Docker Compose up. REST API. Laravel under the hood. Punchmail is email marketing that fits your workflow, not the other way around.
Punchmail isn't a hobby project with a queue bolted on. It's a multi-layered sending engine designed from day one to handle millions of emails without breaking a sweat.
7 priority queues — tracking, sending, campaigns, automations, bounces, imports, default. Each with dedicated workers via Laravel Horizon.
Campaigns split into 500-subscriber batches. Multiple workers process batches simultaneously. Template compiled once, cached in Redis, reused across all batches.
Every open, click, bounce, and unsubscribe stored in ClickHouse with 6 materialized views for instant aggregation. No more slow MySQL GROUP BY on millions of rows.
Redis SETNX locks → MySQL unique index with INSERT IGNORE → job idempotency. Three layers guarantee zero duplicate sends, even during crashes and restarts.
Enterprise email marketing features without the enterprise price tag. Built by someone who's been sending email since before Gmail existed.
Drag-and-drop email builder with 10 block types. Compiles to bulletproof HTML via MJML. Looks perfect in every client — yes, even Outlook.
Nested AND/OR conditions across subscriber fields, tags, engagement history, and campaign activity. "Opened campaign X but didn't click in 90 days" — milliseconds.
Trigger-based workflows with conditions, delays, and actions. Welcome series, re-engagement, cart abandonment. Set it and forget it.
Connect any SMTP provider. Create pools with weighted distribution for IP warmup. Automatic failover. Per-campaign throttling. This is what enterprise ESPs charge thousands for.
Event tracking powered by ClickHouse. Millions of events, instant queries. Full per-campaign reports and per-subscriber activity timeline.
Test subject lines and content with 2-3 variants. Auto-send the winner based on opens or clicks. Data-driven sending.
IMAP/POP3 mailbox polling plus webhook receivers for SES, Postmark, and SendGrid. Automatic hard/soft classification with configurable thresholds.
Multiple suppression lists with email AND domain blocking. Platform-wide suppression for spamtraps and global unsubscribes. Three-layer dedup prevents duplicate sends.
RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe (Gmail/Yahoo required), in-body unsubscribe, and full preference center. List-Unsubscribe headers automatic on every send.
Most email marketing platforms are built for marketers and tolerated by developers. The dashboards are slick, but there's no API for the workflow you actually need. Deployments mean clicking through a web UI instead of running a command. Configuration lives in a database instead of environment variables. Version control? What's that?
Punchmail is built on Laravel 11 — one of the most popular and well-documented PHP frameworks. The codebase is clean, well-structured, and follows Laravel conventions. If you've worked with Laravel before, you can read the code, extend it, and customize it without a manual. If you haven't, the Laravel ecosystem has more documentation than any email platform.
Deployment is Docker Compose. Clone the repo, set your environment variables in .env, run docker compose up -d, and you're live. Updates are docker compose pull && docker compose up -d. No manual server configuration, no PHP version conflicts, no dependency hell. Infrastructure as code, the way it should be.
The REST API covers everything: subscribers, lists, campaigns, segments, and more. Import subscribers via API, trigger automations programmatically, pull analytics data into your own dashboards. Punchmail fits into your existing stack — it doesn't demand you build around it.
Docker Compose up and you're running. Environment variables for config. docker compose pull for updates. No GUI-only setup.
Laravel 11, well-structured, well-documented. Read the code, extend it, customize it. Open source you can actually work with.
Manage subscribers, campaigns, and automations programmatically. Integrate with your existing stack via API.
Configuration via .env and config files, not database settings. Version-controllable, environment-aware, 12-factor friendly.
We're not competing with Mailchimp's marketing budget. We're competing with their feature set.
| Punchmail | Mailchimp | Listmonk | Mautic | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Docker deployment | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| REST API | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Clean codebase | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | Complex |
| Env-based config | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | Mixed |
| Block email editor | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | Basic |
| Automation engine | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| SMTP pools | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| ClickHouse analytics | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Self-hosted | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| One-time pricing | ✓ | $350+/mo | Free | Free |
No PhD required. If you can copy-paste three commands, you can run Punchmail.
Clone the repo, copy the environment file, set your admin credentials.
git clone https://github.com/punchmail/punchmail && cp .env.example .env
One command spins up all 7 containers — app, database, analytics, queue, cache, email renderer. Done.
docker compose up -d
Add your SMTP provider in settings — Amazon SES, Postmark, your own Postfix, whatever. Create pools, set weights, configure failover.
Import subscribers, build your first campaign with the block editor, hit send. Welcome to email freedom.
No subscriber tiers. No send limits. No "contact sales." Just a price that makes sense.
🚀 Launch price for the first 100 customers. Then €99.
I've integrated more email APIs than I can count. Most email platforms treat developers as an afterthought. Punchmail is built the way I'd build it — Docker, env config, clean API, readable code.
Your subscribers. Your data. Your server. One price, forever.