Keila is the open-source email-newsletter platform built and operated by Keila GmbH, a small bootstrapped company based in Seybothenreuth, Germany (managing director Philipp Schmieder; HRB 8676, Amtsgericht Bayreuth). Licensed under AGPLv3 with source on GitHub (pentacent/keila) and an official Docker image, it can be self-hosted for free or used as a managed EU-hosted cloud service — positioned as a privacy-first alternative to Mailchimp, ConvertKit and other proprietary newsletter tools.
Functionally it covers the newsletter workflow end to end: a visual block editor plus Markdown and MJML/custom HTML layouts, signup forms with custom fields, double opt-in, bot protection (Friendly Captcha or hCaptcha), list segmentation with both a visual editor and a query language, Liquid-based personalization, marketing automations, A/B testing, and open/click analytics that are privacy-conscious and can be switched off entirely. A comprehensive API is available (Zapier integration in private beta). Sending is flexible — either "Send with Keila" (managed) or bring-your-own SMTP/ESP such as AWS SES, Mailgun, Postmark or SendGrid.
The sovereignty story is among the cleanest in the category. Keila GmbH is 100% European-owned with no foreign capital, all customer data is stored exclusively on EU servers (Hetzner in Germany, Scaleway in France), and both the DPA and the sub-processor list are public PDFs downloadable without a login. The approved sub-processor list (as of April 2026) names only Hetzner (DE), Scaleway (FR), AWS EMEA SARL (Luxembourg/Germany, used only for the optional managed SMTP relay) and Intuition Machines (US, only if hCaptcha is chosen over the EU Friendly Captcha). Both US-linked services are optional and transient with no customer data at rest in the US, so CLOUD Act exposure is minor — and a self-hoster using bring-your-own SMTP and Friendly Captcha removes it entirely.
Cloud pricing is transparent and scales by monthly email volume, with unlimited contacts and projects on every plan: €8 (XS, 2,000 emails/mo), €16 (S, 5,000), €32 (M, 15,000), €64 (L, 50,000), €128 (XL, 100,000) and €256 (XXL, 250,000). There is deliberately no free cloud tier — the company is bootstrapped and declines to monetize user data — though self-hosting is free. Best fit: privacy-conscious creators, NGOs and SMBs who want a GDPR-clean, EU-hosted or self-hostable newsletter tool and don't need a free plan.