Mailtrain

Mailtrain is a self-hosted newsletter platform that handles subscriber management, campaign creation, automation, and analytics without per-subscriber fees. You install it on your own server, connect it to an SMTP service (Amazon SES, Postmark, your own mail server), and manage subscribers, campaigns, and automations from a web UI.

It handles list management, segmentation, A/B testing, templates, and basic automation triggers. The UI is functional, not beautiful, but it gets the job done. Import/export subscribers via CSV, track opens and clicks, manage bounces.

Version 2 added a drag-and-drop template editor and better automation workflows. It uses MySQL/MariaDB for storage and can handle large lists (100K+ subscribers) with proper infrastructure.

The catch: development has slowed significantly; commits are sporadic and the community is small. The setup isn't trivial: you need Node.js, MySQL, Redis, and an SMTP relay, plus DNS records for DKIM/SPF. If something breaks, you're debugging it yourself. And the UI feels dated compared to modern alternatives. Listmonk has largely overtaken Mailtrain as the go-to self-hosted newsletter tool. It's faster, simpler to deploy (single binary + Postgres), and more actively maintained.