Mailcheap sends first issue at 10% cost

Mailcheap is a compelling demonstration that vibe-coded infrastructure can replace expensive SaaS for technically capable operators, but the savings come with real operational responsibility.

• –Self-hosting shifts costs from subscriber count to actual email volume.
• –Amazon SES keeps sending costs exceptionally low, while MongoDB, Vercel, and QStash can cover the remaining stack on free tiers.
• –Built-in bounce handling, suppression, unsubscribe compliance, and list cleanup address the hardest parts of running email infrastructure.
• –The tradeoff is owning deliverability, DNS, security, upgrades, and support yourself.
• –The project’s strongest feature may be extensibility: founders can modify the product around their own workflows instead of waiting for a SaaS roadmap.