Mailtrain

Mailtrain is a self hosted newsletter application built on Node.js (v10+) and MySQL (v8+) or MariaDB (v10+).

Features

Subscriber lists management
List segmentation
Custom fields
Email templates (including MJML-based templates)
Custom reports
Automation (triggered and RSS campaigns)
Multiple users with granular user permissions and flexible sharing
Hierarchical namespaces for enterprise-level situations

Hardware Requirements

1 vCPU
2048 MB RAM

Quick Start

Preparation

Mailtrain creates three URL endpoints, which are referred to as "trusted", "sandbox" and "public". This allows Mailtrain to guarantee security and avoid XSS attacks in the multi-user settings. The function of these three endpoints is as follows:

trusted - This is the main endpoint for the UI that a logged-in user uses to manage lists, send campaigns, etc.
sandbox - This is an endpoint not directly visible to a user. It is used to host WYSIWYG template editors.
public - This is an endpoint for subscribers. It is used to host subscription management forms, files and archive.

The recommended deployment of Mailtrain would use 3 DNS entries that all points to the same IP address. For example as follows:

lists.example.com - public endpoint (A record lists under example.com domain)
mailtrain.example.com - trusted endpoint (CNAME record mailtrain under example.com domain that points to lists)
sbox.mailtrain.example.com - sandbox endpoint (CNAME record sbox.mailtrain under example.com domain that points to lists)

Installation on fresh CentOS 7 (public website secured by SSL)

This will setup a publicly accessible Mailtrain instance. All endpoints (trusted, sandbox, public) will provide both HTTP (on port 80) and HTTPS (on port 443). The HTTP ports just issue HTTP redirect to their HTTPS counterparts.

The script below will also acquire a valid certificate from Let's Encrypt. If you are hosting Mailtrain on AWS or some other cloud provider, make sure that before running the installation script you allow inbound connection to ports 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS).

Note, that this will automatically accept the Let's Encrypt's Terms of Service. Thus, by running this script below, you agree with the Let's Encrypt's Terms of Service (https://letsencrypt.org/documents/LE-SA-v1.2-November-15-2017.pdf).

Login as root. (I had some problems running npm as root on CentOS 7 on AWS. This seems to be fixed by the seemingly extraneous su within sudo.)
```
sudo su -
```
Install git
```
yum install -y git
```

Download Mailtrain using git to the /opt/mailtrain directory

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/Mailtrain-org/mailtrain.git
cd mailtrain
git checkout development

Run the installation script. Replace the urls and your email address with the correct values. NOTE that running this script you agree Let's Encrypt's conditions.
```
sh setup/install-centos7-https.sh mailtrain.example.com sbox.mailtrain.example.com lists.example.com admin@example.com
```
Start Mailtrain and enable to be started by default when your server starts.
```
systemctl start mailtrain
systemctl enable mailtrain
```
Open the trusted endpoint (like https://mailtrain.example.com)
Authenticate as admin:test
Update your password under admin/Account
Update your settings under Administration/Global Settings.
If you intend to sign your email by DKIM, set the DKIM key and DKIM selector under Administration/Send Configurations.

Installation on fresh CentOS 7 (local installation)

This will setup a locally accessible Mailtrain instance (primarily for development and testing). All endpoints (trusted, sandbox, public) will provide only HTTP as follows:

http://localhost:3000 - trusted endpoint
http://localhost:3003 - sandbox endpoint
http://localhost:3004 - public endpoint

Login as root. (I had some problems running npm as root on CentOS 7 on AWS. This seems to be fixed by the seemingly extraneous su within sudo.)
```
sudo su -
```
Install git
```
yum install -y git
```

Download Mailtrain using git to the /opt/mailtrain directory

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/Mailtrain-org/mailtrain.git
cd mailtrain
git checkout development

Run the installation script. Replace the urls and your email address with the correct values. NOTE that running this script you agree Let's Encrypt's conditions.
```
sh setup/install-centos7-local.sh
```
Start Mailtrain and enable to be started by default when your server starts.
```
systemctl start mailtrain
systemctl enable mailtrain
```
Open the trusted endpoint http://localhost:3000
Authenticate as admin:test

Quick Start - Deploy with Docker

Requirements:

Steps:

Depending on how you have configured your system and Docker you may need to prepend the commands below with sudo.

Download Mailtrain files using git: git clone git://github.com/Mailtrain-org/mailtrain.git (or download zipped repo) and open Mailtrain folder cd mailtrain
Copy the file docker-compose.override.yml.tmpl to docker-compose.override.yml and modify it if you need to.
Bring up the stack with: docker-compose up -d
Start: docker-compose start
Open http://localhost:3000/ (change the host name localhost to the name of the host where you are deploying the system).
Authenticate as user admin with password test
Navigate to http://localhost:3000/settings and update service configuration.
Navigate to http://localhost:3000/users/account and update user information and password.

License

GPL-V3.0

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