head to head
Mailchimp vs Keila
Keila is the open source alternative to Mailchimp — email marketing platform. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — Keila is a viable free replacement for Mailchimp. Keila is open source under AGPL-3.0, written in Elixir, with 2,211 GitHub stars, 167 forks and 76 open issues; it was last pushed 24 hours ago. Mailchimp costs from $13, while self-hosting Keila carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 2 other open source Mailchimp alternatives are tracked here, led by Listmonk at 23,471 stars. Keila ranks #3 of 3 tracked open source Mailchimp alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: Listmonk (23,471 stars), Mautic (10,525 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to Keila and 3 reasons to stay on Mailchimp.
choose Keila if
- Your Mailchimp bill is growing with seats or usage
- You need your data in a format and server you control
- Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
- You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort
stick with Mailchimp if
- You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
- Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
- You depend on a Mailchimp integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated
Side by side
| Keila (open source) | Mailchimp | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | Free / $13-$350/month |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — pentacent/keila | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 2.2K · ⑂ 167 | — |
| Built with | Elixir | — |
Why people look for a Mailchimp alternative
About Keila
Keila is an open source newsletter and email marketing tool written in Elixir and licensed under AGPL 3.0. It is presented as an open alternative to Mailchimp and Sendinblue, and it lives in the open source email marketing and newsletter ecosystem for people who want to manage campaigns and subscriber sign ups without relying only on a paid hosted service.
read the full Keila overview →
Other open source alternatives to Mailchimp
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is Keila a good replacement for Mailchimp?
Keila is an open source alternative to Mailchimp (Email marketing platform). It is written in Elixir and licensed under AGPL-3.0, with 2,211 GitHub stars.
Is Keila free compared to Mailchimp?
Yes. Keila is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. Mailchimp is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.
How do I migrate from Mailchimp to Keila?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check Keila's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.