$/transactional-email-api providers ↗
hub · self-hosted

Self-hosted email

Open-source platforms that run on your own infrastructure. Trade operational ownership for independence from a vendor and the ability to keep all data in your environment.

Open-source email servers and platforms that run on your own infrastructure.

ranking

8 Best Self-Hosted Email Tools (2026), Tested

Open-source platforms you can run on your own infrastructure.

Full ranking →
  1. 01

    Postal

    Self-hosted Transactional

    Most mature open-source SMTP-server replacement.
  2. 02

    mailcow

    Self-hosted

    Full Dockerized mail and groupware suite with admin UI, Postfix, Dovecot, Rspamd, and SOGo.
  3. 03

    maddy

    Self-hosted

    Compact all-in-one mail server with SMTP, MX receipt, IMAP, DKIM, SPF, DMARC, DANE, and MTA-STS.
  4. 04

    Plunk

    Self-hosted Marketing

    Unified marketing plus transactional in a single AGPL app.
  5. 05

    Listmonk

    Newsletter Self-hosted

    Single-binary newsletter manager. Bring your own SMTP.
ranking

12 Best Open-Source Email Tools (2026), Tested

A reference stack for teams that want to own every layer.

Full ranking →
  1. 01

    Postal

    Self-hosted Transactional

    Outbound and inbound delivery server.
  2. 02

    mailcow

    Self-hosted

    Full self-hosted mail and groupware suite with a strong admin UI.
  3. 03

    maddy

    Self-hosted

    Compact all-in-one SMTP, MX, IMAP, and authentication stack.
  4. 04

    Listmonk

    Newsletter Self-hosted

    Newsletter manager and broadcast.
  5. 05

    Novu

    Notifications Self-hosted

    Notification orchestration across channels.
all providers in this category

Directory (8)

All providers →

Ghost

Newsletter Self-hosted

Open-source publishing with built-in memberships and email.

free tier
Self-hosted is free (your infra cost)
starts at
Ghost Pro from $9/mo

Listmonk

Newsletter Self-hosted

Self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager.

free tier
Free, self-hosted
starts at
Self-hosted only

Postal

Self-hosted Transactional

Open-source mail delivery platform.

free tier
Free, self-hosted
starts at
Self-hosted only

Plunk

Self-hosted Marketing

Open-source unified email platform.

free tier
3,000/mo on hosted free plan
starts at
$19/mo or self-host

Novu

Notifications Self-hosted

Open-source notification infrastructure.

free tier
30,000 events/mo on cloud, free self-hosted
starts at
$250/mo (Business cloud)

maddy

Self-hosted

Composable all-in-one mail server.

free tier
Free self-hosted, GPL-3.0
starts at
Free self-hosted

mailcow

Self-hosted

Dockerized groupware and email server suite.

free tier
Free self-hosted, GPL-3.0
starts at
Free self-hosted

Cuttlefish

Self-hosted Transactional

Open-source transactional email server with a web UI.

free tier
Free self-hosted, open source
starts at
Free self-hosted

reading this as teams choosing a transactional API

Judged purely as an API. What the request contract guarantees on retry, how complete the webhook event coverage is, whether suppressions are readable and writable programmatically, and how much the message log retains when something needs debugging in production.

Applied to self-hosted email, that means weighing idempotency keys, webhook coverage, event stream, and operating track record ahead of the rest, against high-frequency programmatic sends where a missed delivery is a product failure.