Email Marketing and Outreach, Self-Hosted: No Vendor Renting Your Sender Reputation.
Genius Campaign puts contacts, templates, sequences, campaigns, and deliverability in one console. Bring your own AWS SES, Gmail Workspace, and Cloudflare R2. Your data and your sending domain stay yours.
MIT licensed · No account required · No credit card · No per-contact fees
See the Console
Contacts, templates, sequences, and campaigns, running on your own server. Click any screenshot to zoom in.
What is Genius Campaign?
Genius Campaign is a free, open-source, self-hosted email marketing and outreach platform. Contacts, templates, sequences, campaigns, deliverability, and sender rotation live in one console: MIT licensed, with no per-contact fees.
Hosted cold-outreach tools like Smartlead and Instantly charge monthly fees that scale with contacts and send volume, on top of whatever email provider you already pay for. Genius Campaign is a one-time free download: full source code, deploy on your own infrastructure, no recurring bill regardless of list size.
The system ships with a sequence builder for multi-step drip automation — now with A/B step variants, a Stats tab, and per-sequence sender overrides — plus inbound and outbound webhooks for your stack, and an AI-assisted template editor with spintax, multi-subject & preview-text shuffles, and conditional if/else blocks. Contacts support custom fields (text/number/date/url/boolean/dropdown) and server-side pagination, while sending rotates automatically across your own AWS SES and Gmail Workspace accounts, quota-aware, with bulk email verification (and per-contact click-to-verify + auto-suppression) before every send.
Email marketing ↗ remains one of the highest-ROI channels available, but most tools in the category charge a recurring fee for infrastructure four AWS services already provide. Genius Campaign gives you the same sequence-and-campaign workflow without renting your sender reputation from a vendor.
Built for Teams That Own Their Sending
Marketing teams & agencies
Running cold outreach who want control of deliverability instead of sharing a vendor’s IP pool.
Developers & agencies
Self-hosting internal tools for clients without adding a per-client SaaS line item.
Teams already on AWS or Google
Anyone who doesn’t want a third SaaS subscription for something four AWS services already do.
9 Modules. Full Outreach Lifecycle.
From contact import to sent campaign: every core email outreach workflow is built in and ready to use out of the box.
Contacts, Lists & Tags
- CSV import with arbitrary column mapping & real-time progress
- Pick-or-create lists/tags at import, server-side pagination & bulk actions
- Custom fields (text/number/date/url/boolean/dropdown) per contact
Template Editor
- Rich-text + spintax, multi-subject & preview-text shuffle
- Conditional if/else with variable defaults, AI-assisted copy (OpenAI/DeepSeek)
- CTA button/link controls, paste-and-drop image upload, reusable across campaigns
Sequences
- Multi-step drip with per-contact enrollment, pause/resume mid-sequence
- A/B step variants — multiple templates per step, Stats tab (enrolled/open/click)
- Per-sequence sender override, enrolled date/last step/last executed time
Campaigns
- One-off sends by list/tag/hand-picked, schedule for later or run-for-real
- Open/click/delivered tracking with engagement analytics per campaign
- Sender override (From name/reply-to), search/filter on detail view
Email Verification
- Bulk checks before you send + per-contact click-to-verify
- Reoon primary, NeverBounce fallback — auto-suppresses risky/invalid
- Live bulk-verify progress, protects sender reputation
Triggers & Webhooks
- Auto-enroll on tag added, field changed, list joined, or HMAC webhook
- Webhook-based trigger + fired-events history
- Connect your stack without polling
Public API
- API-key endpoint for forms/automation — push contacts, idempotent enroll
- Remove from list/tags/sequences, stop-all, rate-limited & expiring keys
Sender Rotation
- Rotate across multiple AWS SES + Gmail Workspace accounts, quota-aware
- Per-account named credentials, test-email button, delivers click/open tracking
- Protects deliverability by spreading volume
Team & Audit
- RBAC: owner/editor/viewer — global guards, live-validated JWT, last-owner protection
- Full audit log (now includes role changes) + global suppression checked before every send
- Team management in Administration → Team, clear email log by retention window
Genius Campaign vs Smartlead vs Instantly vs Mailchimp
Same core sequence-and-campaign workflow. No per-contact or per-send fee. Your infrastructure.
