EmailOctopus
EmailOctopus
Role
Sends marketing / announcement email to the family's general
audience — product launches, occasional digests, drip campaigns. The
technical / developer audience is served separately by
Buttondown per
decisions/architecture/newsletter-split-buttondown-emailoctopus.md.
Distinct from Resend, which handles transactional email (sign-in links, receipts, auto-replies) only.
| Audience | Sender | Free tier |
|---|---|---|
| General / marketing (visual editor, larger list) | EmailOctopus | 2,500 subs / 10K sends per month |
| Technical / developer (Markdown, API-driven) | Buttondown | 100 subs |
Free tier
- 2,500 subscribers
- 10,000 emails / month
- Automations and drip sequences
- Landing pages and signup forms
- Reports and analytics
- API access
Card / subscription required?
NO. Free tier sign-up is email-only. No payment method requested. Account review may apply on first send (standard for marketing email providers).
Alternatives
- Buttondown — sibling, technical/dev audience (100 subs)
- MailerLite — fallback (1K subs)
- Sender (15K emails free)
- Mailchimp (paid past 500 contacts — rejected)
- Brevo / Sendinblue
Swap cost
Low — subscriber list exports as CSV, imports into any alternative. Templates are HTML, portable. Signup-form embeds are the only hard-coded URL.
Why this is our pick (for marketing)
2.5K subscribers / 10K sends without a card is the most generous
no-card-required free tier for marketing-style email. The
visual editor + landing-page builder fit hand-composed announcement
campaigns. For Markdown-native, API-driven technical digests we use
Buttondown — see
decisions/architecture/newsletter-split-buttondown-emailoctopus.md.
Cross-refs
- Buttondown — sibling, technical/dev audience
- Newsletter split decision
- Resend — transactional email only, not marketing
- MailerLite — fallback marketing provider
- No card-on-file rule