Your email list, on your own metal — contacts, broadcasts, and welcome sequences without a $99/month marketing cloud. Runs on Cloudflare. Sends through Resend. You keep the list.
EmMail is a small email marketing app for a single site. It is not Mailchimp, and it does not try to be. It is the bit of ActiveCampaign most sites actually use: a list, a broadcast, a welcome sequence, unsubscribe, and tracking you own.
🎯 A real contact list — import CSV, tag people, keep suppressions, honor unsubscribes.
📨 Broadcasts — write in Markdown, queue a send, watch pending → sent → delivered. Opens and clicks hit your domain, not a vendor pixel farm.
🔁 Welcome / follow-up sequences — linear automations: send an email, wait, add a tag. Disable to edit. Preview a draft without mailing anyone.
What it is not (yet): a Canva-style email designer, a branching automation canvas, landing pages, or a multi-user marketing department. Those are on the list below.
The honest split: Cloudflare is cheap. Resend is the meter that moves with volume.
| Piece | Idle / small list | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Workers Free | $0 | Possible on paper. This app’s send consumer (HTML + signing + D1) often wants more than Free’s 10 ms CPU per run. |
| Workers Paid | $5 / month | The realistic floor. Account-wide, not per app. Covers the Worker, D1, Queues, the every-minute sweeper, and a custom domain. |
| Resend | their email pricing | Separate from Cloudflare. You pay for mail that actually leaves. Keep EMMAIL_SEND_MODE=dry-run until a domain is verified. |
On Workers Paid, a quiet list sits inside the included allotments. Rough fit:
| Free (if it even runs) | ~$5/mo Paid included | |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts stored | Fine into the hundreds of thousands | Same 5 GB D1; millions of rows before storage is the problem |
| Broadcasts | Hundreds–low thousands/day, then CPU or D1 writes bite | Comfortably millions of emails / month before D1 write overages |
| Automation emails | ~thousands/day (Queues 10k ops/day, ~3 ops per message) | Large welcome funnels fit the included million queue ops |
| Automation definitions | Dozens–hundreds | Same — the limit is running enrollments + mail, not how many sequences you save |
Cloudflare quotas are account-wide. If this Worker shares a D1 or an account with other apps, they eat the same pie. Open/click tracking adds extra Worker hits and D1 writes on top of sends.
$5 + Resend vs $49–149/mo for a hosted ESP. The catch is you operate it. No success manager, no drag-and-drop campaign builder, no “we’ll pause your account if the list looks bought.”
| EmMail | ActiveCampaign (SaaS) | Mautic (self-host) | FluentCRM (WordPress) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly floor | ~$5 Cloudflare + Resend | Typically tens–hundreds, contact-tiered | A VPS (~$5–40) + your time | WP host you already pay + plugin |
| Who owns the list | You, in D1 | Them, with an export | You, in MySQL | You, in wp_users / CRM tables |
| Setup | Cloudflare account, a domain, Resend, this repo | Sign up and import | PHP, MySQL, cron, updates, plugins | Install a plugin, stay on WordPress |
| Builder | Markdown + a linear step list | Mature visual campaigns + email designer | Mature, heavier UI | Good enough for WP shops |
| Fits | One site, “I want the list not the suite” | Teams that want support, scoring, CRM, SMS | People who like running PHP apps | Woo / WP sites that should not leave WordPress |
| Pain | You ship features. No branching flows yet. | Price + lock-in + contact caps | Patch Tuesday forever | Tied to WordPress. Fine until it isn’t. |
Not a SaaS replacement. ActiveCampaign wins if you need deal pipelines, SMS, and a vendor to call. Not a Mautic replacement. Mautic wins if you want a full open-source marketing suite and will babysit PHP. Not a FluentCRM replacement. FluentCRM wins if the site is WordPress and the list already lives there.
EmMail wins when the site is already on Cloudflare (a Worker, Pages, or a static front), you want one list and one welcome flow, and you would rather pay compute than a contact tax.
- One tenant. Fork, rename, ship. There is no multi-site admin. Config in this repo is still a branded example — see the install WIP note below.
- Linear automations only —
send_email,wait,add_tag. No branches, no “opened / didn’t open,” no goal split. - Markdown emails, rendered through a React Email shell. No block canvas, no image gallery, no “drop a button here.”
