Mailcoach began as one developer's fix for a pricey newsletter bill and grew into a polished, privacy-minded email platform

Mailcoach has one of the nicest origin stories in email. Freek Van der Herten, a well-known name in the Laravel world, was sending his newsletter through Mailchimp, then moved to a self-hosted tool, and eventually decided to build exactly what he wanted. That became Mailcoach, first released in January 2020 as a Laravel package and later grown into a full commercial product by his company, Spatie.

Spatie is a web development shop in Antwerp, Belgium, with a team of around sixteen people. In October 2022 they launched Mailcoach Cloud, the hosted version, so you no longer need a Laravel app to use it. Today it covers campaigns, automations and transactional email for creators, startups, developers and marketers.

Where it shines

Mailcoach feels like a tool made by people who care about craft. Campaigns come with segmentation and split testing, automations and drip campaigns can be built without code, and transactional emails can be edited, sent and tracked through an API. At the Cloud launch, open and click tracking was switched off by default, a respectful choice for privacy-minded senders. You can connect the email service you already use, such as Amazon SES, Postmark or Mailgun, through guided setup wizards.

The best way to start

Start the 14-day free trial, no credit card needed, connect a sending service and import your list from a CSV or through the API. Plans are based on how much you send rather than who is on your list. If your team prefers to own everything, Mailcoach Self-Hosted is there too.

Built by people who send their own newsletter, and it shows in every thoughtful default.

The verdict