| Feature | Genius CampaignFree · Open Source | Smartlead | Instantly | Mailchimp |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free forever | $39–$379/mo | $37.60–$358+/mo | $13–$350/mo |
| Self-hosted | Yes, your infrastructure | No (SaaS only) | No (SaaS only) | No (SaaS only) |
| Source code access | Full (MIT license) | No | No | No |
| Sending infrastructure | Your own AWS SES / Gmail Workspace | Vendor mailbox infrastructure | Vendor mailbox infrastructure | Vendor-managed sending |
| Sender rotation | Built in, quota-aware | Built in | Built in | Not applicable |
| Sequences / drip automation | Built in | Built in | Built in | Available |
| Webhooks & triggers | Built in (inbound + outbound) | Pro plan and up | Available | Available |
| AI writing assistance | Built in | Available | Available | Available |
| Email verification | Built in (Reoon + NeverBounce) | Add-on credits | Add-on module | Not built in |
| Data ownership | Your server, your data | Vendor servers | Vendor servers | Vendor servers |
Smartlead, Instantly, and Mailchimp pricing per each vendor's published plans, 2026. Costs scale with contacts and send volume; Genius Campaign does not.
Your Infrastructure. Not Ours.
This is the whole point of self-hosting, worth spelling out before you click download.
Nothing proxies through a third-party server
AWS SES, Gmail Workspace, and Cloudflare R2 calls go directly from your deployment to AWS, Google, and Cloudflare. Xgenious never sits in that path; we don’t see your emails or your subscriber data.
Your sending domain’s reputation is yours
No shared IP pool, no vendor-wide deliverability incidents dragging your domain down with everyone else on the platform. Whatever reputation you build stays attached to your own SES or Workspace account.
Two deploy paths, same result
docker compose up covers Postgres, Redis, the API, and the web console in one command. Bare-metal deployment is documented too, with the full environment variable reference for production.
From Deploy to First Send in 3 Steps
Deploy
docker compose up brings up Postgres, Redis, the API, and the web console in one command. Bare-metal deployment is documented too.
Connect Sending & Verify Domain
Add your AWS SES or Gmail Workspace credentials, then verify your sending domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC so campaigns land in the inbox.
Import Contacts and Send
Import contacts by CSV, pick a template or draft one with AI assistance, build a sequence or a one-off campaign, and send. Verification runs before dispatch.
Built on a Modern, Self-Hostable Stack
NestJS API and workers, Postgres for storage, Redis for the send queue. Cloudflare R2 is optional.
NestJS
API and background job services
PostgreSQL + Drizzle ORM
Contacts, campaigns, and sequence data
BullMQ + Redis
Sequence and campaign send queue
React (Vite)
Admin console frontend
Tailwind CSS
UI styling
Zustand
Frontend state management
System Requirements
Docker recommended. Bare-metal deployment documented too.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Genius Campaign connects directly to your own AWS SES or Gmail Workspace account, and your own Cloudflare R2 bucket if you use one. Calls go straight from your deployment to AWS/Google/Cloudflare; nothing proxies through a third-party server, including ours.
Yes. MIT licensed, confirmed in the repository LICENSE file. Every feature is included at no cost: no paid tier, no per-contact pricing, no feature locks.
The template editor includes AI-assisted copywriting via OpenAI or DeepSeek, plus spintax variants for subject line and body rotation. It drafts and suggests; you review and send.
Genius Campaign rotates sends across your connected AWS SES and Gmail Workspace accounts automatically, tracking each account’s quota. Spreading volume across senders protects deliverability instead of pushing everything through one address.
Before a campaign sends, contacts are checked against Reoon (primary) with NeverBounce as a fallback provider. Invalid and risky addresses are flagged so your bounce rate, and sender reputation, stays healthy.
Yes. Contacts can auto-enroll into a sequence on a tag added, a field changed, a list joined, or an inbound HMAC-signed webhook. There’s also an API-key-authenticated public API for pushing contacts in from external forms or automation tools.
docker compose up is the recommended path and covers Postgres, Redis, the API, and the web console. Bare-metal deployment is also documented, along with the full environment variable reference for production.
Smartlead and Instantly charge per-tier monthly fees that scale with contacts and send volume; Mailchimp scales similarly. Genius Campaign is a one-time free download (self-hosted, MIT licensed, full source code) with no per-contact or per-send fee, and your data never leaves your infrastructure.
Yes. The MIT license permits modification, redistribution, and commercial use, including client deployments. Replace the branding, run it under your own domain, and build on top of it without restriction.
Still have questions?
Check the docs or open a ticket. We'll help directly.
Download Genius Campaign
Full source · MIT licensed: free forever, self-hosted
- API: contacts, campaigns, sequences, webhooks
- Web: React admin console
- Sender rotation across AWS SES / Gmail Workspace
- Docker Compose file for one-command deploy
- Full documentation