MailCheap

Most newsletter platforms charge by subscriber count, which means you pay full price for people who stopped reading months ago. MailCheap flips that model: you pay for the emails you actually send. At 4,000 subscribers sending one issue a week, that works out to $19/month instead of $109 on beehiiv.

It covers everything a newsletter needs without splitting features across tiers:

• Campaigns and scheduling with a block-based editor (headings, images, boxes via a / command) and smart send-time suggestions based on when your readers open
• Public website where every issue gets its own indexed page, with themes you can customize with your colors and fonts
• Signup forms for your newsletter site, your own domain, or embedded via API, with double opt-in and welcome emails
• Stats on opens, clicks, unsubscribes, and list growth, updated daily
• Custom domain sending with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC handled for you
• List imports from beehiiv, Substack, or Mailchimp via CSV in about a minute

Deliverability is built in and on by default. New senders start slow and earn speed as their list proves itself. Imports filter out typos, spam traps, and dead domains. Readers who stop engaging get one final re-engagement email before MailCheap quietly stops sending them issues (they stay on your list, they just don't get billed against your send count). Campaigns pause automatically if bounce or spam rates spike.

The AI agent integration is a genuine differentiator. Connect it to Claude, ChatGPT, or Grok Bot with your sign-in, or use an API key with Cursor or Codex. Agents can draft campaigns, schedule sends, run test sends, and pull stats. Sending to your full list requires your confirmation since it can't be undone.

MailCheap is open source under AGPL-3.0, and the repository is the whole app. You can self-host it for free with your own Amazon SES or PostShiba account, paying about $0.10 to $0.16 per 1,000 emails, or use MailCheap Cloud, which runs the same code.

All features are available on every plan. No 'Powered by' badge on any tier. Plans start at $19/month for 20,000 emails and scale by send volume, not list size.