Softwr

Email Marketing · head to head

Sailthru vs Sendy

Sailthru logo

Sailthru

Email Marketing

Retail and publisher email personalisation, now one product inside the Marigold portfolio

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Sendy logo

Sendy

Email Marketing

Self-hosted newsletter app bought once for $69 that sends through your own Amazon SES account

From
$69/one-time
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Sailthru the product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.; Sendy free updates run only to the next major version, so the one-time purchase is really one purchase per major release and the long-term cost is not zero.
  • They diverge on capability: Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Sendy covers One-time licence.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Sailthru and Sendy actually diverge.

Attributes where Sailthru and Sendy differ
AttributeSailthruSendy
Starting priceOn request$69/one-time
Pricing modelquoteOne-time purchase
PlatformsWeb, REST APIWeb, Linux

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Email Marketing).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Sailthru

  • Interest profiles
  • Personalisation engine
  • Prediction Manager
  • Site personalisation
  • Zephyr templating
  • Lifecycle optimiser

Only in Sendy

  • One-time licence
  • Amazon SES delivery
  • Multiple brands
  • Autoresponders
  • Segmentation
  • Bounce and complaint handling
  • Reporting
  • Client access

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Sailthru

  • A publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content cataloguenot Sendy
  • A retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity modelnot Sendy
  • High-cadence sending where per-recipient content assembly matters more than journey branchingnot Sendy
  • Teams that want churn and lifetime value scores available as native campaign conditions rather than imported fieldsnot Sendy

Sendy

  • A publisher with a large list sending frequently, where a hosted platform bills by subscriber count month after monthnot Sailthru
  • An agency managing newsletters for several clients who each get their own brand and login under one licencenot Sailthru
  • A business that must keep subscriber data on its own infrastructure for privacy or contractual reasonsnot Sailthru
  • A developer wiring signups from a custom application into a mailing list without paying platform API feesnot Sailthru

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Sailthru

  • The product sits in a portfolio with several overlapping platforms under one owner, so roadmap investment is a portfolio decision rather than a product decision and is worth asking about in writing.
  • Pricing counts stored profiles, so retained inactive readers keep costing money long after they stopped opening anything.
  • On-site personalisation requires a developer to implement the JavaScript and maintain the content feed, which puts the highest-value feature behind engineering time.
  • Zephyr is a proprietary templating language, so template maintenance skills are scarce compared with the Liquid syntax used by most competitors.
  • It is built for high-cadence content and retail sending, and B2B lifecycle programmes with long sales cycles sit poorly on the model.

Sendy

  • Free updates run only to the next major version, so the one-time purchase is really one purchase per major release and the long-term cost is not zero.
  • Deliverability becomes entirely your problem: SES gives you a raw sending pipe and no warm-up guidance, reputation dashboards or deliverability consultants when a campaign starts landing in spam.
  • Amazon SES requires production access approval and will suspend accounts on high bounce or complaint rates, which can take a list offline mid-campaign with little warning.
  • The template editor and design tooling are basic next to Mailchimp or Klaviyo, so anything visually ambitious means hand-written HTML email.
  • You own the server: PHP upgrades, database backups and patching are yours, and an unmaintained Sendy install holding a subscriber list is a data breach waiting to happen.

Pricing, plan by plan

Sailthru

On request
  • Sailthru$undefined/year
    • Priced on stored profiles and send volume
    • Site personalisation and prediction features licensed by module
    • Annual contract through Marigold

Sendy

$69/one-time
  • Sendy licence$69/one-time
    • One-time purchase, no subscription
    • Free updates only up to the next major version
    • Unlimited lists, subscribers and campaigns
  • AI Assistant bundle$39/one-time
    • Optional add-on, listed at a discount from $49
    • AI writing assistance inside the campaign editor
  • Installation service$79/one-time
    • Optional one-off setup by the vendor
    • For buyers who do not want to configure hosting and SES themselves

Which should you pick?

Choose Sailthru if

  • You need interest profiles.
  • You work on Web, REST API.
  • You also want personalisation engine.
Sailthru review

Choose Sendy if

  • You need one-time licence.
  • You work on Web, Linux.
  • You also want amazon ses delivery.
Sendy review

Questions people ask

Is Sailthru or Sendy better?
Neither clearly leads. Sailthru starts at On request and Sendy at $69/one-time, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Sailthru or Sendy?
Sailthru starts at On request and Sendy at $69/one-time.
Does Sailthru or Sendy run on more platforms?
Sailthru runs on Web, REST API. Sendy runs on Web, Linux.
What is Sailthru best used for?
Sailthru is most often used for a publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content catalogue, a retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity model, high-cadence sending where per-recipient content assembly matters more than journey branching, teams that want churn and lifetime value scores available as native campaign conditions rather than imported fields. Of those, a publisher sending a personalised daily newsletter assembled per reader from a content catalogue and a retailer that wants email and on-site recommendations driven by the same affinity model are not what Sendy is typically brought in for.
What can Sailthru do that Sendy cannot?
Sailthru covers Interest profiles, Personalisation engine, Prediction Manager, Site personalisation. Sendy covers One-time licence, Amazon SES delivery, Multiple brands, Autoresponders.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Sailthru: Who owns Sailthru now?

Marigold, formerly CM Group, which also owns Campaign Monitor, Emma, Selligent, Liveclicker and Cheetah Digital.

Sendy: What does it actually cost to send?

The licence is $69 once. Delivery is Amazon SES at roughly $1 per 10,000 emails, plus your own hosting, so a 50,000-contact weekly newsletter costs a few dollars a month to send.

Sailthru: Does that affect the roadmap?

It can. Overlapping products in one portfolio compete for investment, so ask which platform is the strategic one for your segment before signing multi-year.

Sendy: Are updates free forever?

No. Updates are free up to the next major version, for example within 7.x. Moving from 7.x to 8.x is a paid upgrade.

Sailthru: Is it worth it just for newsletters?

For personalised daily newsletters at publisher scale it remains one of the strongest options. For simple broadcast sending it is heavily over-specified.

Sendy: Do I need to know how to set up a server?

Standard PHP and MySQL hosting is enough and the vendor compares it to installing WordPress, but the SES side needs AWS configuration. An $79 installation service is offered if you would rather not.

Sendy: What happens if Amazon suspends my SES account?

Your sending stops until you resolve it with AWS. There is no alternative delivery route built in, and this is the single biggest operational risk of the model.

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