Redbird (and anyone else) -
I wanted to post back about this product which I purchased and started to use.
I'm a fan of the product (Sendy), its developer (Ben) and the service (Amazon SES).
It really seems too good to be true so I was in two minds about posting (wanted to keep it a secret because I don't want everyone using it and the cost of the service increasing!).
Wanted to post a quick review.
1. The developer has responded to every email i ever sent him and solved my issues going above and beyond. I have annoyed him with what must be over 20 emails!
2. I was promptly emailed a software update a day or two after I purchased that addresses a timeout that can happen on some shared hosts. The update also increases the functions to duplicate and edit campaigns.
3. Amazon SES is pretty easy to configure and access their keys which the software needs. You initially have to verify all sending email addresses, and then apply for production access (I was granted it within 24 hours allowing me to send up to 10,000 emails a day). Amazon throttle it at 5 per second and all emails bypass your host which is essential for shared hosting accounts which usually have limits on list size and limit sending to around 300 per hour.
4. As a new user with a big list from an aged website, I was uncertain of acceptable bounce rates. I split up a list of 16,000 and averaged an open rate of 10%, unsubscribe rate of 1.5%, click rate of 1% and unfortunately a bounce rate of 22%... (great to have all these stats available and following the process to connect the bounce info between Amazon and Sendy mean that these emails won't be contacted again nor will the unsubs).
5. The high bounce rate got my Amazon SES account suspended (learn from my mistake). I appealed and it's now back open but you can't have a bounce rate that high so start with a small list each day (say 1000) and only send to people who have recently interacted with your site. All of my emails were to double opt ins, but maybe a lot were spambots.
Anyway it was a steep learning curve, anyone could get through it and it really does give you many of the features that MailChimp and constant contact etc. offer but at a fraction of the price.
Just try and follow the can spam stuff, double opt in, address in email footer and the other tips (content is key too) and deliverability rates will stay high. Logging into amazon SES will also show you "complaint rates" which involve the number of people who mark your message as spam… pretty awesome.
Well in a nutshell, if you send a newsletter use Sendy (
http://www.sendy.co ) - it's cheap and then emails throughout Amazon are $1 per 10,000 (wow!!)
