Tools/knadh/listmonk

Listmonk

High-performance, self-hosted newsletter manager

23.5k ★+36/wkgrowthGoGNU Affero General Public License v3.0 →trending

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Replaces:ActiveCampaign Mailchimp SendGrid

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The Lens

By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.

Updated Aug 2026

Listmonk is the self-hosted answer to Mailchimp: a single Go binary and a Postgres database that handle subscribers, campaigns, templates, analytics, and sending. Point it at any SMTP provider (Amazon SES, Postmark, your own relay) and you own the list. AGPL-3.0, every feature included, no paid tier and no hosted version from the maintainer.

Deployment is a Docker Compose file and a database URL, and it moves serious volume on modest hardware. The parts most vendors charge for are simply there: OIDC single sign-on (logging in with your company account), role-based permissions, a transactional mail API, multi-SMTP queues, and a visual drag-and-drop email builder alongside the WYSIWYG, Markdown, and raw HTML editors. Subscriber segmentation runs on raw SQL, which is either a gift or a wall depending on your comfort level.

Solo operators and small teams should stop shopping. Mautic (mautic/mautic) is the move only if you need full marketing automation and can carry the operational weight. Postal (postalserver/postal) solves a different problem, since it is a mail server rather than a campaign tool.

The catch: deliverability becomes your job. SPF, DKIM, DMARC, warming a sending domain, and watching bounce rates are all on you, and one careless campaign can burn a sender reputation you cannot buy back. Kit is free up to 10,000 subscribers, so below that line the savings argument is thin and you are really buying control.

Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid

fully free

Free

All of it. AGPL-3.0, single binary, no feature gates, no seat limits, no hosted upsell. OIDC single sign-on and role-based permissions are included, which is the part worth noticing given how many vendors put exactly those two behind an enterprise plan.

Paid

Nothing to buy from the project. Your spend goes to a server and an email provider.

Self-Hosted Costs

Server: $5 to $10 a month. A 512MB VPS handles a small list; give Postgres more room once you pass six figures of subscribers.
Amazon SES: $0.10 per 1,000 emails with no plan commitment, or $0.16 per 1,000 on the Essentials plan. 50,000 sends lands between $5 and $8.
Postmark: $15 a month for Basic, then $1.80 per 1,000 additional emails. More expensive, better sending reputation out of the box.
Domain and DNS: free, but SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are mandatory, not optional.

Setup runs one to two hours with Docker.

When to Pay

Pay a managed ESP when nobody on the team wants to own deliverability. Kit is free to 10,000 subscribers and Mailchimp Standard is $100 a month at 5,000 contacts, so the crossover is less about list size than about who gets paged when the bounce rate spikes.

Free software with nothing gated, including SSO. Budget $10 to $20 a month for a VPS plus metered sending, and budget your own attention for deliverability.

What to do by team size

Solo: free and the best option in the category. Docker Compose to first campaign in about an hour.
Small team: free. One person can own it. Postgres backups and DNS records are the only recurring chores.
Medium team: free. The API-first design slots into existing systems, and role-based permissions mean you can hand marketing an account without handing over the server.
Large team: free, but budget for managed Postgres, real monitoring, and someone who actually understands email deliverability.

Self-hosting ops:moderate

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