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Plugin Documentation — direct deep-dives
Self-hosted transactional email
For high-volume, app-triggered transactional email — password resets, receipts, per-event notifications sent through a programmatic per-message API — the best self-hosted, open-source choices are dedicated mail transfer agents like Postal, Haraka, and Cuttlefish, or the managed pay-as-you-go backend Amazon SES. AcelleMail is not one of those — it is a self-hosted marketing platform (campaigns, lists, automation). It fits transactional-adjacent work — notifications, digests, and receipts modeled as automations — and sends through the same SES/SMTP backend a dedicated MTA would use, on a $80 one-time license. If your sends are purely programmatic, use a dedicated MTA; the two can even relay through one SES account.
Transactional email is triggered by a single user action and sent to one recipient: a password reset, an order receipt, a shipping alert, a one-time code, a per-event notification. Your application calls a send API (or hands a message to SMTP) the moment the event happens. The workload is high-frequency, low-latency, one-to-one, and driven entirely by code — not by a person composing a newsletter.
That is a different job from marketing email, where a human builds a campaign, targets a list or segment, schedules it, and reviews open/click reports afterward. The tools optimized for one are usually a poor fit for the other. A self-hosted transactional stack has three broad options:
If you need a programmatic per-message API for app-triggered mail at volume, start here. These are purpose-built for transactional delivery and are open source:
All three run on your own hardware, keep your data in-house, and cost only your server and engineering time. In exchange you own deliverability operations: IP warmup, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, blocklist monitoring, and bounce/complaint feedback loops.
Amazon SES is not self-hosted (it runs in AWS), but it is worth naming because it is the cheapest way to deliver at scale — roughly $0.10 per 1,000 emails — and it hands you managed IP reputation and DKIM signing. Many self-hosted apps, including AcelleMail, relay through SES rather than running their own outbound MTA. If you don't want to operate mail infrastructure at all, SES (or a self-hosted MTA pointed at SES as a smarthost) is the pragmatic middle ground. See our dedicated Amazon SES page.
Being upfront: AcelleMail is a self-hosted marketing platform, not a drop-in transactional MTA. Its REST API is built around campaigns, lists, and subscribers — you create a campaign, add subscribers, and run it — not a per-message send() endpoint like SendGrid's or Postal's. So for password resets and receipts fired by application code, a dedicated MTA is the better tool.
send()
AcelleMail is a good fit when your sends sit between marketing and transactional:
And the backend is shared: AcelleMail sends through 8 drivers — Amazon SES, SendGrid, SparkPost, Mailgun, Elastic Email, Blastengine, Gmail relay, and generic SMTP — so it can relay through the exact same SES account or SMTP host a dedicated transactional MTA uses. A common setup runs a dedicated MTA (or SES) for pure transactional traffic and AcelleMail for marketing, both on one delivery backend.
Hosted transactional services meter you per email or per thousand and add a monthly fee. The self-hosted options remove the software rent: dedicated MTAs are free and open source (you pay for servers), and AcelleMail is a one-time license ($80 Regular) with lifetime point/minor updates and full, unencrypted PHP source. On the marketing side you pay only your delivery backend — for example SES at ~$0.10 per 1,000 — plus a modest VPS, with no per-subscriber or per-message software charge. Your data and your list stay on your server.
The Extended License turns one install into a multi-tenant product. It bundles customer accounts, subscription plans, 6 payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Razorpay, Paystack, Offline), prorated upgrades, dunning, and white-label branding. You run one install, your clients log in to their own accounts, and all sending flows through your chosen backend (SES or SMTP). See For Developers.
Postal facts from postalserver.io / its GitHub repository; Cuttlefish facts from cuttlefish.io / its GitHub repository; SES facts are the documented Amazon SES model. Licenses noted per each project's stated terms and can change — verify against the source before you rely on them.
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How the open-source & source-available platforms really differ.
Self-hosted PHP/MySQL sending apps you run on your own VPS.
Send through SES at cost with a full marketing front-end.
