Keila

What It Is

Keila is an open-source email newsletter tool for managing contact lists, building sign-up forms and sending newsletter campaigns, with transactional email added through its API. Its documentation describes it as "a free/libre open source email newsletter tool written in Elixir," released under the GNU AGPLv3. The home page calls it "a 100% Open Source newsletter tool, made in Germany and hosted in the EU." You can run it on your own server with the official Docker image, or pay for Keila Cloud, the company's managed service. The company describes itself as a small bootstrapped business with no outside investors, and it says Keila is built to do email newsletters well "without trying to be an all-in-one marketing platform."

Four Ways to Write an Email

Keila lets you pick the editor that suits the sender. The Block Editor is, in the company's words, "the most flexible editor choice in Keila." It supports multi-column layouts through a WYSIWYG interface, and its blocks cover text paragraphs, headings, images with links, captions and alt texts, centered or full-width buttons, ordered and unordered lists, separators and block quotes.

The Markdown editor is for writers who like plain markup or want simple single-column newsletters. You can compose in plain Markdown or use the Markdown-based WYSIWYG editor, and the feature list describes the result as hybrid HTML and plain text campaigns.

Plain text is treated as a first-class format. The editors page argues that the simplest option is sometimes the right one, and calls Keila "a great choice to send your plain-text email newsletter."

For full control there is MJML. The company says it lets you "customize every aspect of the newsletter design while still maintaining excellent compatibility with mobile devices and legacy desktop clients."

Whatever the editor, the editors page says "Keila emails are built on a rock-solid foundational template that looks great on all email clients, from Gmail to Yahoo, Thunderbird, and Outlook - on mobile and on desktop." A June 2026 update added reusable templates in MJML, HTML or plain text, with content slots for campaigns and transactional messages.

Personalization and Segmentation

Custom data for every contact and every campaign is stored as a single JSON object, and emails are personalized with Shopify's Liquid template language, which the site says can also build fully dynamic templates. Data can come from your sign-up forms or from external sources such as a CMS or CRM.

Segments are built in a visual editor or, for complex cases, in the Keila Query Language, which the segments documentation says "is inspired by MongoDB's Query Documents and is fully valid JSON." It supports match, $and, $or, $not, $like with wildcards, date and number comparisons, and an $empty check. Message-based segmentation targets contacts by how they interacted with campaigns: the documented filters cover campaign ID, opened, clicked, bounced, complaint received and unsubscribed dates. The documentation says this lets you "target contacts who have received, opened, or clicked specific campaigns," including contacts who did not open a given campaign.

Forms, Analytics and List Quality

The Form Builder creates sign-up forms with extra checkboxes, text fields and dropdowns. Forms can be protected with hCaptcha or Friendly Captcha, and new sign-ups verified with double opt-in; the site explains that bot sign-ups hurt list quality and "might ultimately jeopardize the deliverability of your emails." A May 2026 update lets you pre-fill form fields from URL query parameters, which the company suggests for "Manage preferences" links. A February 2026 update added a verification step to unsubscribe and double opt-in links so mail scanners cannot trigger them by accident.

Analytics cover click and open tracking. The site says Keila collects what is useful "while respecting user privacy," and tracking can be turned off entirely with a single click. The feature list also names automatic bounce and complaint handling, CSV import and export, and public archive links for campaigns.

Sending, API and Integrations

Keila Cloud customers can use the "fully managed Send with Keila option" or bring their own sending through SMTP, AWS SES, Mailgun, Postmark or Sendgrid. The documentation covers domain setup with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and a separate guide covers sending without a custom domain.

The API manages campaigns (including scheduling and delivery), contacts and their custom data, forms and form submissions, segments, senders and templates, and it can send and render transactional messages. The June 2026 update describes transactional sending as "one-off transactional emails through the Keila API, such as order confirmations, password resets, and magic links." An interactive API playground sits in the docs. For no-code users, the home page says "we currently have a Zapier integration in private beta."

For agencies, a May 2026 update introduced Keila Cloud Partner Mode, which lets you "manage multiple sub-accounts for your clients." The interface is available in English, German and French, and a May 2026 update added Brazilian Portuguese.

What Is Still on the Roadmap

The company is open about gaps. Its comparison page says Keila's marketing automation features "are still in development," that A/B testing "is on Keila's roadmap but not yet available," and that its integration ecosystem is smaller, with a full API and Zapier support in place of a large library of native connectors. A public roadmap lists what is planned next.

Pricing

Keila Cloud is priced by emails sent per month, not by contacts. The pricing page lists six plans, each with unlimited contacts, unlimited projects and the choice to "Send with Keila or bring your own email server":

• Keila XS: €8 a month for 2,000 emails a month
• Keila S: €16 a month for 5,000 emails a month
• Keila M: €32 a month for 15,000 emails a month
• Keila L: €64 a month for 50,000 emails a month
• Keila XL: €128 a month for 100,000 emails a month
• Keila XXL: €256 a month for 250,000 emails a month

Prices are shown including tax. The company says "Every Keila plan includes all features," naming segmentation, custom fields, the API, Liquid templating and MJML support.

There is no free plan. The pricing FAQ explains that free plans are either paid for from a marketing budget or "a hint that you are the real product and they're making a profit from using your data," and adds that Keila "will never sell you data." Self-hosting the open-source software remains free. The FAQ says open-source projects, and nonprofits or small businesses that struggle to afford a plan, can ask about a discount, and that the company offers paid help setting up a self-hosted instance.

Open Source and Data Control

The home page says "Keila is 100% Open Source with no proprietary premium features," and invites bug reports, translations and code on GitHub. The company says you can leave Keila Cloud at any time and self-host the same software, with fully exportable data and portable templates.

Data Location and Compliance

Keila Cloud, the home page says, runs "entirely on European infrastructure in Germany and France," which "guarantees strict European privacy standards for your and your subscribers." The comparison page adds that your data and your subscribers' data "is subject to European privacy law only." The footer links to a GDPR and DPA page. Self-hosted installations keep data wherever you run them.

Support

The site promises personal support on every plan, covering template setup, embedding forms, spam complaints, deliverability debugging and MJML layouts, and says the team is happy to "hop on a quick call." A public status page, the documentation and a contact page round it out.

Who It Suits

Keila fits newsletter senders who want open source, EU hosting and a price that does not rise with list size: a creator or association with a large list and one newsletter a month pays by volume sent, not by contacts. Developers get a documented API, JSON contact data and Liquid templates, and agencies can use Partner Mode. The home page quotes Volt Europa, which says Keila has helped it "send millions of emails to subscribers all across Europe while keeping full control of our data."

It is a weaker fit for teams that need mature automation workflows or A/B testing today, both still on the roadmap, or that depend on a large catalog of native integrations. Teams that do not want to run a server can simply use Keila Cloud instead of self-hosting.