Plunk Hosting Live In 5 Minutes

Plunk hosting puts your email platform on your own server, with your own Amazon SES account doing the sending. xCloud runs the pinned Plunk 0.16.0 image with private PostgreSQL and Redis, generates the admin password, closes signup after install, mounts persistent volumes and publishes the dashboard, API, landing site and documentation over HTTPS — your sending domain and reputation stay yours.

Deploy your Plunk

No terminal
No technical skills needed
No lock-in, cancel anytime

What is Plunk?

Plunk is an open-source email platform that combines transactional emails, marketing campaigns and workflow automation in one place. Upstream describes it as a self-hostable alternative to tools such as SendGrid, Resend and Mailgun, licensed under AGPL-3.0.

On xCloud, Plunk runs on your own server and sends through your own Amazon SES account, so your sending domain and reputation stay with you.

From Sign-Up to a Working Email Platform In Just 3 Easy Steps

A Plunk stack normally means an app container, PostgreSQL, Redis, a first-account seed, four web addresses and certificates before the first email. This is the same result without assembling any of it.

Step 01
Sign Up
Create your xCloud account and pick Plunk from the OneClick catalog. Choose your domain, then enter the admin email, your AWS SES region, and the access key ID and secret of an IAM user allowed to use SES.
Step 02
We Deploy It For You
One click. We bring up the official Plunk image, pinned by immutable digest, with private PostgreSQL and Redis kept off the public internet and a one-shot seed that creates your first account, mount the postgres_data and redis_data volumes, generate the admin password, and publish the dashboard, API, landing site and documentation over HTTPS.
Step 03
Verify A Domain And Send
Save the admin password from the protected installation credentials and open the HTTPS dashboard — the first boot runs migrations and takes about two minutes. Sign in, add and verify your sending domain, then create a contact, a template and a campaign.

Everything Plunk Does, On Your Own Server

Plunk runs in full here: transactional email, campaigns and workflows from your own dashboard, backed by a database you own.

Transactional Email Over The API
Send emails straight from your own API calls, with template support and variable substitution.
Campaigns To Your Contacts
Send newsletters and product updates to large audiences as campaigns.
Workflows And Segments
Build automations with triggers, delays and conditional logic, and organise contacts with dynamic filtering.
Your Domains, Your Sending Reputation
Verify and send from your own domains with DKIM and SPF support, through your own Amazon SES account.
Opens, Clicks And Bounces
Track opens, clicks, bounces and engagement metrics from the dashboard.
Optional SMTP Relay
Plunk can act as an SMTP relay for existing tools; ports 465 and 587 are published on the server and stay closed until you open them in your own firewall.

Everything You Need To Run Your Email Platform 24/7

Managed hosting for Plunk, so the parts that keep it online are not your problem.

Plunk 0.16.0 deployed instantly
Official image pinned by digest
Admin password generated for you
Signup closed after install
Free SSL certificate
Server backups and snapshots
Server security updates included
30+ server locations
Unused balance refunded

What You Can Do With Plunk

Product emails from your own API
Send receipts, sign-in links and notifications straight from your application, using templates with variable substitution.
Newsletters and product updates
Send campaigns to your contacts without a per-contact limit on the platform side.
Lifecycle automation
Set up workflows with triggers, delays and conditional logic, and aim them at segments of your contacts.
One platform for both kinds of mail
Keep transactional and marketing email in a single dashboard, on a server you control.

Plunk Screenshots

Plunk vs Alternatives

SendGrid: A hosted email service; Plunk is open source and runs on your own server, sending through your own Amazon SES account.
Resend: A hosted email API; Plunk is self-hosted and also covers campaigns and workflows.
Mailgun: A hosted email service; Plunk keeps the platform and your contacts on a server you own.
Listmonk: A self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager focused on campaigns, where Plunk adds transactional email and workflows.

Simple Pricing. Everything Included.

Dedicated Cloud VPS sizes, pre-configured for Plunk hosting. Pick the one that fits, and resize any time.

Cloud VPS 6 GB

Cloud VPS 16 GB

More headroom if Plunk sits alongside other apps on the same server.

$59.99per month

16 GB RAM
6 vCPU cores
200 GB NVMe SSD
30 TB
Unlimited

Get started

Every size is a dedicated Cloud VPS we provision, patch, monitor and restore. Billed monthly with no lock-in — delete the server and the unused balance comes back to your account. Plunk itself is licensed by Plunk's maintainers under AGPL-3.0; Amazon SES sending is billed separately by AWS.

