EmailOctopus review

The newsletter tool that plugs into your own Amazon SES

EmailOctopus is a small, self-funded London company that has resisted turning its newsletter tool into a marketing suite. There is no CRM, no SMS, no sales pipeline. You write emails, you send them to a list, you see who opened them.

Its most interesting feature is the one nobody else offers: EmailOctopus Connect lets you attach your own Amazon SES account, so you pay Amazon's raw sending rate and EmailOctopus only for the software on top. For high-volume senders this is dramatically cheaper than per-subscriber pricing.

For writers, SES users and anyone tired of Mailchimp

• Newsletter writers who want a clean tool and nothing else
• Developers already running Amazon SES who want a proper interface over it
• Lists between 500 and 2,500 people that send a weekly issue
• Anyone who finds Mailchimp's interface exhausting

Two ceilings free, and Pro's price follows your list

As of July 2026: 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails per month. You get campaigns, automation, landing pages, and signup forms. Emails include EmailOctopus branding, and reporting history is limited on the free tier.

10,000 emails across 2,500 subscribers is four sends each per month. A full list of 2,500 people on a weekly newsletter uses your entire allowance.

Your reporting history has a limit too

• The email editor is basic, and design-led senders will find it restrictive
• Segmentation is simpler than MailerLite's or Brevo's
• No paid-newsletter or membership features at all
• Free plan reporting history is capped, so you cannot study long-term trends without upgrading
• Pro pricing climbs with subscriber count, so the model reintroduces the exact problem people leave Mailchimp over, just at a lower rate

So when is EmailOctopus the cheapest sensible choice?

We like EmailOctopus for being honest about what it is. A no-fuss newsletter tool with a genuinely useful free tier, and the SES option makes it the cheapest sensible choice once you are sending hundreds of thousands of emails. It is not the tool to pick if you want beautiful templates or deep automation, and its paid pricing still scales with list size.