Comparing SES Wrappers:
Transmit vs. Sendy vs. Sidemail
Should you self-host PHP? Or use a managed wrapper? Here is the honest breakdown of the AWS SES ecosystem.
The SES Ecosystem has 3 tiers: Self-Hosted (Sendy), Lightweight Wrappers (Sidemail), and Infrastructure Suites (Transmit). Your choice depends on how much maintenance pain you can tolerate.
- Sendy: Cheapest ($69), but requires you to manage a PHP server, CRON jobs, and database upgrades.
- Sidemail: Great lightweight wrapper, but lacks advanced specialized features (Warmup, Inbound Parsing).
- Transmit: The 'Vercel for SES'. Fully managed, API-first, with enterprise features like Inbound and Dedicated IPs.
Sendy
The Legacy Self-Hosted
- One-time fee
- Unlimited emails
- Self-hosted (EC2/VPS)
- No API for transactional
- Maintenance heavy
Sidemail
The Simple Wrapper
- Fully managed
- Good UI
- Limited features
- No inbound parsing
- Basic templating
Transmit
The Control Plane
- Fully Managed
- React Email Support
- Inbound Parsing
- Automated Warmup
- Multi-Tenant Teams
02. The Hidden Cost of Self-Hosting
We love Sendy. It was the pioneer. But "One time fee" is comprehensive deception. You pay with your time.
Error: Syntax error or access violation: 1064
... near 'grouping' at line 1
Analysis: Sendy v5 uses "grouping" as a column name. This is a reserved word in MySQL 8. Your entire campaign is broken until you manually ALTER TABLE.
If you choose Sendy, you are essentially becoming a Linux Sysadmin. Do you have your upgrade script ready?
Do you want to be debugging STRICT_TRANS_TABLES SQL modes on a Friday night? Or do you want to send email?
It is the synthesis.
Beyond the Wrapper
Choosing a control plane is step one. Step two is securing the connection and scaling your reputation.