Mailtrain

Mailtrain is a self hosted newsletter application built on Node.js (v5+) and MySQL (v5.5+ or MariaDB).

Features

Mailtrain supports subscriber list management, list segmentation, custom fields, email templates, large CSV list import files, etc.

Subscribe to Mailtrain Newsletter here (uses Mailtrain obviously)

Cons

• Alpha-grade software. Might or might not work as expected
• Awful code base, needs refactoring
• No tests
• No documentation

Requirements

• Nodejs v5+
• MySQL v5.5 or MariaDB
• Redis (optional, used for session storage only)

Installation

1. Download and unpack Mailtrain sources
2. Run npm install in the Mailtrain folder to install required dependencies
3. Copy config/default.toml as config/production.toml and update MySQL settings in it
4. Import SQL tables by running mysql -u MYSQL_USER -p MYSQL_DB < setup/mailtrain.sql
5. Run the server NODE_ENV=production npm start
6. Open http://localhost:3000/
7. Authenticate as admin:test
8. Navigate to http://localhost:3000/settings and update service configuration
9. Navigate to http://localhost:3000/users/account and update user information and password

Using environment variables

Some servers expose custom port and hostname options through environment variables. To support these, create a new configuration file config/local.js:

module.exports = {
    www: {
        port: process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_PORT,
        host: process.env.OPENSHIFT_NODEJS_IP
    }
};

Mailtrain uses node-config for configuration management and thus the config files are loaded in the following order:

1. default.toml
2. {NODE_ENV}.toml (eg. development.toml or production.toml)
3. local.js

Running behind Nginx proxy

Edit mailtrain.nginx (update server_name directive) and copy it to /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

Running as an Upstart service in Ubuntu 14.04

Edit mailtrain.conf (update application folder) and copy it to /etc/init

Bounce handling

Mailtrain uses webhooks integration to detect bounces and spam complaints. Currently supported webhooks are:

• AWS SES – create a SNS topic for complaints and bounces and use http://domain/webhooks/aws as the subscriber URL for these topics
• SparkPost – use http://domain/webhooks/sparkpost as the webhook URL for bounces and complaints
• SendGrid – use http://domain/webhooks/sendgrid as the webhook URL for bounces and complaints
• Mailgun – use http://domain/webhooks/mailgun as the webhook URL for bounces and complaints

License

GPL-V3.0