Mailchimp charges $350+/month for 50K subscribers. Punchmail charges €49 once for unlimited everything. Self-hosted, your data, your rules.
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.
Mailchimp is the default choice for email marketing. It's easy to start, has a polished interface, and works well enough. But as your list grows, so does your bill. At 50,000 subscribers, you're paying $350+ per month. At 100,000 subscribers, over $700/month. Over three years with a 50K list, that's $12,600 — for software that runs on someone else's servers.
Beyond cost, there's the data ownership problem. Your subscriber data, engagement history, and campaign analytics live on Mailchimp's servers. If you leave, you get a CSV export and lose everything else. Years of engagement data, automation sequences, and email templates — gone. You're renting your email marketing infrastructure.
Mailchimp also limits what you can do with your own infrastructure. You can't use your own SMTP servers, can't create IP warmup pools, can't use ClickHouse for analytics, and can't control your sending reputation independently. You're sharing infrastructure with millions of other senders, including spammers who haven't been caught yet.
Punchmail gives you Mailchimp-level features — block editor, automation, segmentation, A/B testing, analytics — on your own server. €49 once. Unlimited subscribers. Unlimited sends. Your data stays on your server. Your sender reputation is yours alone. That's not just cheaper — it's fundamentally better.
€49 once versus $350+/month. Over 3 years, save $12,500+ while getting unlimited subscribers and sends.
Subscriber data, engagement history, analytics — all on your server. No vendor lock-in, no data hostage situations.
Use any SMTP provider. Create pools with weighted distribution. Control your sender reputation independently.
No pricing tiers based on subscriber count. 10K or 1M subscribers, the price is the same: €49.
We're not competing with Mailchimp's marketing budget. We're competing with their feature set.
| Punchmail | Mailchimp | Brevo | ActiveCampaign | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Unlimited subscribers | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Own your data | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Block email editor | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automation workflows | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| A/B testing | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| SMTP pools + warmup | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| ClickHouse analytics | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| No monthly fees | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Pricing | €29 once | $350+/mo | $65+/mo | $259+/mo |
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 was paying Mailchimp $420/month for 60K subscribers. I switched to Punchmail, spent €49, and now I own my data, my sending reputation, and my freedom. The ROI was instant.
Your subscribers. Your data. Your server. One price, forever.