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Need an affordable replacement for Mailchimp for a mailing list for a blog with RSS-to-email feature
Hi guys -- I need an affordable replacement for Mailchimp for a basic mailing list for a blog, that can auto-generate content from the blog's RSS feed (RSS-to-Email).
Currently looking at pricing for 1000 - 5000 subscribers (about 10X emails per month). May hit 10000+ subscribers in a year.
It needs to be self-contained, hosted externally by the service, integrate easily with a blog, easy to manage, have good deliverability, and has the typical double-opt-in sign up process, etc., etc. But no extra CRM features are actually needed. Mainly needs automatic RSS-to-Email feature.
Also, I don't want to use "free" services that have any branding stuff on them. Will pay to remove the branding.
I am currently looking at various alternatives like MailerLite, Brevo (Sendinblue), ConvertKit, Moosend, EmailOctopus, AWeber, Mailjet, ActiveCampaign, Zoho Campaigns, etc...
Any thoughts? I'd love to save some money if possible. Right now, it's looking like MailerLite is the best deal, but I haven't researched all options and relevant features yet. And to be clear, I'd prefer not to self-host! 
Thanks in advance for any feedback.
BTW, current Mailchimp pricing:
Mailchimp Standard 1500 contacts = $45 per month
Mailchimp Standard 2500 contacts = $60 per month
Mailchimp Standard 5000 contacts = $100 per month
Mailchimp Standard 10000 contacts = $135 per month
Some example comparisons:
AWeber Plus 1000 subscribers = $45 per month
AWeber Plus 2500 subscribers = $55 per month
AWeber Plus 5000 subscribers = $90 per month
AWeber Plus 10000 subscribers = $135 per month
ConvertKit Creator 1000 subscribers = $29 per month
ConvertKit Creator 3000 subscribers = $49 per month
ConvertKit Creator 5000 subscribers = $79 per month
ConvertKit Creator 10000 subscribers = $119 per month
MailerLite "Growing Business" 1000 subscribers = $15 per month
MailerLite "Growing Business" 2500 subscribers = $25 per month
MailerLite "Growing Business" 5000 subscribers = $39 per month
MailerLite "Growing Business" 10000 subscribers = $73 per month
Moosend Pro 1000 subscribers = $16 per month
Moosend Pro 2000 subscribers = $24 per month
Moosend Pro 5000 subscribers = $48 per month
Moosend Pro 10000 subscribers = $88 per month
Zoho Campaigns Professional 1000 contacts = $12 per month
Zoho Campaigns Professional 2500 contacts = $29 per month
Zoho Campaigns Professional 5000 contacts = $52 per month
Zoho Campaigns Professional 10000 contacts = $81 per month
Brevo Starter (+remove branding) 1500 contacts (10K emails per month) = $29 per month
Brevo Starter (+remove branding) unlimited* contacts (20K emails per month) = $41 per month
Brevo Starter (+remove branding) unlimited* contacts (40K emails per month) = $51 per month
Brevo Starter (+remove branding) unlimited* contacts (100K emails per month) = $81 per month
- I'm estimating 8-10 emails per month, so that roughly lines up with other providers
Mailjet Essential 15K emails per month = $17 per month
Mailjet Essential 50K emails per month = $37 per month
Mailjet Premium 100K emails per month - $105 per month
Even more expensive than Mailchimp:
ActiveCampaign Plus 1000 contacts = $49 per month
ActiveCampaign Plus 2500 contacts = $95 per month
ActiveCampaign Plus 5000 contacts = $145 per month
ActiveCampaign Plus 10000 contacts = $189 per month
Comments
I think Amazon SES is one of the cheapest options available. But you might need to implement some features yourself then.
https://sendy.co/
$69 for the software, and then SES pricing ($0.1/1K email)
So the pricing should be $69 initial + $5/50K emails sent
Why are you leaving Mailchimp?
If you are using WordPress, Newsletter plugin with automation addon (paid, $79/year, $6.6/month) + SES ($5.5/month) to send the emails for 5k subscribers ($12.1/month/total):
https://wordpress.org/plugins/newsletter/ (https://www.thenewsletterplugin.com/automated).
