About Tris:
Why We Built This

The email marketing industry is a racket. Here's how I found out.

I sent 50,000 emails and infrastructure cost me $5. Traditional platforms wanted $75/month for the same thing.

That's when I realized the entire email marketing industry is built on information asymmetry. They charge you for "contacts" because you don't know that sending emails costs ten cents per thousand.

I built Tris because I believe product creators deserve to know the real cost—and keep the savings.

The Awakening

Three years ago, I was building a side project. Just another product creator with an idea and a mailing list. I signed up for one of the big email platforms. You know the ones. $35/month to start. $75/month once I hit 2,000 contacts. $150/month at 5,000.

I paid because everyone pays. That's just what email costs, right?

Then I got curious. What does it actually cost to send an email?

I started digging. Turned out, the underlying infrastructure providers charge about $0.10 per 1,000 emails. Not $0.10 per email. Per thousand.

Let me do the math for you:

•I was sending 10,000 emails a month
•That cost the platform $1 in infrastructure
•They were charging me $75
•That's a 7,500% markup

Not a typo. Seventy-five hundred percent.

This wasn't SaaS pricing. This was a protection racket.

The Industry's Dirty Secret

Here's what they don't want you to know:

Email infrastructure is cheap. Absurdly cheap.

•Sending 10,000 emails costs about $1
•Storing 10,000 contacts costs about $0.03 per month
•Domain authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is free—it's just DNS records

So why do platforms charge $350/month for 10,000 contacts?

Because they can. Because most product creators don't know what things actually cost. Because they've built an entire industry on information asymmetry.

Charge for "contacts"

You're not buying infrastructure—you're buying access to your own customer list. See how that works?

Make it painful to leave

Your sending reputation? That's theirs. Your domain's IP history? Gone if you migrate.

Weaponize complexity

Want to self-host? Just learn DKIM, SPF, DMARC, IP warming, bounce handling... Most people try for a weekend and give up.

Extract maximum rent

The result: You pay the markup tax or you become a DevOps engineer. Those are your options.

I Got Tired of Choosing

So I built the third option.

Tris is what happens when you refuse to accept the false choice between getting ripped off or spending six months learning email infrastructure.

The founding principles:

1Radical cost transparency

We tell you exactly what infrastructure costs. $0.10 per 1,000 emails. That's it. Our pricing is that number plus the smallest margin that lets us keep the lights on. No games. No contact-based pricing. No hiding the real cost behind "plans" and "tiers."

2Ownership over rental

When you hit Professional tier, you get a dedicated IP address. Not shared. Not pooled. Yours. Your sending reputation builds on infrastructure you control. Leave Tris tomorrow? Take it with you. Your domain configuration, your IP history, your deliverability reputation. We're not in the hostage business.

3Zero DevOps required

Email infrastructure is complex. It should be. But complexity shouldn't be weaponized to extract rent from product creators. We built Tris to handle SPF, DKIM, DMARC, IP warming, bounce handling, and deliverability optimization. You verify your domain. We do the rest.

4Software that sets you free

Most platforms are designed to lock you in. Expensive to leave. Painful to migrate. Reputation held hostage. We built Tris to liberate you from that. Export everything. Download all your data. Take your configuration with you. No termination fees. No downgrade penalties. No guilt trips. Stay because we're good, not because leaving hurts.

What We're Building

Tris is ownership-first email infrastructure.

Not another email marketing platform. Not enterprise sales software. Not VC-funded growth-at-all-costs nonsense.

We're building for:

Product creators who want to own their infrastructure
Indie hackers who know the value of a dollar
Sovereignty-minded builders who refuse to rent what they could own
People who've been burned by contact-based pricing
Anyone who looked at their email bill and thought "this can't be right"

We're NOT building for:

Enterprise teams that need account managers
People who want someone to blame when things go wrong
Companies that need hand-holding through every feature
Anyone who values convenience over ownership

The Philosophy

Software should empower users, not imprison them.

That's it. That's the whole philosophy.

Most SaaS companies optimize for lock-in. High switching costs. Proprietary formats. Vendor dependency. They call it "moats." We call it hostage-taking.

We compete on features and price, not lock-in. If we're not good enough to keep you, we don't deserve to.

The best customer is one who chooses to be here. Not one who's trapped by switching costs.

What We're NOT

Let me be clear about what Tris isn't:

We're not VC-funded.

No board demanding 10x growth next quarter. No pressure to pivot to enterprise or raise prices to hit valuations. We're profitable at small scale, and we plan to stay that way.

We're not enterprise sales.

No demos. No "schedule a call to see pricing." No account managers. The pricing is on the website. The features do what they say. You can try it for free. That's the whole sales process.

We're not hiding costs.

If infrastructure prices go up, we'll tell you. If we need to raise margins to hire support, we'll explain why. No surprise fees. No "contact our sales team" for the real price.

We're not everyone's solution.

If you need blame-shifting, hand-holding, or enterprise compliance theater, traditional platforms have entire teams for that. We built Tris for people who value ownership over comfort.

The Graduation Path

Most email platforms trap you in tiers designed to extract maximum revenue. We built a graduation path designed to give you maximum control.

FREE ($0/month)

1,000 emails/month

Full AI agent access. See if your idea has legs before spending a dollar.

