Posthawk
Compare

Posthawk vs Postmark
side by side

Postmark earned its reputation on transactional deliverability — and charges for it. Posthawk delivers through the same AWS SES infrastructure Postmark uses, gives you the same per-domain reputation isolation, adds a built-in newsletter product, an MCP server, and an AI assistant — at one-tenth the per-email cost.

Self-Hostable
Full Control
No Per-Email Fees
Features

Feature comparison

FeaturePosthawkPostmark
Platform
Self-hostable (Docker)
Multi-region sending
Cloud: US-east + EU-north (per-domain) · Self-host: any SES region
US only
EU data residency
Multi-workspace + roles
Account-level
Free tier emails / month (cloud)
3,000
100
Sending
Transactional REST API
Batch send (up to 1,000 / call)
500/call
Scheduled sending
scheduledFor + cancel + reschedule
Recently added
Broadcast campaigns
Race-safe cancel mid-flight + audit log
Broadcasts (separate product)
Streams / message types
Workspaces with per-domain region
Streams
SMTP relay (port 587)
Visual workflow automations
Drag-drop builder · Scale on cloud, unlocked self-hosted
Marketing & Audience
Contacts management
Tag-based segmentation
Limited (Broadcasts only)
Newsletter product (signup page + archive)
Hosted /n/[slug] page + embeddable widget + public archive
Double opt-in confirmation
CSV bulk import
Abuse protection (honeypot, throttling, MX checks)
Basic
Templates
Templates with dynamic variables
React Email (native)
Drag-and-drop email designer
Code-first (React Email)
Required-variable enforcement
Deliverability
SPF + DKIM + DMARC auto-config
BYODKIM (your own DKIM keys)
Per-workspace reputation isolation
Dedicated SES VDM tenant per workspace · cloud only
Shared pools (dedicated IP $50/mo)
Soft-bounce auto-suppression
3 consecutive → suppressed (counter resets on delivery)
Basic
Hard bounce + complaint suppression
Inbound email parsing
Per-domain webhook routing
Developer Experience
TypeScript SDK
posthawk on npm
postmark
Python SDK
posthawk on PyPI
postmarker
Go SDK
posthawk-go
postmark-go
MCP server (Model Context Protocol)
18 tools, OAuth 2.1 + PKCE
AI assistant (in dashboard)
Subject suggestions, content gen, schedule parsing · cloud Pro+
Webhook signature verification
HMAC-SHA256
Basic auth
Sandbox / test environment
CLI tool
Security & Compliance
Encryption at rest
AES-256 (Postgres disk)
AES-256
TLS in transit
TLS 1.2+
TLS 1.2+
API keys
Bcrypt-hashed, scoped, instantly revocable
Server tokens
2FA / TOTP
Audit logs
Append-only on broadcasts/scheduled · Scale on cloud, unlocked self-hosted
Activity feed
Pricing & Value
Self-hosted: AWS SES passthrough
$0.10 per 1,000 — paid directly to AWS
Not available
Cloud: Pro plan (50,000 emails/month)
$12 / month
$50 / month
Cloud: pay-as-you-go overage (Pro+)
$0.60 per 1,000 over plan
Tier-based, ~$1.00+/1k
Dedicated IPs
Self-host: via your AWS SES account
$50/mo per IP
Pricing

Cost comparison

Every tier of Posthawk on the left, every tier of Postmark on the right. Cloud plans run on infrastructure we manage; Self-Hosted runs on yours and pays AWS SES directly with no Posthawk markup.

Posthawk4 tiers
Free
$0
3,000 emails / month
100/day cap · 1 domain · 2 API keys · 2 team members
ProMost popular
$12 / month
50,000 emails / month
Unlimited daily · 10 domains · $0.60 / 1,000 overage · AI assistant
Scale
$49 / month
100,000 emails / month
100 domains · 50 team members · workflow automations · audit logs · $0.60 / 1,000 overage
Self-Hosted
Free forever
No limits
Pay AWS SES directly at ~$0.10 / 1,000 — no Posthawk markup
Postmark4 tiers
Developer$0
100 emails / month
No domain limit · for testing only
10K plan$15 / month
10,000 emails / month
~$1.50 / 1,000
50K plan$50 / month
50,000 emails / month
~$1.00 / 1,000 · Broadcasts is a separate add-on
100K plan$115 / month
100,000 emails / month
~$1.15 / 1,000 · dedicated IP $50 / month extra
Advantages

Why switch to Posthawk

Up to 10× cheaper, depending on how you run it

Postmark charges $1.00–$1.50 per 1,000 emails. On Posthawk cloud, Pro is $12/month for 50K emails — that's an effective $0.24 per 1,000 inside the plan, and $0.60 per 1,000 on overage. Self-host Posthawk and you pay AWS SES directly at $0.10 per 1,000 with no markup at all — the full 10× saving.

A built-in newsletter product

Postmark has Broadcasts as a separate paid product. Posthawk includes the full newsletter system — hosted subscribe page, embeddable widget, public archive, double opt-in, and abuse protection — on every cloud plan, including Free.

EU data residency, by domain

Postmark is US-only — EU customers send through US infrastructure. Posthawk lets you set the SES region per domain at creation: pick eu-north-1 (Stockholm) and the entire send pipeline for that domain stays in the EU.

MCP server and AI assistant

Posthawk ships an 18-tool MCP server so AI agents can send mail by natural language, and an in-dashboard AI helper that drafts subjects, rewrites HTML, and parses schedules ("send tomorrow at 9am"). Postmark has none of this.

Self-host or use the cloud

Postmark is closed-source SaaS. Posthawk runs as Docker images on GHCR — clone the docker-compose.yml from our docs, point AWS SES credentials at it, and you have the same product running on your own infra with no usage limits.

Ready to switch from Postmark?

Follow our step-by-step migration guide to move from Postmark to Posthawk with minimal downtime.

Migration Guide

Try Posthawk today

Start sending emails in minutes. Free to self-host, no credit card required for cloud.

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