📧 Quillrush Newsletter Studio for Sendy turns your WordPress dashboard into a full-blown newsletter creation studio for the Sendy + Amazon SES stack. Drag your latest posts into a beautiful responsive HTML email, pick the Sendy lists/segments to ship to, and send via your self-hosted Sendy installation, which forwards every message through Amazon SES. No HTML coding. No external SaaS. No paid tier.

⚠️ Requires a self-hosted Sendy install backed by Amazon SES. This plugin is the WordPress front-end — it does not replace Sendy or SES. If you don’t have Sendy + SES set up yet, see sendy.co and aws.amazon.com/ses.

✨ Headline features

🎨 Visual newsletter builder — drag posts in, see the rendered email update live.
📨 Two newsletter formats per campaign — The Roundup (subscriber-facing) and The Insider Brief (editorial pitch for media & partners).
📋 Auto-fetched Sendy lists & segments — pulled live via the Sendy API, shown as checkboxes with active subscriber counts. Cached 10 minutes; one-click refresh.
🧠 Remembers your last selection — the lists you sent to last time are pre-checked next time.
🔍 Infinite-scroll post search — AJAX-loads posts in batches of 10 as you scroll.
🖼️ Smart hero image — uses your uploaded banner if present, otherwise falls back to the first post’s featured image.
📱 Mobile-first responsive layout — 2 columns on desktop, single column on mobile (< 600px), auto-height cards.
📅 Three send modes — Save as Draft in Sendy, Send Immediately, or Schedule for a future date/time.
🕐 Timezone-aware scheduling — uses your WordPress timezone; shows current server time + zone next to the picker.
♻️ Auto-recovery for overdue campaigns — if WP-Cron didn’t fire on time, overdue scheduled campaigns are auto-sent on next admin page-load.
🛠️ Retry on failure — failed sends show the exact Sendy error + a one-click Retry Send button.
⚙️ Optional cron trigger — after each send, optionally hit scheduled.php?i=BRAND_ID on your Sendy host so queued campaigns process without a server cron.
✍️ Custom footer block — extra text/HTML above the footer in a highlighted box. Supports anchor tags + auto nl2br.
🌐 Social footer icons — Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), YouTube.
🗃️ Campaign history — every campaign stored as a qrnss_campaign custom-post-type entry with Status / Scheduled For / Error columns.
🔒 WordPress-native security — nonces on every action, manage_options capability checks, wp_safe_redirect() for all redirects.

📨 The two newsletter formats

🗞️ The Roundup — visual hero + 2-column story grid for your subscribers. Uses the “Custom Footer Text” highlighted box.

✉️ The Insider Brief — personal greeting, lead paragraph, centered hero with featured image, “What Else We’re Seeing” 2-column grid, “Why this matters” callout, “For Media & Collaborations” CTA block, and a centered About Us block. Built for media pitches & partner updates. All copy editable from Settings The Insider Brief — Template Texts.

Pick the format per-campaign on the Create Newsletter page (Design Settings Newsletter Format). Header and dark footer (logo, social, copyright, unsubscribe) are shared across both formats.

📋 Full settings reference

🔌 Sendy Connection Settings

Sendy Installation URL — base URL of your Sendy install (e.g. https://sendy.yourdomain.com/).
API Key — from Sendy Settings Your API Key.
Brand ID (Optional) — from Sendy Settings Your Brand ID. Required by some Sendy versions and used for auto-fetching lists.
Default From Name — pre-filled into every new campaign.
Default From Email — pre-filled into every new campaign.
Auto-Trigger Cron — checkbox. After sending, hit <sendy-url>/scheduled.php?i=BRAND_ID so queued campaigns process without a system cron.
Show Article Excerpt — checkbox. Insert a 20-word excerpt between the post title and the “Read More” button.

🎨 Footer & Social Settings

Footer Logo URL — logo shown in the dark footer band.
Copyright Text — footer copyright line. {year} is replaced with the current year.
Custom Footer Text — textarea, HTML allowed. Shown in a highlighted box above the footer in The Roundup. Newlines <br> automatically.
“Read More Articles” Link — optional link below the post grid.
Instagram URL / LinkedIn URL / X (Twitter) URL / YouTube URL — social icons in footer.

✉️ The Insider Brief — Template Texts (used only by The Insider Brief format)

Greeting — e.g. Hi [First Name],
Intro Paragraph — lead paragraph above the hero story (HTML allowed).
Hero Section Label — small label above the hero (e.g. Hero Story).
Grid Section Heading — e.g. 🔍 What Else We're Seeing
“Why This Matters” Heading + Body
Collaboration Heading + Body — e.g. 📩 For Media & Collaborations + CTA bullets and contact info (HTML allowed).
About Us Heading + Body — centered About block above the footer.

📅 Send modes

💾 Save as Draft in Sendy — POSTs to create-campaign.php with send_campaign=0. Campaign appears in your Sendy dashboard as a draft. WP logs status: draft.
🚀 Send Immediately — POSTs to create-campaign.php with send_campaign=1. Sendy queues + dispatches via SES. WP logs status: sent. If Auto-Trigger Cron is on, also hits scheduled.php?i=BRAND_ID.
⏰ Schedule — stored as a qrnss_campaign post with status scheduled. WordPress registers a one-off wp_schedule_single_event for the chosen datetime. When the event fires, the plugin sends via Sendy. Datetime picker is timezone-aware and uses your WP timezone setting.

🛟 Failure handling

Failed sends never silently disappear:

❌ Red admin notice at the top of the Campaigns screen.
📋 Exact Sendy error in the Error column.
🔁 One-click Retry Send button (CSRF-nonced).
♻️ Auto-recovery — overdue scheduled campaigns automatically send on next admin page-load.

🗄️ Campaign history (CPT)

Every campaign is stored as a qrnss_campaign custom-post-type entry. Admin columns:

Title — subject line.
Status — draft (grey), scheduled (yellow), sent (green), failed (red).
Scheduled For — datetime if scheduled.
Error — Sendy error message if the send failed.

🔌 Sendy API endpoints used

All requests go straight to your own self-hosted Sendy installation at the URL you set in Settings. The plugin never talks to any third-party SaaS — Sendy itself fans out to Amazon SES from your host.

api/lists/get-lists.php — fetch lists for the Create Newsletter screen (cached 10 min). Sends: api_key, brand_id.
api/subscribers/active-subscriber-count.php — per-list subscriber counts. Sends: api_key, list_id.
api/campaigns/create.php — Save as Draft, Send Immediately, scheduled fire. Sends: api_key, from_name, from_email, reply_to, title, subject, html_text, plain_text, list_ids, brand_id, send_campaign.
scheduled.php (your Sendy host) — only when Auto-Trigger Cron is ticked. Sends: i=BRAND_ID query param.

🔒 Requirements

WordPress 5.8 or higher (tested up to 7.0).
PHP 7.4 or higher.
A reasonably recent self-hosted Sendy installation.
Amazon SES configured inside Sendy (out of scope for this plugin).