phpList proved open-source email marketing was possible. Punchmail proves it can also be beautiful, fast, and powerful.
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.
phpList is one of the oldest open-source email marketing tools — it's been around since 2000. For over two decades, it's served as the go-to free option for self-hosted newsletters. That legacy deserves respect. But the codebase and user experience show every one of those 25 years.
The interface is functional but painfully dated. There's no drag-and-drop editor, no visual email builder, no modern campaign workflow. Creating an email in phpList feels like filling out a government form from the 1990s. The segmentation is limited, there's no automation engine to speak of, and A/B testing doesn't exist.
Performance is another major concern. phpList stores everything in MySQL with no optimization for analytics workloads. Once you're past a few thousand subscribers, the dashboard slows to a crawl. There's no dedicated analytics engine, no caching layer, no queue system for parallel sending. Large campaigns can take hours to process.
Punchmail honors phpList's self-hosted philosophy while delivering a platform built with modern tools. A block editor for beautiful emails, ClickHouse for instant analytics, Redis for caching, parallel queue workers for fast sending, and a UI that doesn't make you feel like you've time-traveled to 2003.
Drag-and-drop block editor with 10 block types and MJML output. Build beautiful emails in minutes, not hours of raw HTML.
Multi-queue architecture with parallel batch processing. Send to 100K+ subscribers per hour instead of phpList's sequential processing.
ClickHouse-powered dashboards load in milliseconds, not minutes. Track opens, clicks, bounces, and engagement in real time.
Welcome series, re-engagement flows, drip campaigns. phpList has no automation — Punchmail has a full trigger-based workflow builder.
We're not competing with Mailchimp's marketing budget. We're competing with their feature set.
| Punchmail | phpList | Listmonk | Mautic | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Modern UI | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | Dated |
| Block email editor | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Basic |
| Automation workflows | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| A/B testing | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | Basic |
| SMTP pools | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| ClickHouse analytics | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Bounce processing | ✓ | Basic | Basic | ✓ |
| Fast at scale | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Docker deployment | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
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.
phpList got me through my first 50,000 subscribers. But at some point, I realized I was fighting the tool instead of growing my list. Punchmail is what self-hosted email marketing should feel like in 2025.
Your subscribers. Your data. Your server. One price, forever.