Sendtric has been the default answer to “how do I put a countdown in an email” for a long time, and it earned that. The free tier is real, the timers render everywhere, and the price for going paid is a rounding error. If you’re reading a Sendtric alternative page, it’s probably not because Sendtric let you down. It’s because you’ve started wanting things a widget tool doesn’t do.
What Sendtric actually is
A widget maker for email. Countdown timers first, then polls and weather, and on paid plans image personalization and rule-based images. Everything is an image you generate and paste into your ESP, which is the same mechanism Alterable uses.
Their pricing page is refreshingly plain. Free gives you 10,000 monthly views of timers, polls and weather, with a watermark only if you go over. Micro is $8.25 a month billed annually for 150,000 views a month, and it’s a bigger plan than the price suggests: standard and start-on-open timers, image personalization, rule-based images, and 900+ fonts. Standard is $35 a month for a million views and adds motion timers, transparent backgrounds and count-up timers. Power is $62.50 for five million views and adds dynamic custom event timers. Custom fonts, multi-language, sub-accounts and the API sit on Enterprise.
Two details matter for the rest of this page. Start-on-open timers, which is what everyone else calls evergreen, arrive at $8.25. And the API is Enterprise-only, so below that tier nothing outside the dashboard can create or change a widget.
Where Sendtric is the better buy
- Evergreen for pocket money. A per-recipient timer that starts at first open costs $8.25 a month on Sendtric. On Alterable, evergreen timers are a Pro feature at $49. If an evergreen countdown is the whole requirement, that gap decides it and nothing below changes that.
- Weather and polls are included. Sendtric’s weather widget has no Alterable equivalent. Alterable has surveys, which cover the poll case, but if you want a live forecast in the header, Sendtric does it and Alterable doesn’t.
- Cheaper per view at volume. A million views a month is $35 on Sendtric and $49 on Alterable Pro, which covers half that. Timers alone, at scale, Sendtric is the smaller line.
- Nothing to learn. One job per widget, a generator each, paste the code. There’s no rules engine because there’s nothing to write rules about.
If timers, polls and weather cover what you need, buy Sendtric and stop reading. I mean that.
Where Alterable is the better buy
The argument isn’t the timer. Both render a live countdown at open, both work in any ESP, and Sendtric’s costs less.
The argument is the second thing. In my experience the countdown is the gateway: it works, and within a month someone asks whether the product grid can show what’s actually in stock, or whether the hero image can carry the reader’s nearest store. On a widget tool that’s where the project ends or a second vendor appears. Alterable includes countdown timers, dynamic images, dynamic products, local maps, surveys and scratchers, and every one of them is on every plan, including the free one. Pro adds A/B testing at $49 a month, with overage billed at $1 per thousand impressions rather than cut off.
Two smaller differences that come up. Sendtric’s timers are localized on Enterprise; Alterable’s are localized in 22 languages on every plan, with full timezone support. And automation: Sendtric’s API is an Enterprise feature, while Alterable has a published API, an MCP server so Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor can build the timer for you, and a Zapier integration in private beta, all from the Pro plan up.
Key differences
| Aspect | Sendtric | Alterable |
|---|---|---|
| What it makes | Timers, polls, weather, image personalization | Timers, images, products, maps, surveys, scratchers |
| Free plan | 10,000 views, watermark only if exceeded | 10,000 impressions, no branding |
| Paid entry | $8.25/mo billed annually, 150K views, includes start-on-open timers | $49/mo, 500K impressions, includes evergreen |
| Top published plan | $62.50/mo billed annually, 5M views | $199/mo, 2.5M impressions |
| Localization | Multi-language on Enterprise | 22 languages, every plan |
| Automation | API on Enterprise; no Zapier or MCP | API, MCP server and Zapier, from Pro |
When a Sendtric alternative makes sense
Ask what you’d build next if the timer was already done.
If the answer is “nothing, the timer is the job”, Sendtric is a good tool at a fair price, and its evergreen timer in particular is hard to argue with at $8.25. Stay.
If you can name the second thing, and it’s usually the stale product block or the hero image that’s the same for everyone, you’re choosing between two vendors or one. That’s the decision. The per-view rate isn’t.
What switching looks like
There’s nothing to export, because both tools draw the image at open rather than storing anything. Rebuild the timers you use in Alterable, swap the image tags in your templates, and your ESP never knows. Timezone, language and expiry settings all have direct equivalents.
If you were using Sendtric’s weather widget, decide what replaces it before you cancel, because nothing here does. Polls map to Alterable surveys. And if the reason you’re moving is one of the other five content types, build that first on the free tier. The timer already works. What you’re testing is whether the rest earns its keep.