listmonk review

Seven million emails on one CPU core

listmonk is a self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager written by Kailash Nadh. It ships as a single binary, talks to a Postgres database, and does not phone home to anyone. Version 6.2.0 landed in June 2026.

It is fast in a way hosted tools are not. The project documents a campaign of over seven million emails running on less than one CPU core and 57 MB of RAM. Segmentation is done with raw SQL queries against your subscriber table, which is either the best or worst news in this review depending on who you are.

Who wants their subscriber list in Postgres

• Large lists where per-subscriber pricing has become absurd
• Developers and technical teams who already run servers
• Organisations with data residency requirements that rule out US-hosted vendors
• Anyone who wants their subscriber list to be a Postgres table they own

AGPL software, and a delivery bill priced by your SMTP provider

The software is free under AGPL-3.0 with no limits on subscribers, lists, or campaigns. That is the honest headline, and here is the honest asterisk: listmonk does not deliver email. It queues messages to SMTP servers you configure, so you also need a sending provider. Amazon SES, Postmark, and Mailgun are the usual choices, and they bill per email.

So the real cost is a small VPS plus your provider's rate. At Amazon SES rates that works out far cheaper than any hosted tool at scale, but it is not zero, and the setup is a genuine afternoon of work rather than a signup form.

You own SPF, DKIM and every bounce: the limits that matter

• You own deliverability. SPF, DKIM, DMARC, warming an IP, and handling bounces are all on you
• The email editor is functional rather than designed, with HTML, Markdown, and a basic WYSIWYG mode
• No landing pages, no popups, no A/B testing, no paid subscriptions
• Segmentation is done in raw SQL, which assumes you can write SQL
• Support is a GitHub issue tracker and a community forum, not a support desk

Two kinds of reader, and only one should run listmonk

If you can run Docker and configure DNS records, listmonk is the cheapest serious email tool that exists, and the gap widens the bigger your list gets. If you cannot, the "free" here is misleading and you will have a worse time than you would on Brevo's free plan. Be honest with yourself about which group you are in before you start.