Notifuse

Notifuse is an open-source email platform that combines newsletters, marketing automation and a transactional API. You design emails with an MJML-based drag-and-drop builder or code editor and personalise them with Liquid, then send them through an email provider you connect.

Because delivery goes through your own ESP, Notifuse never charges per email. Self-hosting is free with every feature. Notifuse Cloud charges by active contacts, meaning contacts with any event in the last 30 days; dormant contacts do not count toward the limit.

Cloud plans run from $19 a month for 2,500 active contacts to $319 for 50,000, with every feature on every plan and differences only in scale, workspaces, team size and data retention. The vendor gives the example of SES costing about $5 for 50,000 emails on top of a plan.

The trade-off is that you must set up and manage your own sending provider and its reputation, and it is a younger project than the long-established suites.