Notifuse: Self-Hosted Newsletters, Email Marketing, and Transactional Email
Notifuse is a self-hosted email platform covering three jobs that usually need separate services: newsletters, marketing campaigns and automations, and transactional email sent from your own applications. It positions itself against Mailchimp, Brevo, and Klaviyo.
Features
- A visual drag-and-drop editor built on MJML, so emails render properly across mail clients
- Campaigns with A/B testing
- A visual automation builder for multi-step journeys
- A REST API for transactional email such as receipts and password resets
- Liquid templating for personalisation
- Seven sending providers: Amazon SES, Mailgun, Postmark, Mailjet, SparkPost, SendGrid, and plain SMTP
- Webhooks, an S3-backed file manager, and built-in privacy-first web analytics
Sending is the hard part
Notifuse manages lists, content, and scheduling, but it hands delivery to a sending provider. That is the right design. Delivering bulk email from your own server’s IP address is a reputation battle you usually lose, as our article on why self-hosted email is hard explains. Amazon SES is typically the cheapest provider for volume.
Deployment
Notifuse is written in Go with a React frontend and uses PostgreSQL. It deploys with Docker Compose, and a hosted version is also sold.
The license change
Version 40 moved Notifuse from AGPL-3.0 to the Business Source License 1.1, which converts to AGPL-3.0 four years after each release. Releases 39.x and earlier remain AGPL permanently. Five capabilities now require a license key. The BSL is source-available, not open source: self-hosting for your own use is generally fine, but read the terms before building a business on it.
If you want a fully open source newsletter tool, listmonk is the established choice, with a smaller feature set. Keila is another option.
License
Business Source License 1.1 from v40 (converts to AGPL-3.0 after four years). AGPL-3.0 for v39 and earlier.