Keila alternatives: six options when one welcome email is not enough

If you need drip sequences, look at Broadcast or Mautic. If you want the lightest free tool, look at Listmonk. That covers most people searching for a Keila alternative. Keila is a free, AGPL newsletter tool from Germany with the most polished interface in open source. This page sorts the alternatives by which of Keila’s limits you have run into.

Why people leave Keila

Three reasons come up most.

• One welcome email, no sequences. Keila 0.19 (February 2026) added a welcome email per signup form. A second step, a delay, or a branch is still on the roadmap.
• Elixir is less common to operate. The official Docker image makes the first install easy. When something breaks at the runtime layer, fewer people have seen it before.
• It is still a 0.x project. Keila ships steadily, but two-factor sign-in and automations are listed as planned, not shipped.

If you send a newsletter, a welcome email is enough, and the interface is what matters to you, stay on Keila. It is free and it is pleasant to use.

The six alternatives at a glance

Broadcast

Broadcast is our product, so read this section with that in mind. It is a self-hosted Rails application sold as a $250 one-time license, with an Extended License at $1,000 for up to 25 servers.

It covers the gap Keila leaves. Sequences have delays, conditions and branches, and they run from the same dashboard as your broadcasts. It also has things Keila lists as planned, such as two-factor sign-in that you can require for every user, plus scheduled offsite backups to S3-compatible storage and SPF, DKIM and DMARC monitoring. The dashboard is available in 12 languages. Support is by email and Discord, and every 2.x update is included. It is not open source and has no managed cloud version.

Pick Broadcast if Keila’s interface was right but you need sequences now. Detail in Broadcast vs Keila.

Mautic

Mautic is PHP under the GPL, free, and has the deepest automation builder in open source. Campaign graphs with branching, lead scoring, landing pages and dynamic content are all there. If one welcome email was the ceiling you hit, this is the other extreme.

The price is operational. It needs a web server, PHP, MySQL, cron and a queue, on a larger server than Keila. First installs often take days to tune, and updates run through Composer on the command line.

Pick Mautic if you are replacing a marketing automation suite and someone can own the stack. Detail in Keila vs Mautic.

Listmonk

Listmonk is a single Go binary with a Postgres database, free under the AGPL. It is very fast on modest hardware, its API is clean, and version 5 added a visual email builder and two-factor sign-in. It is the lighter thing to keep running.

It has no welcome email, no sequences and no branching, so on automation it is a step down from Keila. The interface is an admin panel, which is fine when a developer is the one sending.

Pick Listmonk if you want the smallest footprint and you drive sends from your own code. Detail in Keila vs Listmonk.

Sendy

Sendy is a PHP application, about $69 one-time per installation, that wraps Amazon SES. Its autoresponders send a timed series after signup, which is more than Keila’s single welcome email. Sendy 7 (May 2026) brought a new interface and a drag-and-drop editor.

It sends through SES only. Major versions are paid upgrades: Sendy 7 cost existing owners $34, and its AI assistant is a $49 add-on.

Pick Sendy if you are committed to SES and want timed follow-ups on a budget. Detail in Keila vs Sendy.

phpList

phpList has been around since 2000, is PHP under the AGPL, and is very mature. Subscription management and double opt-in are the strong parts. Automation is limited to scheduled sends, and the UX is from another era, which is the opposite of what Keila users are used to.

Pick phpList if the list and its opt-in record matter more than what you send to it.

Mailtrain

Mailtrain is a Node.js platform under the GPL with a good template system, multi-list support, segments and basic automation. The community is smaller than Mautic’s.

Pick Mailtrain if your team already runs Node services and wants to extend the tool in JavaScript.

How to choose

1. You need sequences and want a modern dashboard. Broadcast.
2. You need a full campaign builder and have an ops person. Mautic.
3. You want the smallest free tool and send from code. Listmonk.
4. You send through SES and want timed autoresponders. Sendy.
5. Your list is a community list. phpList.
6. Your stack is Node. Mailtrain.

Frequently asked

Does Keila have automations?

Partly. Since version 0.19 (February 2026) each signup form can send one welcome email. Multi-step sequences, delays and branching are on Keila’s roadmap but not shipped as of October 2026.

What is the best free alternative to Keila?

Listmonk if you want speed and a small footprint, Mautic if you want automation. Both are free. Listmonk has no welcome email at all, and Mautic takes much more work to run.

Is there a Keila alternative with drip sequences?

Yes. Broadcast and Mautic both have multi-step sequences with branching. Broadcast is a $250 one-time license and runs as one Docker image. Mautic is free and needs a PHP stack. Sendy has timed autoresponders but no branching.

Is there a Keila alternative hosted in the EU?

Any self-hosted tool on this list runs on the server you choose, so an EU server keeps your data in the EU. Keila Cloud is the managed EU-hosted option if you do not want to run a server.

Can I move my Keila contacts somewhere else?

Yes. Export your contacts as CSV from Keila and import them into the new tool. Broadcast’s importer keeps tags and custom fields.

Related

• Broadcast vs Keila
• Keila vs Listmonk
• Keila vs Mautic
• Keila vs Sendy
• Listmonk alternatives
• Mautic alternatives
• Sendy alternatives
• Release speed: how often each tool ships
• The 7 best self-hosted email marketing platforms