In today’s world, it is highly essential to let your targeted users know about the newly launched products, blog posts, new features, etc.
These days, a lot of business organizations and website owners are opting for email newsletter applications to reach out to potential customers.
How do you communicate with your customers and users?
One of the popular ways to use a marketing platform that lets you send emails to your users. Most platforms offer FREE emails to up to 2000 users per month. However, you need to spend more to send more, and the cost can go high.
Managed marketing email solutions are expensive.
And, if you are looking for a cheaper solution, then the following self-hosted email software will save you $$$.
If you are still wondering what is self-hosted – you will need to host the email platform on your server. Typically, you’ll be given software that can be installed on a VPS or cloud VM.
Installing them is not a difficult task. Most of them provide explicit instructions, and by following that, you should be able to get your self-hosted email platform ready in less than one hour.
Switching your campaigns to self-hosted services can save thousands of dollars, which is why many organizations are actively opting for it.
Let’s explore them…
Top Self-Hosted Email Marketing Software in 2024
Sendy
Sendy is one of the popular solutions to send a bulk email at a much cheaper cost.
It’s built-in PHP and MySQL and sends an email via Amazon SES. It is one of the most affordable services, with a plan that costs only $1 for 10,000 emails. You can avail of all the future updates and support from their technical team for a one-time fee of $59.
Highlights
- You get all basic features, including Campaign Builder, Reporting, Automatic Bounce Handling, Auto-responder, Complaints, Unsubscribe, Statistical Graph, etc.
- You can create separate accounts for your clients and ensure that they online get a view that is required for them instead of displaying all the lists
- It has an email filtering list. If an email does not exist, it is automatically cleared off from the list the next time
In the latest version of Sendy, they have introduced setting a custom domain for the brands and the following features.
- Get notified when someone subscribes to the list. Earlier, it was only possible with Zaiper integration.
- Create a suppression list of emails if you never want to send them.
- Housekeeping to clean inactive or unconfirmed subscribers
- Block domain if you don’t want to send emails to them anymore
Sendy 4 got a fresh new look. If you are an existing customer using an earlier version, you can upgrade for only $29.
MailWizz
MailWizz is one of the complete self-hosted email marketing systems available today. Written in modern PHP and using MySQL as its database, it can run on any web hosting account.
MailWizz makes email marketing accessible to everyone as simple as possible. It is suitable for both experts and beginners.
Highlights
- Add as many accounts as you need in a single install
- Create regular campaigns, autoresponders, or recurring campaigns
- Send campaigns based on external RSS or JSON feeds
- Get detailed reports related to your campaigns and share these reports with anyone
- Send your emails with any SMTP server or a well-known solution such as Amazon SES, SendGrid, MailGun, SparkPost, PepiPost, ElasticEmail, etc.
- Import your subscribers from CSV, text, or external database
- Create as many custom fields as you need for your subscribers
- Segment your list based on custom fields and target only the right segments
You can start your email marketing business as a SaaS. Check out the features page to find out more.
Mailtrain
Mailtrain is a newsletter application and mail listing app built on top of Nodemailer, Node.js & MySQL under a GPL v3 license.
It is a great tool that offers automation and analytics and works well for large mailing lists of millions of subscribers.
Highlights
- You can add the mail addresses of your subscribers manually or import them from CSV
- You can add various tools like custom fields, including text fields, numbers, drop downs & checkboxes through merge tags.
- You can even filter the subscriber list and send emails to specific subscribers that match the segmentation rules predefined by you
- It allows you to create landing pages for actions like unsubscribing from the list
- Apart from self-hosting, you can also use various services like Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), SparkPost, SendGrid, and Mailgun that support SMTP protocol
The great thing is it’s FREE.
NuevoMailer
NeuvoMailer is a feature-rich self-hosted e-newsletter and email list management system that comes with autoresponder software.
You can access all the features of NuevoMailer for a one-time license fee. It is a cost-effective tool mainly aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises.
Highlights
- You can manage unlimited subscribers and mailing lists
- If you find any inactive or dormant subscribers, you can remove them
- NuevoMailer supports single and recurring email campaigns, drip campaigns, and triggers
- You can generate custom landing pages, build a form and keep a check on your progress by tracking real-time reports and charts
- NuevoMailer is easy to use and learn
Dada Mail
Dada Mail is an open-source email and list management tool written in Perl.
Dada Mail was introduced in January 2000 as Mojo Mail under GNU General Public License.
