Broadcast

What Broadcast is

Broadcast is commercial, self-hosted email marketing software: you buy a license once, install it on your own Ubuntu server, connect your own email provider, and run newsletters, drip sequences and transactional email from it. The homepage headline is "Own your email marketing platform." and the pitch is "Self-hosted email marketing for developers, agencies, and technical founders", with unlimited subscribers and no monthly SaaS bills. The FAQ answers the obvious question directly: "No. Broadcast is software you buy once and host on your own server. There is no monthly subscription, no per-subscriber fee, and no data sitting on our servers." The site's use-case menu lists technical founders, developers, agencies, email consultants and self-hosted newsletters, and newsletters, product updates, drip campaigns and transactional emails as jobs. The footer names the company as Furvur Inc., and the homepage showed the latest release as v2.35.0.

Setup and sending providers

The homepage describes five steps from license to first broadcast: buy the license, deploy the app on your Ubuntu server with the automated installer, connect a provider, import subscribers, and send. The company's comparison guide describes Broadcast as built on Ruby on Rails and shipped as a single Docker image that "sets up in about 30 minutes via the automatic installer".

Broadcast does not deliver mail itself. The FAQ says you bring your own provider account, and Broadcast "handles list management, campaigns, automations, and analytics on top of it." Amazon SES, Postmark, Mailgun and SendGrid are built-in integrations, and "Broadcast works with any SMTP-compatible service". A guided setup wizard connects Postmark, Amazon SES, SendGrid or Mailgun, verifies your sending domain and wires up the webhooks for you. The guide points out the practical benefit: with your own provider, "your sender reputation is portable."

Campaigns and templates

The homepage says your team can design and send emails without writing code once Broadcast is installed, mentioning drag-and-drop components, asset uploads and brand customization, and you can "Use the built-in editor, or bring your own HTML templates." The company's own comparison guide describes the editor more precisely as "Rich text + HTML + Liquid templates" and lists "No drag-and-drop visual editor" as a weakness, so buyers who want a block builder should try the live sandbox first. The site also offers a free drag-and-drop email template builder that exports clean HTML.

Campaigns are unlimited: the homepage says you can send as many newsletters, promotions and announcements as you need "without artificial sending limits." The demo shows composing, previewing and sending a test, then sending with throttled delivery and queue tracking.

Subscribers, segments and automation

Subscribers are imported by CSV or through the API, with "No list-size limits". The homepage says you can "segment your audience, and manage preferences with ease", and the demo shows segments built on tags, custom fields and behavior. Opt-in forms are part of the feature set according to the comparison guide.

Automation covers drip campaigns and sequences: "Welcome series, follow-ups, and nurture sequences trigger automatically based on subscriber actions." The comparison guide says Broadcast supports "Sequences with conditional branching", and its overview table lists the automation depth as "Sequences with conditionals, AI Autopilot".

Multi-brand, API and developer tools

Broadcast is "Multi-brand ready", with separate channels for each business, which suits agencies and companies running several brands from one install. For developers there is a REST API to "Send transactional emails, manage subscribers, and trigger campaigns programmatically", webhook integration, and SDKs for Ruby, PHP, Node and Python. The "Built for Agents" section says Broadcast "ships with a CLI and an MCP server", so AI agents such as Claude Code can manage subscribers, drafts and sends.

AI and operations features

Several features go beyond the basics. Ask AI answers questions about your list in plain language from live channel data, and anything that would change data waits for your confirmation. Autopilot reads your changelog, a GitHub repository or an RSS feed, drafts a newsletter in a few versions, and lets you pick and edit one before it goes out. DNS health monitoring "rechecks your SPF, DKIM and DMARC records every few hours" and alerts you when one drifts. Offsite backups upload to object storage you own: AWS S3, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi or MinIO.

Reporting and data

Broadcast tracks opens, clicks, bounces and spam rates, can sync analytics from the connected providers, and the demo shows click maps. On data, the homepage says it is "GDPR compliant with built-in privacy controls and easy subscriber management", with automatic unsubscribe handling; those are the company's statements. Because the software runs on your server, subscriber data stays with you.

Pricing and licenses

The homepage lists two one-time licenses:

• Regular License: $250 once, for a single server, "Perfect for developers, technical founders, indie hackers, and teams that prefer self-hosted software". It includes unlimited subscribers, unlimited campaigns, email automations and sequences, and all future 2.x updates.
• Extended License: $1,000 once, for up to 25 servers, aimed at agencies, consultants and businesses with multiple brands or client installations. It adds priority email support.

The FAQ says the Regular License is for a single business, while the Extended License lets you deploy Broadcast for clients and across multiple brands. Both carry a 30-day money-back guarantee, and license keys are delivered instantly with payment through Stripe. Hosting and sending are separate costs: the comparison guide puts hosting at roughly $5 to $20 a month and Amazon SES at about $0.10 per 1,000 emails.

Support

Every license includes email support and documentation, with bug fixes and new releases for the lifetime of the license. The FAQ says the company does not offer a done-for-you installation service, but will help by email if you get stuck. On updates, all 2.x releases are included, and when version 2 shipped, free access was extended to everyone who bought during 1.x. Documentation, how-to guides, a deliverability guide and free tools such as SPF and DMARC generators are on the site, and a live sandbox demo lets you try the interface.

Who Broadcast suits

The homepage's "Good fit" list is clear: you like self-hosted software, want to own your email platform, can connect a provider such as SES, Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid or SMTP, and want unlimited subscribers without monthly pricing. That describes technical founders, developers, agencies with the Extended License, and newsletter publishers with large lists. The FAQ warns that anyone who has never touched a server should "plan for a learning curve", and teams that want a hosted service with delivery included are not the audience.