BillionMail
BillionMail gives you open-source MailServer, NewsLetter, and Email Marketing: fully self-hosted, dev-friendly, and free from monthly fees.
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Sep 2026
BillionMail runs your own mail server and your own newsletter platform in a single box. Not a Mailchimp style client that hands delivery off to Amazon SES, the actual SMTP server, plus Roundcube webmail, a campaign builder, contact lists and tags, and open and click analytics. The installer claims eight minutes to a working system.
Docker Compose or a bash script brings it up, and it provisions free SSL certificates automatically. What it cannot do for you is DNS. You are adding SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records by hand, and you are warming up an IP address that no mail provider on earth has ever seen before.
Free under AGPLv3, all of it, permanently. That is the appeal and it is real. No per contact pricing, no monthly send ceiling, and no plan that suddenly costs $319 a month the week your list crosses fifty thousand people.
The catch is deliverability, and it is not a small one. Running your own SMTP means Gmail and Outlook decide whether your mail is legitimate based on an IP with no reputation and a domain they have not seen sending before. Most people should send through an established provider and put Notifuse/notifuse or knadh/listmonk on top of it. Take this on only if owning the entire pipe is worth learning inbox reputation the hard way.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
fully freeFree: Everything. AGPLv3 licensed with a full SMTP mail server, Roundcube webmail, campaign builder, contact and tag management, customizable templates, and delivery, open, and click analytics. No contact limits and no send limits.
Self-hosted: This is the only deployment mode. Install via bash script, Docker Compose, or one click on aaPanel. You need a server, a sending domain, and correctly configured SPF, DKIM, and DMARC DNS records. SSL certificates are provisioned automatically. Real ongoing cost is IP reputation management, not compute.
Paid: No paid tier, no cloud version, no pro edition. The project sells nothing.
Completely free with no contact or send limits, because you supply the mail server. The hidden price is deliverability: a cold IP earns its reputation slowly or not at all.
What to do by team size
- Solo
- free, but use a sending provider unless deliverability is the point
- Small team
- free; only worth it if someone owns DNS and IP reputation
- Medium team
- free, though most teams this size should pair listmonk with SES instead
- Large team
- free; viable when you already run mail infrastructure and have the expertise
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Trust Signals
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
Must share source even for SaaS/network use. Strongest copyleft.
Commercial use: ✓ Yes
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