Overview

Sendy and Listmonk are both self-hosted email marketing solutions. Sendy is proprietary ($69) and optimized for Amazon SES. Listmonk is open source (free) and works with any SMTP provider. Both require technical skills to set up and maintain.

The Open Source Question

Listmonk's biggest advantage is being completely free. No license fees, ever. Sendy costs $69 upfront and major version upgrades may cost more. If you're maximizing savings and comfortable with open source support models, Listmonk is compelling.

Provider Flexibility

Sendy is locked to Amazon SES. This is fine since SES is excellent and cheap. Listmonk works with any SMTP provider: SES, Mailgun, Postmark, your own mail server. If you want flexibility to switch providers, Listmonk wins.

Technical Stack

Sendy is PHP/MySQL, a stack many find dated but widely supported. Listmonk is Go/PostgreSQL, modern and performant. For developers, Listmonk's codebase is cleaner and more pleasant to work with. Performance-wise, Go is significantly faster.

Established vs Modern

Sendy has been around since 2013. More tutorials, community knowledge, and proven deployments exist. Listmonk is newer with an active community but less historical knowledge. Some prefer proven reliability over cutting-edge tech.

Neither is a Complete Solution

Both Sendy and Listmonk focus on basic campaigns and list management. Neither has sophisticated automation, landing pages, or advanced segmentation. For anything beyond newsletters, you'll hit limitations.

For SaaS Companies

Self-hosting makes sense for cost optimization, but building SaaS-specific features on top of either would require significant custom development. For subscription businesses wanting Stripe integration and event-based automation, consider Sequenzy.

Making the Choice

Choose Sendy if you want an established solution with Amazon SES. Choose Listmonk if you want free open source with provider flexibility. Both are solid self-hosted options for technical users with basic email needs.