Highlights
- Since Dada Mail is browser-based, the main part of the program runs as a simple CGI script rather than a daemon process. So the overall security is improved.
- Individual subscribers can edit their profiles based on preferences
- You can send emails in batches, ensuring that the host doesn’t get showered with a huge number of emails
- Apart from an email address, you can create form fields for acquiring other information about your subscriber like first name, last name, city, etc.
- You can also capture the content of a particular URL and send it to users in your subscriber list
MoonMail
MoonMail is another platform for sending email marketing newsletters that offer unlimited campaigns and unlimited subscribers for a reasonable price.
Highlights
- One of the prime reasons for MoonMail to be included in this list is its straightforward User Interface. You can use a demo account to understand how MoonMail works. Its dashboard predominantly displays a graph showing the results of the previous email campaign along with several other self-explanatory tabs.
- You can easily create beautiful email templates using the built-in Bee Editor Plugin and Template library
- MoonMail’s live chat support currently supports ten languages
- Its Email validation tool can help you find invalid email addresses from your lists
Octeth
Octeth is a feature-packed email marketing software from the founders of Sendloop, which has over 4000 clients in around 80 countries.
Highlights
- You can log activities for your subscribers, use their data such as their name, age, address, etc., and even set up autoresponders.
- You can seamlessly generate forms using their form designer
- With Octeth, you get subscription and unsubscription alerts through emails as well as ping
- You can use their wizard to design your email as well as save it as a template
- Octeth lets you set up autoresponders for sending regular emails to your subscribers
- After integrating Octeth with PreviewMyEmail, you can test your email design on more than 4o email clients
Mautic
Mautic is available in two flavors – self-hosted and cloud-based.
You can download the self-hosted version from Mautic.org and then follow the essential setup guide for its configuration.
Highlights
- It is open-source and has an active community
- It is quite easy to install and has minimum server requirements
- You can create contacts and segment them
- Apart from creating email campaigns, you can also create landing pages and forms
- Since it is open-source, new features and enhancements are regularly introduced
Mautic is FREE.
SendPortal
SendPortal is a self-hosted, open-source email marketing software that makes email marketing convenient. It has an interactive and user-oriented UI, making it a breeze. It aims to simplify work and features a range of options to make it easier for people to manage organizations, businesses, and jobs.
You can track messages, email campaigns, subscriber lists, and reports. Send Portal integrates with other applications and rest API for a streamlined work process.
With custom-defined segments, you can easily manage your subscriber lists. With this tool, you are always in control of your data. There is no limit to the number of users, subscribers, messages, or segments you can manage.
| ✅ Pros | ❌ Cons |
|---|---|
| Integrates seamlessly with email service providers like AWS SES, Postmark, Sendgrid, Mailgun, SMTP, and Mailjet. | Requires self-hosting infrastructure. |
| Offers multiple workspaces in a scalable application. | Limited official customer support. |
| An open-source platform managed by the Laravel community. | Potential complexity for beginners. |
| Easily check the configuration of your Email Service by running a test run. | Responsibility for data security. |
| Update customer lists with API or CSV upload. |
SendPortal is free to use to make email marketing accessible to everyone.
OpenEMM
OpenEMM is a free alternative to the award-winning AGNITAS E-Marketing Manager (EMM.) It is the first-ever open-source solution in its domain. The commercial version of EMM has a comprehensive toolkit to help organizations take their marketing to another level. However, not all businesses or individuals need such elaborate tools.
With OpenEMM, Agnitas seeks to make email marketing management accessible to everyone. Creating, sending, and evaluating newsletters and emails is a wonderful platform.
Agnitas claims that even though openEMM is free to use, it is miles ahead of some commercial solutions regarding features and in-house operations.
It offers professional email marketing and automation services but with basic tools. Since it is a self-hosted software, the users only need to know the installation and administration skills. It is also an excellent tool for lead management.
| ✅ Pros | ❌ Cons |
|---|---|
| 100% GDPR compliant. | Since openEMM is a self-hosted open-source software, it is not as specialized as its premium paid version. |
| Mail design is template-based. | |
| Automatic bounce management. | |
| Profile characterization can be done through an individually defined database column. | |
| Effortless extension of basic features using plugin interface. | |
| Profile characterization can be done through an individually defined database column. |
OpenEMM is a free tool. As a matter of fact, it is the first open-source email marketing and automation software.
Conclusion
I hope the above solutions help you to build your own email marketing solution to save $$$. If you are not confident in managing, you may alternatively try cost-effective platforms.