- Shared-secret admin, not team roles. Cloudflare Access in front is the grown-up move; until then,
EMMAIL_ADMIN_TOKENis the gate (unset = nobody gets in). - No forms / landing pages / preference center. Ingest is a sidecar endpoint for the public site.
- No A/B, no send-time optimization, no RSS-to-email. Campaign stats are a rollup, not a BI tool.
- Free-plan CPU is tight. Budget Workers Paid if you actually send.
- Resend idempotency is 24h. Welcome-mail at-most-once is solid; a pathological D1 outage plus a re-submit after that window can theoretically double a welcome. See the sending notes below.
Not a contract. A punch list, in the order it would actually get used.
Soon-shaped
- Visual email builder — rows, columns, a button, an image, dark-mode preview. Markdown stays as the escape hatch for people who write faster than they drag.
- Drag-and-drop automation canvas — same engine, less “edit a JSON-ish step list.” Branches: opened / clicked / tagged / waited. A kill-switch still sits on the sequence, not buried in a node.
- Saved segments — “subscribed + tag X, not complained” as a named audience, not a one-off campaign filter.
- Inbox preview — render Gmail / Apple Mail / a skinny phone pane before you hit send. “Looks fine in the admin” is a famous last sentence.
Fun, still real
- Subject gym — three subject lines, pick one, or split 10% of the list. No 27-variant science fair.
- Quiet hours — don’t wake a sequence at 3am in the contact’s timezone. The minute cron already exists; it should learn manners.
- List hygiene desk — bounce / complaint hospital, “this address has never opened,” one-click suppress. Deliverability is a feature.
- Preference center — topics, not just unsubscribe-forever. “Still want launch notes, skip the diary.”
- RSS → draft broadcast — new site post becomes a campaign draft, human still hits send.
- AI copy pass — rewrite preview text, tighten the CTA, don’t auto-send. Humans stay on the trigger.
- Site-form ingest widgets — WordPress, or any static/Worker front, without a handmade sidecar secret every time.
Later / maybe never
- Full CRM, SMS, landing-page CMS, multi-tenancy as a product. If you need those, buy ActiveCampaign or run Mautic. EmMail should stay a mail core, not a second WordPress.
You need: a Cloudflare account, a domain already on Cloudflare, and a Resend account with a verified sending domain.
Recommended: turn on Workers Paid ($5/mo) before the first live send.
Letting an AI coding tool do the Wrangler work? Cloudflare’s public skills (wrangler, plus the platform cloudflare skill) and MCP servers (docs, bindings, API) are the right helpers — Workers, D1, Queues, secrets, custom domains. This is a Worker with static assets, not Pages. Do not wrangler pages deploy this repo.
Checked-in config still uses example tenant names (Worker name, D1 database, queue, custom domain, from-address, ingest path, welcome copy). Rename those to yours before a real deploy. A cleanup pass on wrangler.toml, package.json migrate scripts, .dev.vars.example, and the ingest route is coming; until then, treat them as templates.
| File | What to change |
|---|---|
wrangler.toml |
name, APP_BASE_URL, DEFAULT_FROM_*, [[routes]] hostname, D1 database_name / database_id, queue name |
package.json |
db:migrate:local / db:migrate:remote still pass the example D1 name — match whatever you put in Wrangler |
.dev.vars.example |
From-address and dummy secrets |
src/email/welcome.ts |
Subject/body still example-branded |
| Ingest route | Still /api/integrations/<example>/contact-message until the backend pass |
EmMail is a Worker with static assets, a custom domain, D1, and a Queue.
Worker name → whatever you set in wrangler.toml (example: emmail)
Custom domain → mail.yourdomain.com (or a workers.dev URL while testing)
workers.dev stays as a fallback even after you attach a custom domain.
npx wrangler d1 create emmail
npx wrangler queues create emmail-sendPut the D1 database_id and names into wrangler.toml (and the migrate scripts), then:
npm run db:migrate:remoteD1 Free accounts cap out at 10 databases. If create fails, you are at the cap — don’t keep retrying.
npx wrangler secret put RESEND_API_KEY
npx wrangler secret put RESEND_WEBHOOK_SECRET
npx wrangler secret put TRACKING_SECRET
npx wrangler secret put EMMAIL_INGEST_SECRET
npx wrangler secret put EMMAIL_ADMIN_TOKENIn wrangler.toml, set APP_BASE_URL, DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL, DEFAULT_FROM_NAME, and keep EMMAIL_SEND_MODE=dry-run until Resend is verified and a test loop has been watched.
npm run deploy # build admin assets, typecheck, wrangler deployPoint Resend’s webhook at https://<your-host>/webhooks/resend. Log in at /login with the admin token.
