EmailOctopus

Cheap, Simple, and Unusually Honest About the Plumbing

EmailOctopus made its name by being substantially cheaper than the mainstream platforms for straightforward newsletter sending. Paid plans start around $12/month, and there is a free tier for small lists.

The product is deliberately narrow: lists, forms, campaigns, basic automation, landing pages and reporting. If you want a customer data platform or e-commerce revenue attribution, this is not it, and it does not pretend to be.

Where Your List Actually Lives

The privacy policy is more specific than most:

Your contact lists are stored in Ireland, within the European Economic Area ("EEA"), on the secure servers of Amazon Web Services ("AWS"). Unless you are using our 'EmailOctopus Connect' service, they will also be available to our email service providers ("ESPs"). ESPs will only have access to your lists when you are sending an email. Once the email is sent, the ESPs no longer have access to your contact list. Our ESPs are SendGrid and SparkPost.

Read that carefully, because it contains the two facts that matter and most vendors will not give you either.

First, your list sits in Ireland, in the EEA, which is better than a lot of the EU-headquartered tools on this site can demonstrate.

Second, the actual sending goes through SendGrid (Twilio) and SparkPost (Bird), both American, and they see your list during a send. EmailOctopus tells you this, and tells you the access ends when the send does. It also offers EmailOctopus Connect, which routes sending through your own AWS SES account instead, removing the third-party ESPs from the chain entirely. If the US exposure is your concern, Connect is the answer and it exists precisely for that.

Payments run through Stripe, with no card data on EmailOctopus servers, and there is a published processor and sub-processor list.

The Company

Three Hearts Digital Ltd, 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE, registered at Companies House under 09897211, trading as EmailOctopus.

Being a UK company means UK jurisdiction: the Investigatory Powers Act reaches data held by UK providers, and the EU adequacy decision covering transfers to the UK is a Commission decision that can be reviewed. Account data and IP addresses are stored on AWS servers in Ireland "inside the UK and European Economic Area", and staff and service providers outside the UK and EEA may process the data.

Where It Fits

Against MailerLite and Sender, which are EU-owned and comparably priced, and Mailrelay, which is free at volumes EmailOctopus charges for. EmailOctopus wins on transparency about the delivery chain; the others win on ownership. See email marketing.