Switching from Buttondown to Sendy
I've spent some time this afternoon switching my email subscription system from the fantastic Buttondown, to a self-hosted Sendy instance.
I’ve been using Buttondown for years and in that time it’s been faultless. I love their RSS import implementation that allows it to consume a feed and spit out an email. I’ve used Sendy in the past, but this option wasn’t available, and so creating emails was a manual copy and paste process.
Not any more.
I’ve been teaching myself PHP for a little while now and I’m slowly getting better. So with a little help from ChatGPT, I’ve been able to implement a PHP script that will pull my RSS feed into Sendy and spit out an email automagically via API.
Wonderful.
But why change?
Well, as you know, I’ve been looking at simplifying stuff lately, and while Buttondown is very much set and forget, it’s quite expensive. So although this move isn’t much of a simplification, it is an exercise in reducing costs, and being more self-reliant.
Buttondown actually costs me more than the VPS that hosts this site, and all the other sites associated with my various little projects. So paying so much for a service that’s only used by a few hundred people seems crazy, especially since I already had a Sendy license hanging around.
All my testing shows that Sendy should be a 1:1 replacement for Buttondown, so if you’re subscribed via email, everything should just continue to work. The only thing you will notice is that the email you receive looks a little different. But everything else is the same - there’s no tracking, and there’s always an unsubscribe link in every email if you decide you no longer want emails from me.
Of course, there’s always my RSS feed if you want another way to subscribe.
Having said all of the above, if you notice anything wonky, please do let me know buy using the reply button.
If everything works how it should, this post should land in your inbox in the next few minutes. 🤞🏻