Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover newsletter & email. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Ghost | Sendy | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $15 | From $69 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | One-time purchase |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | One-time purchase |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Not stated |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | None | Not stated |
| Runs on | Web | Web |
| Covers | Website Builders, Memberships & Subscriptions, Newsletter & Email | Newsletter & Email, Email Marketing & Automation |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
Publishing and paid subscriptions, open source
Ghost is what a writer picks who wants Substack's economics without Substack's cut, and it takes nothing from subscription revenue beyond the hosting fee. The editor is quiet and fast, and the whole thing is open source, so a technical creator can host it themselves for the cost of a server. Doing that means you are the support team.
Our note
Against Substack the maths is simple: Ghost costs a fixed fee and Substack costs 10 percent of everything, so Ghost wins above roughly $300 a month in subscriptions and loses below it. What Substack sells that Ghost cannot is the network that finds you readers.
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Self hosted sending on top of Amazon SES
Sendy is a PHP application you install on your own server, which then sends through Amazon SES at Amazon's rates rather than at a newsletter platform's. You buy the software once. At a list size where a hosted platform starts charging hundreds a month, the arithmetic is what people come for, and the cost is that hosting, deliverability and upgrades are now yours.
Our note
The arithmetic only works above roughly ten thousand subscribers, and below that a hosted platform is cheaper once your time is counted. Check the Amazon SES sending limits before buying, because a new SES account starts in a sandbox that will not send to the public.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
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