this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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I have been trying to setup my own newsletter for ages.

All of the platforms that I researched asked for stupid amounts of money for the services they where offering.

20$/month for 500 subscribers is not fair pricing mailchimp.

So I looked around the web for selfhosted solutions. Finally I found Listmonk, it's a selfhosted newsletter and mailing list manager, written in go and is extremely performant.

So I wrote an article on how to set that up!

I hope this helps some fellow selfhosters!

If you have any feedback please feel free to comment it bellow.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

One thing to address is that if you're sending lots of emails you start to raise concerns about being a spammer. Especially if somebody forgets they signed up for your newsletter and clicks "report as spam". It can be a quick way to get blocked from your mail provider since they can themselves become blocked and they'd rather ban you than deal with that hassle. Just be sure whoever you're sending mail through is okay with you sending "bulk" mail.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

So I'm curious: why does everyone suddenly have newsletters?

There's not a single selfhosted forum/subreddit/community/magazine/whatever that's NOT full of lots and lots and lots of people who suddenly have the need for a newsletter.

Like who is subscribing, and to what, and like... why?

[–] 4rkal 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's all about getting visitors to come back to a website. People consume so much content every single day, so it's extremely easy for your website to be forgotten in all of the madness.

By having a newsletter you get recurring visitors, not just fly by clicks.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So basically an RSS feed for people who don't understand RSS feeds.

[–] 4rkal 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Scary in what context? For the user? For you as the host? Something else I’m not thinking of?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

As a sarcastic joke comment. Whoosh?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Some news sources sell suvscrptions via newsletter.

Personally I find it quite nice, its similar to RSS and has high quality authors.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I get it as a means to generate revenue, but I wouldn't ever want to be responsible for mail deliverability if I'm getting paid for the email.

I'd just outsource that shit to SES, or mailgun, or mailchimp, or brevo, or whoeverthefuck and not worry about it.

The host it yourself thing just struck me as a weird thing that suddenly was EVERYWHERE I was looking and I couldn't figure out what in the world the use case was.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

I agree with you, I don't want the trouble and just use mailgun free tier.

That said, I just need password reset emails for my IAM solution.

I imagine some just want to try, under the desire to avoid having their email data misused for data collection / ai training

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Amazon SES is dirt cheap, billed per-send, you just need to bring the Everything Else with something like Mailcoach or Sendy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Oh my god.

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/knadh/listmonk/master/

We absolutely need to stop this. Sure, I saw the disclaimer, but we need to end the normalization of running ANY black-box crap off the net. "curl|sh" needs to be laughed into exile for all our safety.

The easiest thing needs to be the right thing -- common security saying

Then it's

vim

As if that's actually user-friendly or a positive experience instead of the worst thing to ever survive from the last century, crawling along on its rotting flesh and drooling on the pavement like some toxic residue from the vietnam war that it is.

In what asylum do you have the people willing to suffer vi and who also need a curl|sh ? Are they lazy or just misled as noobs into thinking vi is the only editor out the--

You guys, I just realized how vi masochists actually reproduce. It's like zombies, guys, eating brains until the victim raises up another zombie.

And that curl|sh -- does it invite supply-chain exploits? Ohhh, you bet it does! Best black-box script ever! Use this as a test for your security people -- if they gauge this as a threat from within another threat, they pass. But, honestly, had it not been for the horrible spelling, I wouldn't have thought to check further. \shrug. Mineshafts and canaries I guess.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

How are the alternatives any better? Download a DEB that executes arbitrary code, signed with some .asc that's sitting in the same webserver? Download an EXE?

Your comment is so rambley that I can't understand whether you're criticizing the distribution method or the packaging. Both of those are very different in terms of attack surface, if you're talking about supply chain attacks.

[–] markstos 2 points 2 months ago

Ghost has a lot of these features as well as being a blog and handling paid subscriptions and donations.