Cuttlefish
Open-source transactional email server with a web UI.
Cuttlefish is a self-hosted transactional email server with SMTP delivery, bounce handling, open and click tracking, real-time analytics, a web UI, and an API. It runs on top of Postfix and is explicitly positioned as free and open source software.
A SaaS product sends on behalf of its customers, so the deciding factors are tenant isolation, whether suppressions can be scoped rather than global, and whether support can answer why one specific account did not receive one specific email. Lifecycle automation and transactional sending usually need to coexist.
Against trial expiry notices, dunning, onboarding sequences, and per-tenant transactional mail, Cuttlefish covers multi-tenant support, event stream, and the suppressions API, and does not cover scheduling and webhook coverage. Whether that gap matters depends on how central those are to the build.
- Multi-tenant: Yes
- Event stream: Yes
- Suppressions API: Yes
- Operating since: Not published
- Scheduling: No
- Best published rate per 1,000: Tiers not published in comparable form
- Deliverability: Self-hosted deliverability depends on Postfix configuration, IP reputation, DNS authentication, bounce processing, and list hygiene. Cuttlefish adds bounce suppression and analytics around SMTP delivery.
- Webhooks: No
- Starts at: Free self-hosted
Self-hosted deliverability depends on Postfix configuration, IP reputation, DNS authentication, bounce processing, and list hygiene. Cuttlefish adds bounce suppression and analytics around SMTP delivery.
Teams that want a self-hosted transactional email dashboard in front of Postfix.
Teams that need managed deliverability, inbound parsing, or template tooling.
- › Open-source transactional email with a useful web UI
- › SMTP integration works with any framework or language
- › Bounce handling, open tracking, click tracking, and application-level analytics are built in
- › Project site describes the product as beta
- › Official site says it does not handle incoming email or built-in templates
- › Requires Postfix and self-hosted operations expertise
Features at a glance
| API | Yes |
| SMTP | Yes |
| SDKs | None |
| Webhooks | No |
| Templates | none |
| React Email | No |
| Batch send | No |
| Scheduled send | No |
| Suppressions | Yes |
| Multi-tenant | Yes |
| Inbound parsing | No |
| Event stream | Yes |
| Idempotency keys | No |
| Dedicated IP | No |