Thank you for your feedback, guys!
I'd be fine using SES but haven't found a solution yet that meets my other requirements!
I don't want to self-host, and last time I checked them out, Sendy still didn't support RSS-to-email yet. Although that may have changed. I know it has been a feature request for years. But yes, if I wanted to self-host, this would have been an option (if there is now an easy way to automate RSS-to-email).
Price. It adds up. I deal with more than one blog, the price is a little crazy, and I'm ready to move on, so I'd like to save some money if possible. Otherwise, it does everything I need it to, and actually far more. (I don't need all the extra features though - just primarily a good RSS-to-email feature.)
This would be a potential solution, but I don't use WordPress anymore.
For what it's worth, I moved to statically-generated sites a while ago, performance is FAR better, security is better, server maintenance is easier/faster (the stack is simpler), sites are more reliable, handles bursts of traffic far better, etc., etc.. But in the past, with WordPress, this looks like it could have been an interesting option.
Thanks again for your help guys!
I'm currently leaning to switching over to MailerLite, but long-term, I'd still like to find something even better and cheaper, but without self-hosting if possible. Above 10K subscribers, I'll look again at pricing, it might be that Zoho, Brevo, or Moosend are better long-term compared to MailerLite, but I'd love to bring the price down even more.
Any other services out there that I might have missed with better prices?
https://zapier.com/apps/rss/integrations/sendy
@jlet88 What stack you are using?
Maybe take a look at https://www.mautic.org/ + SES although it might be overkill.
If you don't need all the bells and whistles that are with a hosted platform like MailerLite and similar, maybe put together something using a Lambda function that is recurring that pulls subscribers list from an SQLite file on an S3 bucket (or even a CSV) and parse the RSS feed and send using your template (https://mjml.io/) via SES? same thing could be done elsewhere too like on Cloudflare.
Nice, thank you! Good to know! Still not planning to host myself, but good to know for if I ever decide to do it this way.
Interesting, I haven't seen that before. Will look at it.
Another interesting suggestion. I don't want extra hassle, I need something that works out of the box with no extra work on my part, but this is still an interesting approach. Thank you.
These blogs are all static sites, I moved from things like WordPress a while ago. For me, it's much better. Think of the MOST simplistic kinds of stacks that you can have. The hosting portion is as dead simple as you can get. Clean, simple, high performance, very low-footprint, more secure, more reliable, handles way more visitors, and if I want, I can bump everything out to a CDN too if needed. There are no dynamic elements, and no unnecessary services running on the servers. This is the beauty of static site generators. I prefer HUGO ( https://gohugo.io/ ) as a static site generator, but that's not the only system I use to build sites. Hence why I want to use external services like MailChimp for this kind of RSS-to-email mailing list feature.
Quick update:
I've decided to transition over to MailerLite, Moosend, or Zoho, and will likely stick with them up to about 20K-30K subscribers, then after that I will re-evaluate the situation and I will reconsider Sendy/SES and self-hosting again, since at that point the cost savings vs. time/features/convenience might be worth it to me.
I'll review the features and test them out in the next few weeks, but their pricing is in a similar ballpark for 20-30K subscribers. Although Zoho scales more affordably it seems.
Thanks again for your feedback, I'll look at Sendy again in the future for sure.
BTW, here are costs of the 3 most affordable alternatives with the core features I need at 20K and 30K subscribers:
MailerLite "Growing Business" 20000 subscribers = $139 per month
MailerLite "Growing Business" 30000 subscribers = $189 per month
Moosend Pro 25000 subscribers = $160 per month
Moosend Pro 50000 subscribers = $315 per month (jumps to 50K subscribers)
Zoho Campaigns Professional 20000 contacts = $123 per month
Zoho Campaigns Professional 30000 contacts = $161 per month
By comparison, MailChimp would cost:
Mailchimp Standard 20000 contacts = $285 per month
Mailchimp Standard 30000 contacts = $340 per month
Mailchimp Standard 50000 contacts = $450 per month (to compare to 50K subscribers with Moosend)
+1 for sendy.co