Self-hosting
ForgeSend is the only cold email platform in its category that you can run on your own server. Every competitor — Instantly, Smartlead, Snov.io, Saleshandy, Woodpecker, QuickMail — is SaaS-only.
On this page
Why self-host?
- Your lead data never leaves your server — critical for agency clients with data protection requirements.
- No per-seat SaaS fees — you pay for infrastructure, not headcount.
- Full control — audit every log, customize every setting, run your own backups.
- Compliance — GDPR, SOC2, and other frameworks are much simpler when you control the data store.
What's included in this MVP
This build supports the Solo tier only — a single workspace, run by a single operator, on your own infrastructure.
| Tier | Price | Self-hostable today? |
|---|---|---|
| Solo | Free forever | Yes — this is what these docs cover |
| Agency | $599/year | Not yet |
| Enterprise | Custom pricing | Not yet |
Agency and Enterprise above are real ForgeSend licence tiers, but self-hosting support for them isn't built yet. This MVP doesn't include per-workspace BYOK or multi-tenant client isolation — the pieces an Agency-tier deployment needs to run multiple isolated client workspaces on one instance. Mailivery and FullEnrich keys, for example, are still one shared key per instance, not per client workspace. If you need multi-tenant self-hosting today, that's planned follow-on work, not shipped — use ForgeSend's hosted Cloud plans instead in the meantime.
Licensing
Self-hostable does not mean open source. ForgeSend is proprietary software — the right to run it on your own server is a licensed capability, not a free one.
The Solo tier's "commercial licence included" means exactly that: the free Solo self-hosting licence covers a single workspace run by a single operator, bundled in at no extra cost, with no separate licence purchase required. See LICENSING.md in the application repository for the full terms before deploying this anywhere.
Deployment model
The whole stack runs as Docker Compose services — PostgreSQL and Redis, plus the backend and frontend themselves as their own containers, built from the repository's own Dockerfiles. Nothing runs outside Docker, and there's no separate process manager like PM2 to install or configure. See Docker setup for the full walkthrough, including every environment variable and how to create your first account.
Requirements
- A VPS with at least 2GB RAM and 20GB storage (Fasthosts, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, etc.)
- Docker Engine with the Compose plugin (
docker compose version, not the legacy standalonedocker-composebinary) - A domain or subdomain for the app (e.g.
app.yourdomain.com) - SMTP port 465 open outbound (port 587 is blocked on some providers) — needed for connected inboxes and system emails, not for the app itself to boot
Quick start
See Docker setup for step-by-step instructions — including the full environment variable reference and creating your first account via the bootstrap script. Self-serve registration is disabled by design on a fresh instance, so that script is the only way in.
ForgeSend uses AES-256-GCM encryption for all stored OAuth tokens and SMTP credentials. Generate a unique ENCRYPTION_KEY_BASE64 before first run.
Where to go next
Next: Docker setup