Do not arm both EMMAIL_WELCOME_ENABLED=true and an enabled contact_created automation on the same list — new leads get two welcomes. Prefer the multi-step sequence; leave the one-shot flag off.
npm install
cp .dev.vars.example .dev.vars # rotate the dummy admin token
npm run dev:setup # local D1 migrations
npm run dev:local # Worker :8787 + Vite :5173Open http://127.0.0.1:5173/login, paste EMMAIL_ADMIN_TOKEN from .dev.vars, then use the admin with live UI reload. Vite proxies /api and /login to the Worker so cookies match.
Worker-only preview (rebuild the admin after UI changes):
npm run build:admin
npm run worker:dev # http://127.0.0.1:8787/loginSample contacts from the admin Seed control, or (Worker must be up, send the admin token):
npm run sample:seed
npm run sample:clear # only the canned demo rowsSeed the welcome sequence from Automations → Seed welcome, enable it, then hit the ingest endpoint or your site’s contact form.
- Cloudflare Workers — API, tracking pixels, unsubscribe, admin gate
- D1 — contacts, campaigns, automations, events, suppressions, imports
- Queues — broadcast drain + automation wakes (
max_concurrency = 1on purpose) - Cron
* * * * *— due waits (>12h queue delay cap) and stuck enrollments - React / Vite admin, served as Worker static assets
- Resend — batch send + bounce/complaint webhooks
- React Email — campaign + automation HTML
POST /api/campaigns/:id/send snapshots the audience into campaign_recipients and enqueues one message. The consumer drains pending rows in Resend batches of 100, then re-enqueues until none remain. The Resend idempotency key is batch-campaign/{id}/{batchIndex}. campaigns.last_completed_batch only advances in the same D1 batch as the outcomes, so a redelivered queue message resends the same payload instead of skipping or doubling people.
Re-POST /send is the recovery path: it enqueues a drain if anything is still pending, and is a no-op once the campaign has drained.
GET /api/campaigns/:id/stats is the rollup (total/sent/delivered/opened/clicked/pending/failed).
When EMMAIL_WELCOME_ENABLED=true, ingest enqueues { type: "welcome", contactId } unless a welcome_sent event already exists. At-most-once per contact; the consumer re-checks the flag (kill switch) and suppressions. Copy lives in src/email/welcome.ts. Prefer a contact_created sequence over this flag.
| Piece | Role |
|---|---|
automations / automation_steps / automation_enrollments |
Schema (migration 0004) |
Trigger contact_created |
Enroll on site contact-form ingest |
| Steps | send_email, wait (seconds), add_tag |
Queue { type: "automation", enrollmentId } |
Drain until a wait or completion |
Cron * * * * * |
Re-queue due waits and stuck actives |
Bodies support {{first_name}}. Disable a sequence before editing name or steps. Preview sequence renders an unsaved draft; it does not send mail.
npm test -- tests/worker/ingest-automation.test.tsHelpers: tests/helpers/mail-harness.ts.
GET/POST /api/sample-data/{status,seed,clear}POST /api/integrations/<example>/contact-message(ingest secret; path is still example-branded — WIP)POST /api/campaigns/:id/send·GET /api/campaigns/:id/statsGET/POST /api/automations·POST /api/automations/preview·PATCH /api/automations/:idPUT /api/automations/:id/steps·POST .../seed-welcome·.../enable·.../disableGET /api/automations/:id/enrollments
Public: /t/open/...gif, /t/click/..., /unsubscribe/..., POST /webhooks/resend.
See CONTRIBUTING.md. Coding agents: start at AGENTS.md. Security reports go through GitHub Security Advisories, not public issues.
For issues, questions, or suggestions:
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