Live data from Hacker News

Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

mailtrain.org

81–90 of 94 posts

Re: Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

#81

Does anyone know of an open source Mandrill clone, preferably self-hosted? Finding someone to do newsletters or simply doing via traditional mailing-list software is pretty easy, but finding an alternative for Mandrill is a bit harder. We have maybe ten different email templates, in 7 different language. Mandrill makes that sort of easy, but their reason decision to require a Mailchimp account (which we don't need) h…

We looked down this path, but ultimately just didn't want to be responsible for SMTP servers.

Now we're with Sparkpost, the rate was actually a touch cheaper (by maybe a few hundred a month on a several thousand dollar bill). There are plenty of features they don't have (or don't have working correctly when we tried):

* Css inlining, we opted for doing this ourselves after trying theirs.

* Account sending limits. With mandrill this was managed based on our usage, with Sparkpost, it needs to be manually adjusted through support (hint: you also need to monitor this, they won't warn you if you near limits).

* Tagging of emails is different, less searchable but generally its better in some ways and worse in others.

Re: Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

#82
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Justin I have known your project for a very long time now. Have you ever considered offering it as a SaaS ? Why not?

Gaggle Mail is a good SaaS group email provider http://gaggle.email/ Disclosure: I'm a dev on this.

Good to see someone solving this! I used fiesta.cc with a couple groups years ago, and then it shut down. I've thought about building a clone, but could never prove a reliable customer base. I look forward to trying it out!

Re: Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

#83

I am the phpList community manager. Anyone used phpList before? We're Open Source (AGPL specifically). We offer phpList as a hosted service on phpList.com. It's the same code (AGPL) but we deal with deliverability, updates etc. Our clients range from 300 mails a month (free) to high volume senders on VPS with millions of subscribers and mails :)

Yes I did, as self-hosted and for very low volume. Thank you for being part of this project. However, I stopped using it because of user-experience issues. Interface was not clear and efficient enough, especially when working with templates. Last point, design seemed a bit outdated.

Re: Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

#84

Does anyone know of an open source Mandrill clone, preferably self-hosted? Finding someone to do newsletters or simply doing via traditional mailing-list software is pretty easy, but finding an alternative for Mandrill is a bit harder. We have maybe ten different email templates, in 7 different language. Mandrill makes that sort of easy, but their reason decision to require a Mailchimp account (which we don't need) h…

We're building a self-hosted service similar to Mandrill for bulk and transactional email on https://highrisehq.com. Mandrill was the only service that offered unlimited sub-accounts each with their own reputation and quota. We relied on that to offer bulk email to our customers, and since there’s no good alternative we need to build it in-house. In addition to sub-accounts & quota management, we needed open+click analytics, templates, and a fast RPC api. We also don’t want an email provider going dark on us again, so it’ll support sending from a pool of email providers. Mailgun is the one we’re using first (it’s been great so far) then likely SES. 
We’re going to open source it at some point. It’s written in Go with a Postgres backend so deployment is straight forward — should be able to get decent mileage off a single Heroku dyno. I look forward to sharing more soon!

Re: Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

#85

Does anyone know of an open source Mandrill clone, preferably self-hosted? Finding someone to do newsletters or simply doing via traditional mailing-list software is pretty easy, but finding an alternative for Mandrill is a bit harder. We have maybe ten different email templates, in 7 different language. Mandrill makes that sort of easy, but their reason decision to require a Mailchimp account (which we don't need) h…

We're building a self-hosted service similar to Mandrill for bulk and transactional email on https://highrisehq.com . Mandrill was the only service that offered unlimited sub-accounts each with their own reputation and quota. We relied on that to offer bulk email to our customers, and since there’s no good alternative we need to build it in-house. In addition to sub-accounts & quota management, we needed open+click a…

This sounds amazing, and addresses a key use case we've had. Looking forward to seeing the repo one day.

Re: Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

#86

Another alternative: SendGrid recently released a much less expensive product [1] which shares most features with MailChimp. Contact storage costs $20 per month for a typical list of 20,000 subscribers (for comparison, storing the same number of contacts at MailChimp would be $150/mo). We handle deliverability issues ourselves, so you won't have to maintain the reputation of a self-hosted solution. If you have any qu…

I love SendGrid, Mailgun, etc. but they are not replacements for marketing-friendly ESPs. Marketing ESPs need easy UIs for email composition, segmenting, workflows, database modifications, reporting, etc.

Check out https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns - you're talking about the perfect use case for the new marketing tool.

Re: Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love SendGrid, Mailgun, etc. but they are not replacements for marketing-friendly ESPs. Marketing ESPs need easy UIs for email composition, segmenting, workflows, database modifications, reporting, etc.

Check out https://sendgrid.com/marketing_campaigns - you're talking about the perfect use case for the new marketing tool.

Thanks. I was about to go with customer.io for a new client project but I'll have to check this out first.

Re: Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

#88
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mailwizz is active developed and the UI is going to change at some point too ;)

Hey man, thanks for Mailwizz, I'm loving it. I believe you should invest in marketing, it's really hard to find about your product in the first place. All your competitors are weak, but they do seem to do better marketing.

Thank you, i agree with you on this one, will def. do something about this ;)

Re: Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI: You can always check someone's profile and see if they have info listed, more efficient and cuts down on extraneous comments and waiting on replies.

indeed. ;) will drop you a line. cheers

Looking forward to hearing from you - my contact information is listed in my profile.
Post reply on HN