🕊️ Postbird
Self-hosted email campaigns over your own SMTP. Stop renting your audience back.
Postbird at a glance
| Price | $149, once — no renewal |
| Replaces | Mailchimp at $20+/mo (grows with your list) — roughly $240 a year, every year |
| Type | Web app — self-hosted |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| Category | Marketing & SEO |
Postbird features
👥 Lists & subscribers
CSV import with dedupe and invalid-email reporting, public signup endpoint per list, CSV export, full status tracking (pending → subscribed → unsubscribed/bounced/complained).
✅ Double opt-in by default
Signup → signed confirmation link; only confirmed subscribers get campaigns. Consent timestamp + IP stored for GDPR.
🎯 Segments
Saved AND/OR filters — domain, name, custom fields, signup date, opened/clicked recent campaigns — with a live count while you edit.
🧱 Drag-block builder
Heading, rich text, image, bulletproof button, columns, footer. Compiles to table-based inline-styled HTML — no flexbox, no grid, no Outlook surprises.
📤 Throttled sending, any SMTP
Default 30 msgs/min (configurable) over pooled nodemailer. Pause or cancel mid-send; the queue lives in SQLite, so a restart resumes where it left off.
📊 Opens & clicks
Tracking pixel plus HMAC-signed rewritten links. Per-campaign report: delivered, unique/total opens and clicks, per-URL click map, recipient activity.
⚖️ Compliance, enforced
Sending is blocked until it passes: non-removable unsubscribe footer, required physical address, RFC 8058 one-click List-Unsubscribe headers on every email.
↩️ Bounce handling
Webhook endpoint for SES/Postmark/Mailgun/generic payloads plus SMTP-time 5xx detection. Bounced and complained addresses are suppressed forever.
$149 once — that's the whole pricing page
Mailchimp charges $20+/mo (grows with your list) — roughly $240 a year, every year. Postbird is a single payment, and it keeps working whether or not we ever sell another copy.
Or get Postbird inside the full suite — every app in the catalog, currently $97 for the bundle. See the bundle →
Postbird guides & pages
Honest answers
Is it really free on GitHub?
Yes — MIT source at github.com/bensblueprints/postbird-mvp, always. $149 buys the packaged installer, 1-click setup and updates — and funds the open-source version.
Will my emails land in the inbox?
Deliverability is your SMTP provider's job, and Postbird is honest about that: use SES or Postmark credentials and you inherit their IP reputation. Mailchimp's managed sending infrastructure is genuinely convenient if you'd rather not think about SPF/DKIM at all — that's what the monthly fee buys.
Is it actually CAN-SPAM / GDPR compliant?
The legal minimums are enforced in code, not suggested: the server returns a 400 if you try to send without a physical address configured, the compiler appends an unsubscribe footer if a template lacks one, and every email carries RFC 8058 one-click unsubscribe headers — which Gmail and Yahoo require for bulk senders.