Overview

Listmonk is a standalone, self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager that packs a campaign engine, subscriber database and analytics dashboard into a single Go binary backed by PostgreSQL. It is built for anyone who wants to send to large lists — from a hobby newsletter to a million-subscriber mailing list — without handing their audience data over to a proprietary email-marketing platform.

Key Features

• Single binary: Go backend with a Vue dashboard, so there is no PHP/Node application stack to maintain
• Scalable lists: Single and double opt-in management with SQL-expression subscriber querying and segmentation
• Campaign builder: Visual drag-and-drop builder, WYSIWYG editor, Markdown, syntax-highlighted HTML or plain text
• Go templating: More than 100 template functions for dynamic subject lines and personalised content
• Built-in analytics: Campaign performance, opens, clicks, bounces and top links tracked in the dashboard
• Transactional API: Send arbitrary messages from pre-defined templates through e-mail, SMS, WhatsApp or custom Messenger webhooks
• High throughput: Multi-threaded, multi-SMTP e-mail queues with sliding-window rate limiting
• Privacy and access control: Subscriber data privacy controls, OIDC SSO with granular roles and per-scope API tokens
• S3-compatible media library: Bring your own object storage for images and attachments

Why Use It

Most e-mail marketing services charge by subscriber count and keep your list on their servers. Listmonk inverts that model: subscribers live in your own PostgreSQL database, sending happens through any SMTP provider or your own MTA, and the whole application runs happily on a single small VPS. The REST API and Messenger webhooks make it a capable transactional-mail backend as well, not just a newsletter blaster, while the AGPL-3.0 licence keeps it free of vendor lock-in.

Use Cases

• Running a newsletter or announcement list for a blog, project or community
• Replacing Mailchimp or Substack-style hosted services with self-hosted infrastructure
• Sending transactional and notification e-mail from your own applications through the API
• Managing opt-in mailing lists with segmentation for an organisation or small business

Platforms

Linux · macOS · Windows (single binary or Docker image; requires PostgreSQL).

Licence

Open Source — AGPL-3.0.

Website

https://listmonk.app/

Alternatives

• Ghost — open source publishing platform with built-in newsletter and member management
• Browse all self-hosted tools — the full TWiF directory