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Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

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Re: Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

#31

Post by knadh »

johnchristopher wrote: post #29
knadh wrote: post #11

Author here. To give some context on why listmonk was built, at work (regulated financial business), we have to deliver e-mails, mostly important updates, to 1.5mn+ customers regularly. We used phpList for the longest time and then tried MailTrain and Sendy before finally deciding to reinvent the wheel after running into a number of issues, of which, a few important ones are mentioned below. - Performance. Unreasonab…

> - Segmentation. Often, we have to rapidly segment users by custom attributes and conditions and relay an update to them. listmonk supports SQL expressions to segment users on their attributes that are defined as arbitrary JSON maps (thanks to Postgres JSONB type). So, is it connected to some kind of CRM ?

Out of the box, it isn't, but it's straight forward to do it with APIs (for individual entries and for bulk CSV imports) or with direct inserts to the DB (the table schema is simple). In production, we've made a small daemon that listens to a PubSub queue published by our CRM to keep the mailing list up to date.

About attributes, every subscriber entry in listmonk can take a JSON map of attributes that can be queried.

Re: Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

#32

Post by knadh »

jonifico wrote: post #28
knadh wrote: post #11

Author here. To give some context on why listmonk was built, at work (regulated financial business), we have to deliver e-mails, mostly important updates, to 1.5mn+ customers regularly. We used phpList for the longest time and then tried MailTrain and Sendy before finally deciding to reinvent the wheel after running into a number of issues, of which, a few important ones are mentioned below. - Performance. Unreasonab…

Amazing work, congratulations! I'm gonna give it a try, we have been using Phplist so far (we send like 500k daily emails). Are you guys using returnpath' senderscore or a similar certification to send that amount of emails ?

Thank you. We aren't. We just have dedicated IPs and proper DKIM and SPF records.

Re: Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

#33

Post by rolltiide »

0xffff2 wrote: post #20
rolltiide wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's legitimate e-mail, I don't think it's much of an issue. starting to sound hopelessly naive you deliver email updates to fund LPs that aren't unilaterally marking you as spam for no reason

>that aren't unilaterally marking you as spam for no reason This sounds hopelessly naive to me. If the receiver marks it as spam, it's spam. By definition. Work harder to only send emails to people who want them.

> If the receiver marks it as spam, it's spam. By definition.

but that shouldn't effect the deliverability to everyone else, but thats a reality which has its own problem and has its own countermeasures.

when people asked OP if they had a solution to this, they hand waived it away. all closed sourced mailing list clients have solutions for this.

but anyway since somehow it is 2019 and people want to act like its 2009 on this matter I'll just skip ahead to echo the productive answer someone else left:

this could probably be run through Amazon SES with their DKIM settings

Re: Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

#34

Post by MisterBastahrd »

cat199 wrote: post #24
0xffff2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that aren't unilaterally marking you as spam for no reason This sounds hopelessly naive to me. If the receiver marks it as spam, it's spam. By definition. Work harder to only send emails to people who want them.

Really? Spam is unsolicited commercial email. if I sign up on a site, click the 'yes email me' button, and then mark the email as spam when I get it, I am the one acting incorrectly, not the sender who is literally doing what I instructed them to do..

Sure, but the end user is going to do whatever is most convenient for them.

Unsubscribing from email lists can be cumbersome and non-uniform, which is usually why people just hit that spam button instead. It always provides them a uniform interface and largely achieves the same goal from their perspective.

Re: Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

#35

Post by onli »

OJFord wrote: post #19
onli wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it? That's not part of the license. Besides, that an email is produced by an AGPL software does not make it covered by the AGPL. That should be exactly the same legal situation as with open source text editors.

That's what I'm trying to understand, it was an honest question. So, who does need to be provided with a copy? Just the 'administrators', the people using it to send email? What about if I modify it and repackage it as monklist or whatever, and charge people to use it. I must give them the source code for listmonk too, and, since another requirement is same licence, the source for my modified version? i.e. monklist c…

Okay. IANAL, but software licenses I had to research a lot, so let's see whether I can explain it and if my understanding is correct.

Maybe look at https://tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-affero-general-public-lice... first. The AGPL GNU page https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html also covers questions and has an explanation. I think the summary covers it already:

> It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version.

So the license requirement is for the users of the software directly. They need to get access to the modified source.

> So, who does need to be provided with a copy? Just the 'administrators', the people using it to send email?

If that is a closed group said group. If it's the public the public. So in your case yes, the administrators.

