Can I code this? Marketing Email Automation With Behavior Triggers
Shares this register's email-marketing buildable core. Automation that reacts to what a subscriber actually does — opened this, clicked that — is a small workflow engine, the real depth ActiveCampaign sells.
Borderline
Effort: a weekendRunning cost: $0/mo to start
Why CanICodeThis says Borderline
Subscriber lists with tags and a broadcast composer share this register's email-marketing build spec
A fixed, linear drip sequence (join list, wait 3 days, send email) is a scheduled job plus a simple state machine
For straightforward scheduled sequences, this is a real weekend build
The parts that'll cause problems
Branching automation based on subscriber behavior (opened this, clicked that, then do X) needs real event tracking wired into a workflow engine
Deliverability at scale is the same ongoing reputation problem every sender on this register shares
Visual flowchart-style automation builders are real, separate UI engineering beyond the automation logic itself
How I'd build this
frontend
Next.js
database
Supabase
email
Resend
hosting
Vercel
MVP scope
Subscriber lists with tags
A broadcast composer
One linear automation: join list, wait N days, send email
AI agent — with a subscription (Claude Pro/Max, Cursor, etc.)
$0 marginal
AI agent — pay-per-use API, no subscription
$43–$86 one-time
Hosting, once it's running
$0/mo (free tier)
Domain name, if you want your own
~$12/yr
Existing tools solving a similar problem typically run $13–$29/mo — see how they compare below.
The build prompt
Build me an email marketing tool with basic automation: subscriber lists with tags, a broadcast composer, and one automation type — a scheduled sequence sent after a subscriber joins a list, with a delay between each email. Skip behavior-triggered branching for v1.