Docker hosting

Already Have a Server? Bring Your Own

Connect any VPS — DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS, Hetzner or bare metal — and deploy Plunk on it through the same panel, for a per-server management fee instead of a Cloud VPS rental.

Free

Start your journey without cost.

$0forever

1 server
10 sites

Start free

Starter

Professional

The same platform, discounted at 6–10 servers.

$4per server / month

6–10 servers
Unlimited sites
All features included
Bring any VPS provider

Get started

Agency

The same platform, discounted at 11+ servers.

$3per server / month

11+ servers
Unlimited sites
All features included
Bring any VPS provider

Get started

Priced per connected server, so your rate adjusts automatically as you add or remove servers. You pay your own provider for the server itself.

Self-managed hosting

Ready To Run Your Own Email Platform?

Plunk on xCloud runs on a dedicated Cloud VPS that we provision, patch, monitor and restore. Deploy faster. Own the server. Stay in control.

Fast Provisioning
Deploy faster using an xCloud Managed Server built with optimized stacks and high-speed SSDs.
Enterprise-grade security
Protect your infrastructure with a free SSL certificate and more advanced security features at no additional cost.
Intuitive Control Panel
From Server creation to application deployment, everything can be managed from our intuitive control panel.

Hear what people are saying about us

See why agencies, developers, startups, and growing businesses choose xCloud to power their projects.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns you may have.

Do I need an Amazon SES account?

Yes. Plunk sends only through Amazon SES, so the install form asks for your SES region and the access key ID and secret of an IAM user allowed to use SES. The account needs production access and a verified sending domain.

How do I sign in?

Use the admin email you entered at install and the generated admin password on the protected installation credentials card. Signup is closed after install, so nobody else can register and send through your SES account.

What runs alongside Plunk?

PostgreSQL for data, Redis for job queues, and a one-time seed step that creates the first account. None of them has a host port. Plunk itself serves the API, queue worker, SMTP relay, dashboard, landing site and documentation from one container.

Why are there four web addresses?

Plunk is deployed with the dashboard, the API, a landing site and the documentation, each on its own xCloud-managed HTTPS domain. Keep all four under one parent domain so sign-in works in every browser.

Can I change the domains later?

Choose the API and dashboard domains before sending and do not change them afterwards, because links in sent emails point to them. The landing site and documentation domains can change freely.

Can I use the SMTP relay?

It is optional. Ports 465 and 587 are published on the server's IP address, but nothing opens them for you; open them in your own firewall to use the relay and set SMTP_DOMAIN. Port 587 requires authentication (STARTTLS) and port 465 is not served. Keep them closed if you only use the HTTP API.

What do I need to set up in Amazon SES before sending?

An SES account in production mode with a verified domain, and a configuration set named plunk-configuration-set for open and click tracking. Plunk shows the DNS records to add when you add a domain in the dashboard.

Was real Amazon SES delivery tested?

No. Real SES delivery was not part of the QA run; sending was exercised against a temporary SES-compatible test endpoint.

What should I back up?

The postgres_data volume (accounts, contacts, templates and campaigns), the redis_data volume (job queues), and the stable values in the Environment editor: JWT_SECRET signs sessions and DB_PASSWORD is applied only when the database is first created. Keep the admin password and the AWS secret private.

Backups in xCloud

What survives a restart?

Contacts, templates and campaigns survive an xCloud Restart; QA checked this by restarting the app and reading them back.

Can a sent campaign be deleted?

No. A campaign that has been sent cannot be deleted; that is upstream behaviour.

Does xCloud automatically back up or update Plunk?

No. The template pins Plunk 0.16.0 by immutable digest; new installations use the pinned release, existing sites are not automatically upgraded. Back up first, read the upstream release notes, then bump the readable tag and digest together on your own schedule. Server-level backups and snapshots are available on every Cloud VPS.

What are the server requirements, and why does this page sell 6 GB?

The template's baseline asks for 1 CPU core, 512 MB of RAM and 10 GB of disk; measured idle use in QA was about 322 MiB. This page sells the 6 GB tier as the entry rung, with real headroom above that baseline.

Is xCloud officially partnered with Plunk?

No. No official partnership or endorsement between xCloud and the Plunk project has been verified. This is a deployment and server-management option for the open-source Plunk project.

Can I cancel anytime?

Yes. There is no lock-in — cancel any time. Hosting is billed monthly and charged for what you actually use, so when you delete the server the unused balance is refunded to your account, less up to 10% in payment-processing fees.