Email Broadcast Software FAQ

What is email broadcast software?

Software that sends marketing email to a subscriber list at scale. It manages your contacts, composes and schedules campaigns, sends through an SMTP provider, and tracks delivery, opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes per recipient. The full picture is on the email broadcast overview.

Is Email Campaign Engine really free?

Yes. It is open source under the MIT license, free to download, run, modify, and use commercially, with the source public on GitHub. Your only costs are hosting, usually a few dollars a month, and your email provider's sending rates.

What do I need to run it?

Almost any hosting with PHP 8.1 or newer, including cheap shared hosting, a small VPS, or Docker. Everything is stored in a single SQLite file, so there is no database server to install. Setup is copying one config file and setting four values, the documentation walks through it.

Which email providers does it work with?

Eleven providers with full webhook parsing: SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, Amazon SES, SMTP2GO, Brevo, SparkPost, Elastic Email, Mailtrap, Mailjet, and SMTP.com. And because it sends over standard SMTP with a built-in mail client, any other SMTP relay works for sending too. See how to connect an email provider.

How is it different from the hosted Email Broadcast app?

Same engine, different operator. The open source release runs on your hosting, under your control, with your list on your server. The hosted app is the managed version, where the servers, updates, and monitoring are our problem instead of yours. Contact our team if the managed route fits better.

How much does sending bulk email cost?

With the engine being free, the cost is the provider rate. Amazon SES runs about $0.10 per thousand emails. Most other providers land between under a dollar and a few dollars per thousand depending on volume and tooling. Even at SES pricing, a hundred thousand emails costs about $10, which is why owning your sending engine changes the economics of email.

Does it handle unsubscribes and bounces automatically?

Yes. Every message carries a hosted one-click unsubscribe link and the List-Unsubscribe header, so mail clients show their native unsubscribe button. Hard bounces, spam complaints, and unsubscribes from any source all land on a suppression list that survives re-imports. The details are in bounces, complaints, and unsubscribes.

Will my emails reach the inbox?

That depends on the three things inbox providers score: authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC on your sending domain), list quality (opted-in, engaged, clean), and sending behavior (steady volume, paced through the day). The engine automates the pacing and the list hygiene, authentication and consent are yours to set up. Start with the authentication guide and the domain warming guide.

Does it do drip campaigns?

Yes, autoresponder series are built in: a sequence of emails sent to each subscriber on a daily, weekly, or monthly rhythm from the day they enroll, with quiet hours and skip days handled automatically. The drip campaign setup guide walks through it.

Can I send email from my own software?

Yes. The JSON API covers single sends, contact adds and uploads, drip enrollment, unsubscribes, broadcast scheduling, conversion tracking, stats, and chatbot replies, all secured with an API key header. The API reference documents every endpoint with examples.

Can it answer email replies automatically?

Yes. The chatbot hook forwards an incoming reply to an AI bot and emails the answer back automatically. Our open source AbraTabia AI Storyteller speaks the hook's format out of the box, so the bot half is free too.

Does it track opens and clicks?

Yes. Provider webhooks record delivered, opens, soft and hard bounces, complaints, and unsubscribes as they happen, and tracked links count every click with bot filtering. Engagement upgrades each contact's activity level, and engaged contacts get priority in future broadcasts. See how to send bulk email for reading the numbers.