Emailing Blog Subscribers from Ghost?

Developer help
1

Hey everyone,

A bit of a basic question, but is there any functionality in Ghost that supports emailing the people that subscribe to our Ghost blog? Or does it simply collect the emails, and out team would need to add an integration to email the list?

Thanks,
Micaela

2

There is no way to email people from Ghost in a clean install.
You can use Zapier or webhooks to connect your ghost subscribers to an email platform or even a contact group in gmail.

It looks like we’ll be able to customize the confirmation/subscription email in the future.

3

Hey @mjhamm :wave:

Ghost 3.1.0 was released earlier today, with support for emailing subscribers upon publishing a post! It seems like docs for this should come shortly :crossed_fingers:

4 Likes
4

I updated the Ghost on Local Development Site

Noticed some new Features and Options

  • Mailgun Setup from MEMBERS (BETA) dashboard
  • Subscribed to newsletter Option on Members Profile list
  • Unsubscribe http://localhost:2368/unsubscribe/ URL Field
  • Email Preview’s (I saw in changelog but can’t find in the dashboard)

Wating for Official Announcement and Setup docs :heart:

Hope they cover this too in upcoming Updates

Optimization - Stripe API Script Enable/Disable option

5

@mskian more details will come in the docs, but regarding:

Email Preview’s (I saw in changelog but can’t find in the dashboard)

You can find email preview options in post settings menu around here:
Screenshot%20from%202019-11-28%2014-48-02
Screenshot%20from%202019-11-28%2014-48-46

2 Likes
6

Ah I am got it now Great

but I am using Amazon SES for outgoing Emails

it does not support other email providers?

Example - if I setup mailgun via members beta dashboard which email client will work? SES or Mailgun?

7

it does not support other email providers?

It does not. At this point we integrate deeply with Mailgun only :)

if I setup mailgun via members beta dashboard which email client will work? SES or Mailgun?

Mailgun will be used for all your member emails and SES for any other emails going out from Ghost ;)

1 Like
8

so both are working at there point

for forget password / account related email SES will work and
for members/subscription/newsletter Mailgun will work right?

PS: include SES option will give more power :rocket:

9

Can these be integrated at some point, i.e. if we setup Amazon SES as mail delivery channel this to be used for member emails as well?

10

if we setup Amazon SES as mail delivery channel this to be used for member emails as well?

There are long-term future plans to have bulk email adapters but nothing short term.

The integration with Mailgun is not going to be shallow - it will have full stats on deliverability, open rates, click rates, automatic unsubscribe of members that mark newsletters as spam, and so on. Once we have a good idea of how all of that is working then we can look at making a universal API that would allow different adapters to be used but right now we’re focusing our attention so that we can deliver and iterate on the feature quickly. Everything in members is still beta remember ;-)

4 Likes
11

oops I noticed this after using the latest version of Ghost in my production site

  • if we configure amazon SES via config file it will send all admin dashboard related emails like password reset
  • it does not send members related email so we need to configure Mailgun for members email via Members dashboard
  • if we have amazon SES on Config JSON file and Mailgun for members it does not send members email, yes having different email providers will conflict the membership email system if we remove amazon SES wait what now it’s work & send members email

so final fact if you enable membership feature on your ghost site Don’t use two SMPT services
Ghost officially support Mailgun - use Mailgun

12

Thanks, really useful.

  • in Email Settings -> Mailgun API key, I have to enter
    the Private API key or the Public validation key?

  • I have correctly configured mailgun with dns mx records etc, the configuration seems correct, the confirmation email from mailgun has also arrived. But it still gets spam in some addresses

13

Private API Key

14

While I understand the path towards deeper Mailgun integration I feel it’s overcomplicating things a bit (but not sure, not a developer so I cannot really judge).

Looking at the ways other platforms integrate mailing providers (as well as your own config.production.json) it seems it would have been both easier and more flexible to just integrate at API level via API keys with multiple providers like AWS SES or similar (or even use the underlaying email delivery system in the config).

1 Like
15

@dsecareanu bulk-email such as newsletters is a very different beast to transactional email, especially at scale, which is why there is a distinction between the core transactional email setup for password resets etc and a bulk-email provider for newsletters (currently restricted to Mailgun).

so final fact if you enable membership feature on your ghost site Don’t use two SMPT services
Ghost officially support Mailgun - use Mailgun

The two are completely separate, neither config is used with the other in any way. You can safely use your preferred SMTP provider for transactional email in your config.json file and set up Mailgun for your bulk email newsletters.

16

I understand that there are differences between transactional emails and newsletters, but most often the underlying email/smtp architecture works with both (in essence Mailgun is also an SMTP service, very similar to Amazon SMTP service but closer to SES in terms of functionalities).

I just probably see things a bit differently in the sense that I associate newsletter distribution more with an integration with Mailchimp (or TinyLetter, MailJet, SendinBlue, MailerLite or any other newsletter platform that also provides email templating services, i.e. Substack even) rather than Mandrill or Mailgun or AWS SES/SMTP and other similar services.

This is the reason why to me it would make more sense to implement a standard integration with an email newsletter service (MailChimp or other) rather than just with an SMTP provider.

This also comes from the impression that you guys seem to prefer implementing most non core features (comments or contact forms, to name a few that the community considers important for a CMS like Ghost) through integrations with third party providers that do those things better.

But then all this is just about how different people see different features as being core or not. :slight_smile:

1 Like
17

I associate newsletter distribution more with an integration with Mailchimp

Mailgun is both a transactional and newsletter platform, in this case we’re using the newsletter platform which is similar to what Mailchimp offers but with an API that is better suited to Ghost’s use-cases. Mailchimp splits their transactional side of their service into a separate add-on called Mandrill. Perhaps that’s where the confusion is coming from? We’re not using transactional email side of Mailgun for sending the newsletter emails.

1 Like
18

Using Digital Ocean + Mailgun combo (with spf records validated) the emails go to spam folder. Do you know why this happens? I already checked it with 2 blogs with same result.

19

I tested
if we add a different provider on config.json Members email not sending ended with 500 Error but if we add same provider it works well
we need to add from_email for admin related emails?

20

I configured Digital Ocean with Mx records and it was working out of the box. Guess it uses SMTP and piggy backs the email from my blog domain directly. I added the Private API key later too just to be sage.

Guess the Integration is flawless. The only Q is to have how to be safe from the SPAM issue.