You could make the argument (it has been tried before with editors) that the email is part of listmonk, but reasonably it would not stand. At first look there is more weight behind the argument that accessing the email is a form of network access between the user and listmonk, vie email, but I don't think that would hold up either, given the implications with regards of what is a software and what is a product.

> What about if I modify it and repackage it as monklist or whatever, and charge people to use it. I must give them the source code for listmonk too, and, since another requirement is same licence, the source for my modified version?

I don't think that you have to give the original source of listmonk, but you have to give users - including those who access the software on a server, like in a SaaS scenario - access to the source code of monklist, yes.

> i.e. monklist couldn't be closed source, but myapp that happens to use listmonk unmodified for sending emails can be?

There it gets murky. There are different understandings of when a software with different parts becomes one thing and thus the AGPL and GPL apply, and afaik that's not very well tested in court. That said, yes, if myapp just uses listmonk and is not a modified version of listmonk and listmonk is not an integral component of it, then myapp is not influenced at all by the AGPL. AGPL talks about "modified versions of software", myapp would be no such thing.

Re: Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

#37

Post by OJFord »

onli wrote: post #35
OJFord wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I'm trying to understand, it was an honest question. So, who does need to be provided with a copy? Just the 'administrators', the people using it to send email? What about if I modify it and repackage it as monklist or whatever, and charge people to use it. I must give them the source code for listmonk too, and, since another requirement is same licence, the source for my modified version? i.e. monklist c…

Okay. IANAL, but software licenses I had to research a lot, so let's see whether I can explain it and if my understanding is correct. Maybe look at https://tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-affero-general-public-lice... first. The AGPL GNU page https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html also covers questions and has an explanation. I think the summary covers it already: > It requires the operator of a network server to pr…

Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

#38

Post by good-idea »

This looks great and is maybe exactly what I'm looking for! I have a couple questions:

I don't see anything in the docs about supplying an unsubscribe link. I don't see an endpoint in the API that could be used with an anchor tag in the footer of the email. Is this something that is supported?

And: my client is concerned about email/spam regulations, which I'm very unfamiliar with. Is there anything I'd need to look out for in this regard?

Re: Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

#39

Post by webbie917 »

cat199 wrote: post #24
0xffff2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that aren't unilaterally marking you as spam for no reason This sounds hopelessly naive to me. If the receiver marks it as spam, it's spam. By definition. Work harder to only send emails to people who want them.

Really? Spam is unsolicited commercial email. if I sign up on a site, click the 'yes email me' button, and then mark the email as spam when I get it, I am the one acting incorrectly, not the sender who is literally doing what I instructed them to do..

Actually, cold emails (without permission) aren't spam. What makes an email spam is: 1) misleading subject line 2) misleading message 3) lack of simple (not requiring login or extra steps) unsubscribe link, and a couple other factors.

People forget subscribing and hit "Spam", which has an impact on the sender reputation and affects future deliverability for that sender.

Re: Show HN: Listmonk – Fast self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager

#40

Post by webbie917 »

massaman_yams wrote: post #17
hemancuso wrote: post #2

Projects like this seem like a great idea, but deliverability seems like a big concern that is hard to measure unless you have a reasonable amount of experience. What are best practices for using/selecting an ESP if you were to use a project like this and want to ensure reasonable deliverability?

The other comments here don't quite tell the whole story; "I never had any problems" is anecdotal - there are plenty of legitimate senders who do run into deliverability issues. Using an ESP will generally simplify the amount of work necessary to achieve good delivery, but due to the complexities of domain reputation and fingerprinting, very occasionally they can also be the cause of delivery problems. General guidel…

I agree with all your suggestions, but want to expand on a couple points: 1) The shared IP pool at cheaper providers like Sendgrid, SES, and MailGun will have lower reputation versus a platform with a guarded (via cost, but also on-boarding mechanisms) platforms like MailChimp, simply due to customer pool and quality of emails sent. I have been hearing from my (BigMailer.io) customers about having deliverability issues with platforms like SendInBlue and MailGun frequently in the last year or so. 2) If the bulk sending practices are healthy and engagement is good, then it's better to use the same sender/domain for both bulk and transactional email.

I would recommend to NOT send different email types from different providers, like use SendGrid or SES for transactional emails and then some other platform for marketing emails, especially using the same sender domain. That's because email header signature and tracking links will be different and email box providers like Gmail can find it suspicious and send emails to Spam. And then there is the issue of processing and syncing bounces/unsubscribes/complaints data.

Keeping all email campaign types in a single platform allows for centralized processing of bounces/unsubscribes/complaints date and protects future campaign engagement + sender reputation.

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