Guide
Sending without a dollar card
Lekalao is paid in your currency, by Mobile Money. The sending is another matter: it is billed by the provider you bring, in theirs. Here are the ways in we know, what each costs in time, and what we cannot do for you.
Free up to 1,000 subscribers, no card. Paid plans: 14 days to try.
Two bills, two currencies
You pay Lekalao for the platform: in CFA francs, naira, shillings, euros or dollars, by Mobile Money, card or transfer. You pay your provider for the sending, on their terms and in their currency.
Lekalao does not resell sending, so it cannot pay your provider for you. That is the other side of taking no margin on your volume.
Four ways in
- A free plan to start.
- Brevo has a free plan of 300 e-mails a day, and says it asks for no card; it reviews a new account before letting it send. Lekalao sends through Brevo with an API key. Enough for a first list and to learn; a larger one needs a paid plan, on Brevo’s terms.
- A relay you already pay for.
- Many web hosts include an SMTP server with the hosting you pay locally. Lekalao sends through any SMTP server. Ask for its hourly limit before a campaign — shared hosting often sets it low — and give it to the mailer: Lekalao keeps to it.
- Your own server.
- Postfix, Postal or KumoMTA on a machine of yours, connected over SMTP. Lekalao signs what leaves with a DKIM key for your domain. Its address must be clean and its reverse DNS set, and a new address starts small: the warm-up grows the volume over twelve days.
- A card that pays in dollars.
- Most providers bill in dollars, by card. Some banks issue cards that pay in dollars from an account in CFA francs or naira. Whether a provider accepts a given card is its own decision: try it before you build on it.
How long each one takes
- Brevo, free plan
- once Brevo has reviewed the account
- Amazon SES, out of the sandbox
- a first answer within 96 hours
- Your web host’s SMTP
- the day you have its settings
- Your own server
- a few days, then twelve days of warm-up
- SPF, DKIM, DMARC on your domain
- as fast as your DNS updates
Lekalao checks the records of your domain every night, and a provider that has never passed its test e-mail cannot send a campaign.
Amazon SES, without illusions
SES is among the cheapest per e-mail: $0.10 per thousand at its published rate. But a new account starts in a sandbox, where it sends only to addresses you verified, 200 a day at most.
Leaving it is a request read by a person. AWS says it gives a first answer within 96 hours, may ask for more, and grants the request only when it can. Say what you send, how people subscribed, and how bounces and complaints are handled — Lekalao handles those two for you, and that is worth writing down.
Ask on the first day, not the day before the launch.
What we do not do
Lekalao does not send from an account of its own on your behalf, and does not pay a provider for you. If that ever changes, this page will be the first to say so.
If you are one of the first teams, we set up the provider with you.
Read on 31 October 2026 on Amazon’s and Brevo’s own pages. Providers change their terms: check theirs before you choose.
Start free. Try the rest for 14 days.
Free up to 1,000 subscribers, with no card. Starter, Growth and Pro can be tried for 14 days, with no card either; if you do not pay, your team simply goes back to Free on day 15.
A question first? Write to hello@lekalao.com