verification, inbox placement tracking and support included. If you want to keep SES, choose EmailOctopus Connect or Mailcoach. If you want to stay self-hosted, listmonk is the upgrade.