About Bento

Bento is for operators who take email seriously.

I wrote the first line of code for Bento in a little cafe in Tokyo. It was supposed to be a tiny side project. I wanted to learn Ruby on Rails. I also wanted a tool that treated inbox placement and automation like the job, not a bullet point.

git commit -am "setting up rails"

I kept seeing the same pattern. Teams would write great emails, build a clean funnel, and then get punished by the unsexy stuff. Spam placement. Authentication. A brittle automation builder. Pricing that jumps because your list grew, even if you are not mailing most of it.

If you care about outcomes, that stuff is the work. It is the difference between \"email works\" and \"email is a headache.\" Bento is built for the first one.

1. Deliverability, defaults that protect your reputation and help you land in the inbox
2. Flexibility, automation that can handle real journeys without becoming a second job
3. Speed, a product that stays fast and email that goes out when it should
4. Value, simple per-user pricing with unlimited emails

Then it got real. People started trusting Bento with emails that actually matter. Onboarding. Renewals. Receipts. Password resets. The stuff you do not get a second chance at.

When software starts working, pressure shows up. The pressure to hire fast and manage a big org. The pressure to chase growth for its own sake. The pressure to turn support into a script. I do not want Bento to become that kind of company.

Bento is staying a tiny business on purpose.

• Support is not outsourced. You get a real answer from someone who can actually fix it.
• No ticket ping pong. If something is confusing or broken, we tighten it up.
• No pricing games. Simple per-user pricing with unlimited emails on every plan.
• No roadmap theater. We ship what customers need, even when it is not flashy.
• We keep it small so we can keep caring about the details.

Most days, it is still just me. I write code, I answer support, and I sweat the deliverability details. When I need extra hands, I bring in people I trust. I want Bento to stay small enough that you can still reach a human who knows your account and your problem.

If you want to support Bento, use it. Push it. Tell me what is missing. Tell me what is confusing. If Bento earns your trust, tell a friend who is tired of email platforms that do not feel accountable.

If you are a customer, thank you. You are keeping small, high-craft software alive. If you are not yet, I would love the chance to earn it.