Sendy is a self-hosted software. Before Sendybay, users would get a license and try to host Sendy themselves on their own servers. Or, to make things easier, they would hire someone. In either scenario, their application ends up running in an server environment not optimised for the application and they face different problems.
In this blog post, we have synthesised common problems that Sendy users faced, as told my customers who migrated to our hosting.
This is the most common trap that Sendy users fall into. Imagine doing all the technical work to get the database, CRON and your php installation in place, only to find a 404 page waiting for you at the other end. Darn!
The fix might be quite simple though. You need to enable “mod_rewrite” on your web hosting. This can be done in a variety of ways depending on your hosting. We have compiled a list of reference articles to do this for most popular web hosts.
CRONs are the next problem areas. There are different reasons why CRONs will not work as expected. The first one might be that CRONs are not installed properly. For this, you will have to consult your web host's guide to set up CRON and verify that things are in order.
Next, you might’ve set up CRONs correctly, but it might be behaving correctly. Common symptoms here are
In this case, the issue might be with the hosting. Sendy recommends setting up CRON to run every 5 minutes. Although, if you are on shared hosting, your hosting provider might not support a CRON to run that frequently, i.e. 5 minutes. After adding your CRON entry, it might’ve been removed or maybe, the CRONs are being run in irregular frequency.
If you are using Sendybay, you don’t need to worry about this. We take care of any problems you face with running Sendy, including this one.
If you’ve self-hosted though, the story might be different. Here are your possible options
Figure out hacks like this one for Godaddy to solve your problems. Hacks don’t last long and chances are, this problem is going to come back and bite you in the future. We don’t recommend this.
A third common problem with Sendy is the sending speed. This is a tricky one. It depends on multiple factors.
Are you using SMTP? In that case, sending is slow as Sendy doesn’t use multithreading if you are using SMTP configuration.
Are you using Amazon SES and still seeing slow speed? The common pitfall here is, while users configure their Sendy setup with the correct AWS key and secret, they miss configuring the sending rate in their settings. Here’s how to do it.
When you are using your AWS account with Sendy, you can’t set any arbitrary sending rate as you wish. Amazon limits the number of emails you can send per second. Your Sendy’s configuration of sending rate should be lower than your AWS account limit.
If you wish to have a higher sending rate, you will need to speak to AWS customer support team. You can do it by creating a support ticket in your AWS console. Here’s a direct link to their support ticket dashboard. Make sure you have selected your correct AWS region.
Finally, your sending rate problems might be arising from the server running your CRONs. If you are on shared hosting, you are most definitely going to experience slow sending speeds (unless your subscriber list is too small). In this case, you will have to upgrade your server to either a dedicated one, or request your hosting provider to increase your RAM and CPU limits. This is again different for each hosting provider and we can’t provide specific details. Feel free to contact us for any guidance here.
Once you are set and start sending campaigns, you will start facing common email marketing problems with your Sendy hosting. This is not an issue with your Sendy installation. Spam folder problems are pretty common and there are standard ways of dealing with it. Here’s what you can do.
DKIM and SPF records validate that you are a genuine sender and the email domain you are using in the FROM address belongs to use. It is your passport to your subscribers Gmail. Setting this up might be tricky. We are happy to help. Nonetheless, here are links pointing to how-to guides with DIY tips
Your domain reputation might have been affected due to previous marketing campaigns. This determines whether your email will land up in Inbox or Spam. In addition to this, things like too many links or images in the email matter. Thankfully there is a simple way to get on top of these criterias. You can test your email quality by using this tool - mail-tester.com. We have found it useful to avoid common pitfalls of sending misconfigured campaigns.
Self-hosting Sendy comes with a responsibility. You need to learn a few things to make sure that things are set up correctly. In addition to this, you need to constantly monitor uptime and performance, so that things don’t crash. This can be fun and we definitely think so. Although, you might have more important things to worry about, instead of solving the technical riddle that a Sendy setup can become. In this case, it definitely calls for giving us a shot and ridding yourself of unnecessary obstacles that block you from achieving your goals.
If you are facing any of the above problems, or have a general query, feel free to reach out to us at support@sendybay.com or ping us on live chat. We’d be more than happy to help!