Sending to tens of thousands at once, on your own infrastructure.
Running a list without a per-subscriber bill.
Every AcelleMail vs-competitor comparison in one place.
For high-volume, app-triggered transactional email — password resets, receipts, notifications sent through a programmatic per-message API — the leading self-hosted, open-source options are Postal (a full mail platform with a SendGrid-style HTTP API), Haraka (a Node.js SMTP server and framework), and Cuttlefish (a Postfix-based server with a tracking dashboard). Amazon SES is a managed pay-as-you-go backend many of them relay through. AcelleMail is not a pure transactional MTA — it is a self-hosted marketing platform — so pick a dedicated MTA for purely programmatic sends.
No — and we'll say so plainly. AcelleMail is a self-hosted marketing platform: its REST API is built around campaigns, lists, and subscribers, not a per-message send() endpoint like SendGrid's or Postal's. For password resets and receipts fired by application code, a dedicated MTA (Postal, Haraka, Cuttlefish) or Amazon SES is the right tool. AcelleMail fits the marketing and notification layer — campaigns, automations, digests — that sits alongside your transactional traffic.
Use AcelleMail when your sends overlap with marketing rather than being purely programmatic: product-update notifications, weekly digests, re-engagement, and onboarding journeys you'd model as automations with tracking and unsubscribe handling. You get a drag-and-drop builder, segments, A/B testing, and open/click/bounce analytics on your own server. For per-event, one-to-one mail triggered by code (resets, one-time codes, order receipts), keep a dedicated MTA — the two commonly run side by side.
Yes. AcelleMail sends through 8 drivers — Amazon SES, SendGrid, SparkPost, Mailgun, Elastic Email, Blastengine, Gmail relay, and generic SMTP — so it can relay through the exact same SES account or SMTP host your transactional MTA uses. A common setup runs a dedicated MTA (or SES) for pure transactional traffic and AcelleMail for marketing, both on one delivery backend, with DKIM and SPF aligned on your domain.
Postal is a full open-source mail platform (Ruby, with MySQL/MariaDB and RabbitMQ) offering a SendGrid-style HTTP API, SMTP, inbound handling, tracking, and multi-tenant mail servers — a strong fit when you want an API plus a deliverability dashboard. Haraka is a high-performance SMTP server and framework on Node.js with a plugin architecture — closer to a toolkit you assemble than a finished product. Cuttlefish is a Postfix-based server (Ruby on Rails) with a web dashboard, bounce handling, and open/click tracking; it is labeled beta but has run in production for years at the OpenAustralia Foundation.
The dedicated MTAs (Postal, Haraka, Cuttlefish) are free and open source — you pay only for servers and your own time to operate deliverability. Amazon SES is roughly $0.10 per 1,000 emails with no software fee. AcelleMail, for the marketing side, is a one-time license ($80 Regular / $199 Extended) with no per-message or per-subscriber charge — you pay only your delivery backend (for example SES at ~$0.10/1,000) plus a modest VPS.
Yes — that is the trade-off. Running your own MTA means you own IP warmup, SPF/DKIM/DMARC, blocklist monitoring, and bounce/complaint feedback loops. Relaying through Amazon SES offloads managed IP reputation and DKIM signing while keeping your app self-hosted, which is why many self-hosted stacks — including AcelleMail — point at SES as the backend rather than sending direct.
For the marketing layer, yes — that is the AcelleMail Extended License ($199). It adds customer accounts, subscription plans, 6 payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Razorpay, Paystack, Offline), prorated upgrades, dunning, and white-label branding on top of your chosen backend. If clients also need programmatic transactional APIs, pair it with a multi-tenant MTA like Postal. See For Developers.
For pure transactional sending, pick a dedicated MTA. For the marketing and notification layer — campaigns, automation, and analytics you own — AcelleMail Regular is $80, one-time, with full PHP source and unlimited subscribers. Try the live demo before you buy.
Join thousands of companies that have taken control of their email marketing with full source code, no recurring fees, and unlimited sending. One-time $80 license, lifetime updates.
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