Our verdict on Acelle Mail

Acelle Mail suits an adult site with an opt-in list and someone comfortable on a Linux server who wants newsletters without a monthly fee or a contact cap. You pay for the license once, and sending costs whatever your relay charges.

The per-message price depends on your relay, and the license cannot be refunded once downloaded.

Acelle Mail at a glance

Type

Self-hosted email marketingPHP and Laravel source included

License

Regular: one domain, free accessextended: resell as SaaS

Deployment

Linux server, VPS recommendedshared hosting discouraged

Technical requirements

PHP 8.3, MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.3cron and a queue worker

Sending and deliverability

Amazon SES, SendGrid, Mailgun, SMTPIP warmup, bounces, SpamAssassin

Contacts and segmentation

Unlimited subscriberssegments, tags, double opt-in

Automation

Workflows, drip series, RSS, birthdaysA/B tests

Tracking and reports

Opens, clicks, bouncesclick maps

Pricing

$80 or $199 once, before taxsupport and AI from $9 to $29 a month

Project activity

Version 4.2.0 LTSsold since 2016

Company

Guardian Holdings HK Limited, Hong Kongsoftware by Basic Technology Software

AcelleMail features page headed “Everything you need to run professional email marketing campaigns from your own server”, with a Get AcelleMail $80 button and a campaign dashboard showing sent, opened and clicked counts — Acelle Mail

Which relays Acelle Mail can send through

Acelle Mail sends through Amazon SES, SendGrid, SparkPost, Mailgun, Elastic Email, or any SMTP server such as Postfix or Exim. It processes bounces and complaints, supports gradual IP warmup and SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication, and checks messages against SpamAssassin before sending. Lists support bulk import, segments, tags, embeddable forms and double opt-in, and campaigns get a drag-and-drop builder, A/B tests, 100+ templates, automated workflows, drip series and RSS-to-email. A REST API, webhooks and Zapier round it out.

What Acelle Mail really costs

The regular license is $80 once, before tax, with lifetime updates and six months of support. Add a server, which AcelleMail puts at $5 to $50 a month for a 2-core, 4 GB VPS handling 100,000+ subscribers, plus your relay’s per-message rate.

Optional support plans add install help and AI credits: Essential $9 a month, Plus $19, Pro $29, Max $79 a quarter.

Server requirements

The installer requires PHP 8.3 and MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.3 on Ubuntu, Debian or Rocky Linux. You need a reliable cron and a long-running queue worker, which is why AcelleMail advises against shared hosting, and Redis is strongly recommended. AcelleMail itself suggests a hosted service if nobody on your team can SSH into a Linux box.

Regular or extended license

The regular license covers one domain, for you or a client, without charging users for access. The $199 extended license lets you resell Acelle Mail as SaaS, with separate accounts, per-plan quotas, billing through Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, Paddle, Razorpay or Coinbase Commerce, and white-labeling. The source code is included but is not open source.

Can you get a refund on Acelle Mail?

No, not once the license has been downloaded or activated. The no-signup live demo is the trial. Direct sales go through Guardian Holdings HK Limited, a Hong Kong company reselling the software under license from Basic Technology Software. Acelle Mail has been sold since 2016 and is on version 4.2.0 LTS.