MailCheap
“Marc Lou's affordable beehiiv alternative — hosted or self-hosted.”
MailCheap is a newsletter platform created by Marc Lou, a well-known indie hacker, who positions it as an affordable alternative to beehiiv. It is available both as a fully managed hosted service and as an open-source version you can self-host. He built it after becoming frustrated with rising beehiiv costs, focusing on straightforward publishing and lower email bills. The hosted service starts at $19/month for 20,000 emails and 10,000 active subscribers, with every feature included on every plan. Write and schedule campaigns, publish issues to a newsletter website, collect signups, and track engagement from the dashboard or through AI agents using its MCP server and REST API. Hosted pricing tiers scale primarily with monthly sending volume, with active-subscriber caps on each tier; dormant contacts do not count. The open-source version lets developers self-host with their own email provider and infrastructure, without a software subscription or platform-imposed email and subscriber limits.
Tech Specifications
MailCheap is a strong fit for creators who want affordable newsletter publishing and developers who want to run campaigns through code or AI agents. Every hosted plan includes the same publishing, website, domain, and reporting tools, so upgrades buy capacity rather than unlock features. Check both email allowances and active-subscriber caps when comparing costs, and budget for test and signup emails as well as campaigns. The self-hosted version adds genuine infrastructure ownership for technical operators who are comfortable managing their own sending stack.
Key Features
- Every hosted plan includes the full feature set, with no MailCheap branding in email footers
- Rich-text editor with slash commands, images, headings, and content boxes
- Campaign scheduling, test sends, and Gmail-style desktop and mobile previews
- Hosted newsletter website with search-indexable issue pages, signup forms, and custom domain support
- Eight coordinated website and email themes with customizable colors and fonts
- Shared sending address or your own sending domain with DKIM, SPF, and DMARC authentication
- Signup forms, double opt-in, welcome emails, and an API for adding contacts
- CSV imports from beehiiv, Substack, Mailchimp, and other newsletter platforms
- Contact tags, custom fields, and audience segments for targeted campaigns
- Campaign reports with open, click, bounce, unsubscribe, and subscriber growth statistics
- Automatic list cleanup stops sending to dormant readers without deleting their contacts
- Staged sending to new contacts, invalid-address filtering, and bounce and spam-complaint monitoring
- One-click unsubscribe and automatic suppression of bounced or unsubscribed addresses
- MCP integrations for ChatGPT, Claude, Grok Bot, Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex
- REST API for managing newsletters, campaigns, contacts, domains, and reports
- Open-source AGPL-3.0 app with self-hosting via your own Amazon SES or PostShiba account
- Annual billing costs ten monthly payments, with a fresh email allowance each month