Open Source Campaign Monitor Alternatives
A curated collection of the 3 best open source alternatives to Campaign Monitor.
The best open source alternative to Campaign Monitor is Listmonk. If that doesn't suit you, we've compiled a ranked list of other open source Campaign Monitor alternatives to help you find a suitable replacement. Other interesting open source alternatives to Campaign Monitor are: Keila and Sendportal.
Campaign Monitor alternatives are mainly Marketing & Customer Engagement but may also be Email & Communication. Browse these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of Campaign Monitor.
A self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager that ships as one binary and stores everything in PostgreSQL.
listmonk is a standalone newsletter and mailing list manager you host yourself, packed into a single binary that uses a PostgreSQL database as its data store.
The backend is written in Go and the frontend in Vue with Buefy, which is why the whole application arrives as one executable rather than a set of services to wire together. A live demo is published for anyone who wants to click around before committing to an install.
Getting it running takes one of two routes.
- Docker: pull the latest image from Docker Hub and start the sample compose file with one command.
- Binary: download a release, extract the executable and run it directly on the host.
- Configuration: a new-config flag generates the config file you edit before first run.
- Database setup: an install flag prepares the Postgres schema, and an upgrade flag migrates an existing one.
- Idempotent upgrades: running an upgrade more than once has no side effects.
Either path leaves the admin interface waiting on port 9000. listmonk is free software under AGPLv3, and the project publishes a developer setup guide for anyone who wants to work on it rather than only run it.
Send newsletter campaigns and build sign-up forms from a self-hosted Elixir application, an alternative to Mailchimp for privacy-minded senders.
Keila is a newsletter tool built as an alternative to Mailchimp and similar hosted services. It covers the whole loop: growing a contact list through sign-up forms, designing a campaign, sending it, and reading what happened afterward, without the list itself living on a platform you do not control.
Campaigns can be written in a visual block editor, in Markdown with or without a WYSIWYG layer, in MJML for fully custom responsive layouts, or in plain text. Base templates absorb the differences between Gmail, Outlook, Thunderbird, mobile, and desktop. For a small newsletter you can send through your own inbox over SMTP; larger projects point Keila at AWS SES, Sendgrid, Mailgun, or Postmark instead.
The features around sending are where a list actually gets managed.
- Form builder: sign-up forms with additional checkboxes, text fields, and dropdowns.
- Bot protection: hCaptcha or Friendly Captcha on forms, plus double opt-in confirmation of new sign-ups.
- Segments: subsets of a list built from contact data such as language or tags, through a visual editor or a segment language.
- Liquid templating: personalization from custom contact data held as a JSON object, using Shopify's Liquid.
- Analytics: open and click tracking that can be switched off entirely with one setting.
- API: contacts, campaigns, forms, segments, and templates all addressable, with CSV import and export.
Self-hosting needs the official Docker image and a PostgreSQL database and nothing else, though a reverse proxy has to forward WebSockets correctly. Keila is written in Elixir, and a sample Docker Compose file ships in the repository.
Self-hosted email marketing on Laravel, with subscriber lists, campaigns, tracking, and workspaces, sending through the provider you already use.
SendPortal is email marketing software you run yourself. Subscribers, segments, campaigns, and the tracking data they generate stay in your own database, and sending goes out through whichever provider you already hold an account with, which is where most of the cost difference against hosted services comes from.
It is a Laravel application, and it exists in two forms. The core package holds the functionality and drops into an existing Laravel application that already handles user authentication. The standalone application wraps that core with authentication and workspace management for anyone starting fresh. Version 3 requires PHP 8.2 or later, Laravel 10 or later, and MySQL 5.7 or PostgreSQL 9.4 as a floor; older PHP and Laravel installations are served by version 2 instead.
The application covers the loop from importing a list to reading a report.
- Subscriber management: import or update contacts by CSV upload or through the API, then divide them into custom segments.
- Campaigns: send to a whole list or to a segment, using templates you design yourself.
- Message tracking: sends, opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes recorded per campaign.
- Workspaces: several teams or domains handled through a single interface.
- REST API: templates, subscribers, tags, and campaigns all addressable for integration and automation.
Sending providers include Amazon SES, Postmark, Sendgrid, Mailgun, Mailjet, and plain SMTP. No per-subscriber or per-message caps are built into the software, so the limits are your provider's and your server's rather than a pricing tier's. Installation is a clone, a composer install, and a web server.
