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How I sent 7000 emails for 0.7$

7 years ago from , Freelance Photographer

Hello DN,

Just wanted to share with you how I reduced my newsletter cost (almost 7000 subscribers on Mailchimp) from 75$ dollar a month to less than 1$ a month (hint: I stopped using Mailchimp and found a self-hosted solution that use Amazon SES to send the emails). Instead of writing a long post I recorded a video and uploaded it to Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av31P2lZ10g

Hope this will be useful to some of you, specially small business or freelancers like me (that cannot always afford the premium price of tools like Mailchimp and Campaign monitor)

Best, Sam

12 comments

  • Joe Bell, 7 years ago

    More people should checkout SendGrid's marketing offering. Up to 2000 contacts and 12000 emails for free. $10/month for 10,000 contacts.

    Mailchimp has a lot of brand awareness - but definitely not cheapest.

    3 points
  • M. AppelmanM. Appelman, 7 years ago

    Related: http://www.wired.com/2016/07/mailchimp-sends-billion-emails-day-thats-easy-part/

    1 point
    • Samuel ZellerSamuel Zeller, 7 years ago

      I understand that, it might be true for massive email campaigns but not for small business. My 7000 subscribers registered their email manually through a mailchimp form, I've had only 0.07% (5 email) who got into spam. And only 19 emails that bounced (mostly because people used disposable email services). Mailchimp is expensive because of all the extra features they have (like A/B testing, automation etc...) but if you don't need those why should you pay a premium price? Apparently there's also Mailgun which is free for less than 10'000 emails per month.

      1 point
      • Mac PankiewiczMac Pankiewicz, 7 years ago

        You're using shared hosting, they can ban you for sending too much emails thru their server. Why? Sending bulk email campaigns will affect their servers and other clients on this machine, they don't want to get banned from Google/Yahoo or whatever.

        From their TOS:

        We take a zero tolerance stance against sending of unsolicited e-mail, bulk emailing, and spam. "Safe lists" and purchased lists will be treated as spam. Any user who sends out spam will have their account terminated with or without notice.

        Sorry for being that guy, but it's a big thing for hosting companies and your account not going to last long.

        0 points
        • Samuel ZellerSamuel Zeller, 7 years ago (edited 7 years ago )

          Hey Mac, Sendy doesn't send the emails, it use Amazon SES to send the emails that's the trick. My shared hosting doesn't send a single email, everything is handled by Amazon. Here's more info: https://aws.amazon.com/ses/ Brands like HTC and Vodaphone also use Amazon SES so it's really scalable... Not breaking any of the Stablehost TOS :)

          0 points
  • Gareth Bull, 7 years ago

    Sendy is really good, however if you're not that savvy, it's all most impossible to setup in my opinion.

    EmailOctopus.com works via Amazon SES but it's a web app and hassle free and the UX is much nicer than Sendy.

    0 points
  • Chip Dong Lim, 7 years ago

    Thanks for the tips and helpful video Sam! Gonna check out Sendy :)

    0 points
    • Samuel ZellerSamuel Zeller, 7 years ago

      You're welcome, feature wise it's really barebone compared to Mailchimp but I don't need more feature than a subscribe form, an autoresponder, different lists and analytics. Oh you don't have A/B testing built in but you can do it manually by splitting your email list and sending the same campaign to two lists.

      1 point
      • Chip Dong Lim, 7 years ago

        Yes agree, I think I can built my template using Mailchimp/Campaign Monitor since Sendy allows HTML import right?

        The A/B split testing trick is brilliant - gonna try it out!

        0 points
        • Samuel ZellerSamuel Zeller, 7 years ago (edited 7 years ago )

          I guess yes, but you'll have to use images that are hosted somewhere. And also the unsubscribe link and "view online" links are different in Sendy. But that's just details.

          1 point