Email and newsletters decision
Emailit
A technical user can build a narrow self-hosted sender (transactional sends + simple campaigns) using open-source projects and SES, but matching Emailit's hosted deliverability, global sending infra and managed features would require considerable ongoing ops and is not fully practical to replace for parity.
Visit website↗$20/mo
$240/yr
Read off the official pricing page.
$100one-off80 h to build
$50/mo6 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 3 seats.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Emailit alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Accept send requests over SMTP or HTTP API, queue and deliver messages via an SMTP provider (or SES), process delivery/webhook events (bounces, deliveries, clicks, opens), store logs/analytics, and provide a minimal UI to send campaigns and view stats.
What it still won’t have
- Global sending infrastructure and shared IP pool and reputation management
- Deliverability tuning, deliverability reports and large-scale analytics as provided by a hosted provider
- Managed customer support and the vendor's hosted dashboard/managed suppression handling
- Built-in credit bundles and out-of-the-box pricing model
What remains hard
- Product polish and ongoing maintenance
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 3 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a self-hosted transactional + campaign email service using Node.js (Express) for the API and UI, Postgres for storage, Redis for queueing, and Amazon SES as the SMTP relay. Core features in scope: SMTP and REST API endpoints to accept sends, a worker to dequeue and deliver via SES, webhook receiver to record bounces/complaints/opens/clicks, simple campaign composer and scheduler, sending-domain setup (SPF/DKIM instructions), suppression list handling, and a dashboard showing send logs and basic analytics. Out of scope: building global IP pools, advanced deliverability tooling, multi-tenant billing UI, and a hosted credit marketplace. Include input validation, retries/backoff for transient sending failures, tests for API and worker logic, and basic error handling and monitoring alerts.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Price verified on pricing page+3
- Evidence score63
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productEmailit product
- official pricingEmailit pricing
- official docsEmailit docs
- open sourcelistmonk repository
- open sourceMailtrain repository
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
