Postal vs SendPortal
| Tagline | Self-hosted mail delivery platform, a SendGrid/Mailgun alternative | Self-hosted email marketing platform built on Laravel |
| Category | Email & Newsletters | Email & Newsletters |
| Replaces | SendGrid | Mailchimp, SendGrid, ConvertKit (Kit) |
| GitHub stars | 17k | 1.5k |
| Language | Ruby | PHP |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 4/5 Involved | 2/5 Easy |
| Deploy options | Docker Docker Compose Manual | Docker Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 18 days ago | 1 month ago |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Postal
- You are responsible for IP reputation, warmup, and deliverability
- Requires MariaDB, RabbitMQ, and DNS/DKIM configuration to run
- No marketing-campaign UI — it is a delivery engine, not a newsletter builder
- Less hand-holding than managed providers for spam/blocklist issues
SendPortal
- No visual drag-and-drop email builder included
- Automation workflows are not yet implemented
- Limited built-in template library
Bottom line
Choose SendPortal if you want the lower-effort setup; choose Postal for the larger community and ecosystem. Postal has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.