STARTER ($0/month)

10,000 emails/month

Still free. Because early traction shouldn't cost rent money.

CREATOR ($20/month)

100,000 emails/month

Advanced segmentation. API access. Your side project just became a business.

PROFESSIONAL

Sovereignty

The sovereignty moment. Your own dedicated IP address. This is where you stop renting infrastructure and start owning it. Your sending reputation belongs to you. Full API control. Custom SMTP. Build exactly the email system you need. Leave anytime and take your deliverability history with you.

AGENCY

Custom pricing

Multi-tenant architecture. White-label options. Priority support. For when you're running email for more than just yourself.

Every tier is designed to graduate you to the next level. Not trap you at the current one.

The AI Agents Difference

Here's where Tris gets unfair.

We built 8 specialized AI agents trained on 10 million high-performing emails. Not generic AI slapped onto forms. Actual specialized agents that write like you, test like scientists, and optimize like they're trying to save your business.

Writing subject lines at 2am? The agents do that. Figuring out send-time optimization? They've got it. A/B testing copy variations? Already running.

Traditional platforms charge $200-500/month for AI features.

We include them at every tier. Even the free one.

Why? Because running AI inference costs us $0.001 per generation. It costs nothing to give away. Charging for it would be pure margin extraction.

We charge for what costs us money: sending emails and provisioning dedicated IPs. Everything else is included because it should be.

The Real Costs

Let's talk about what things actually cost. Because that's the whole point of Tris.

Infrastructure provider costs:

•$0.10 per 1,000 emails sent
•$10/month for dedicated IP
•$0.03/month to store 10,000 contacts
•$0 for domain authentication
•$0 for AI inference at our scale

What Tris charges:

•$0.10 per 1,000 emails + smallest viable margin
•$99/month for Professional tier (includes dedicated IP, unlimited team, full platform)
•$0 for contact storage (it costs us nothing)
•$0 for AI agents (marginal cost is negligible)

What traditional platforms charge:

•$350/month for 10,000 contacts
•$400-600/month for dedicated IP
•$10-30 per team member per month
•$200-500/month for AI features

One of these is honest. You can probably guess which one.

The Manifesto

Information asymmetry is violence.

When you charge someone $350 for something that costs $1, you're not providing value. You're exploiting ignorance.

The entire email marketing industry is built on this exploitation:

•Charge for contacts, not sends (hides the real cost)
•Make migration painful (creates switching costs)
•Weaponize complexity (forces dependency)
•Lock up reputation (holds customers hostage)

This isn't innovation. It's a protection racket.

Tris exists to end this.

We believe product creators deserve to know:

What infrastructure actually costs
How sending reputation works
Why dedicated IPs matter
What you're really paying for

We believe software should:

Empower users, not imprison them
Compete on value, not lock-in
Charge honest margins, not maximum extraction
Set customers free, not hold them hostage

We believe the future of software is ownership, not rental.

And we're building it. One dedicated IP at a time.

Who This Is For

Tris isn't for everyone. And that's by design.

You'll love Tris if you:

Value ownership over convenience
Want to know what things actually cost
Believe in sovereignty-minded infrastructure
Got tired of being held hostage by contact-based pricing
Looked at your email bill and thought "there has to be a better way"
Want to graduate from renting infrastructure to owning it

You'll hate Tris if you:

Need someone to blame when things go wrong
Want hand-holding through every feature
Value enterprise sales calls and account managers
Think complexity should be someone else's problem
Prefer not knowing what things cost

If you're in the first group, welcome. You're our people.

If you're in the second group, traditional platforms have entire teams waiting for your call.

The Roadmap

We're not selling you vaporware. Tris is live. You can sign up today.

But we're just getting started.

What's built:

Complete email platform (campaigns, contacts, automation)
8 AI agents (subject lines, copy, optimization, timing, segmentation, analysis, testing, personalization)
Domain verification with live DNS checking
Dedicated IP provisioning
Full REST API
Team collaboration (no per-seat fees)
Export everything (contacts, analytics, configuration)

What's coming:

Advanced automation workflows
Visual email builder improvements
More AI agent capabilities
White-label options for agencies
Enhanced deliverability analytics

We ship weekly. We listen to customers. We don't have a 5-year roadmap because we don't pretend to know what you'll need in 2031.

We build what users ask for. Then we ship it.

The Founding Team

Just me right now. One founder. One codebase. One mission.

No co-founders. No employees. No board of directors telling me to pivot to enterprise.

Just a product creator who got tired of paying the email tax and decided to build something better.

Will this scale? I don't know. Probably not to VC-scale. But it'll scale to profitable, and that's enough.

Will I hire eventually? Maybe. When it makes sense. When I find people who believe in ownership over extraction.

For now, it's lean. It's focused. It's profitable at small scale.

And it's yours if you want it.

👋

Six

Founder, Tris

six@trytris.com

I read every email

Join Us

Tris is live. The waitlist is open. We're onboarding product creators one at a time.

Real people. Real projects. Zero VC-funded growth-at-all-costs nonsense.

If you're ready to:

Pay what emails actually cost
Own your sending reputation
Graduate to a dedicated IP when you're ready
Never get held hostage by contact-based pricing again

Then join the waitlist.

If you have questions: