4 open source tools compared. Sorted by stars. Scroll down for our analysis.
| Tool | Stars | Velocity | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
 Listmonk High-performance, self-hosted newsletter manager | 20.0k | +86/wk | 73 |
 Nodemailer Send emails with Node.js | 17.6k | +4/wk | 83 |
 Postal Fully featured open source mail delivery platform | 16.5k | +20/wk | 85 |
 Mailtrain Self-hosted newsletter app | 5.7k | +3/wk | 72 |
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Our Analysis
Linkwarden saves, organizes, and preserves web pages and bookmarks with automatic archiving so your links survive when pages go down. It's a single Go binary backed by Postgres that handles subscriber management, campaign creation, analytics, and sending, all through a clean web UI. Connect it to any SMTP service (Amazon SES, Postmark, your own server) and you're running your own Mailchimp for the cost of a VPS. What makes Listmonk stand out: performance. It can handle hundreds of thousands of subscribers without breaking a sweat. The templating system is flexible, transactional emails work alongside campaigns, and the API is well-documented for programmatic access. Subscriber segmentation, A/B testing, bounce handling, it's all there. Deployment is dead simple compared to alternatives. Docker Compose up, point it at a Postgres database, configure SMTP, done. The whole thing runs on a $10/mo VPS comfortably for 50K+ subscribers. The catch: no drag-and-drop email builder. You write HTML templates or use the built-in markdown editor. If your marketing team expects a visual builder like Mailchimp's, they'll be disappointed. There's no built-in landing page builder or signup form designer either; you build those yourself or use the embed code. And the community, while growing, is smaller than commercial ESPs; you're on your own for advanced deliverability tuning.
Nodemailer is the standard library for sending emails from Node.js. It's been the standard for sending email in Node.js for over a decade. Completely free under a permissive license. You get SMTP support, OAuth2 authentication, HTML and plain text emails, attachments, embedded images, DKIM signing, and connection pooling. It works with any SMTP server: Gmail, SendGrid, Mailgun, Amazon SES, your own Postfix server, whatever. No paid tier, no hosted service. It's a library. You install it, configure your SMTP credentials, and send emails. Everyone building Node.js apps that send email: use Nodemailer as your transport layer. Pair it with an ESP (email service provider) for deliverability. If you're sending marketing emails or newsletters, use a dedicated platform instead. The catch: Nodemailer sends emails. That's it. It doesn't manage email templates, track opens/clicks, handle unsubscribes, or give you analytics. For those, you need a service like Resend, SendGrid, or Mailgun on top. Also, sending emails reliably at scale (deliverability, reputation management, bounce handling) is a whole discipline that Nodemailer doesn't solve. It just sends.