Indie dev replaces Zoho Campaigns' 39,960 INR bill with 237 INR self-hosted SES setup

jackedAJ · x · 2026-08-16

Zoho Campaigns charges 39,960 INR per month for a 20k-subscriber list, even if you send zero emails. Developer jackedAJ one-shotted his own newsletter stack using a $5 server and database he already had plus AWS SES, bringing the cost of emailing 20k users down to 237 INR — roughly 1/168 of the price.

The setup powers the newsletter for his open-source project discovery platform Opensox, a classic indie-dev case of self-hosting infrastructure to slash costs.

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