We wired up Interspire Email Marketer on our private server, use AuthSMTP to send, and Odoo 18 CE for CRM and the website. Together it makes a pretty robust marketing funnel for a small business.

Interspire is old PHP software and it looks like it. We use it to set up campaigns, manage the list, and schedule sends via API, so the look of the application is not a problem. The tracking works, the automation works, and we're not paying per contact.

AuthSMTP handles the sending so deliverability stays clean without us managing our own mail server reputation. There's a dashboard in AuthSMTP that shows every email we send and if it bounced or got marked spam.

Odoo handles CRM pipeline, website, landing pages, contact forms, and lead tracking. It's community open source, so we keep track of the repo for bug fixes and patches.

The stack runs on one IONOS VPS. I moved off AWS because the bill was getting out of hand for what I was doing. IONOS gives me a dedicated server with plenty of resources for a flat monthly rate. No metered bandwidth surprises, no data transfer fees, no "oh you left a load balancer running" moments. It just runs.

Monthly cost is the IONOS server and the AuthSMTP plan. No per-seat fees, no contact tier pricing, no surprise invoices when the list grows.

Happy to show anyone how we set it up. Not selling anything, just figured it out and thought it might be useful for other small shops trying to do marketing without a big software budget.