I’m creating a friend’s website with ghost. Let’s be honnest : he’s cheap. But I definitely get it. Especially when you see the cost and restrinctions of hosts and mail services. But that’s another debate. That was to say : he wants to use the newletter functionnality but as free as it can get. We’re using a VPS for ghost. Some will say that it’s not enough but no website and no newsletter are not enough to reach people so when we face the limits of such a setup… then I guess we’ll move on. For now, portal-related mails are working trough our tiny tiny mail plan that’s included with the domain. I was successful setting the stmp in ghost’s config. But newsletter are not working : ghost keeps asking us to setup mailgun. And anyways, I don’t think that our domain provider will allow a newsletter use, even if it’s between 0 and 2000 people (which is big, compared to what we actually have).
That’s why I want to use postfix. It itself quick to install… but I’m lost in configuration. There are several tutorials explaining the process and even two of them are explaining how to set it up for Ghost. They all miss a paragraph about DNS. How am I supposed to set the DNS ? Do I need to set the DNS ? do I need to use the main domain ? a subdomain like “stmp.domain.com” or “mail.domain.com” ?
For now, I can’t even send a mail from the shell comand.
I know that it sounds more like a question related to postfix rather than to ghost but I’m not trying “to make postfix work”. I’m trying “to make postfix work with ghost” and on the same server. So i’m rather looking for someone who’s been able to make postfix work for ghost more than someone who simply knows how to work with postfix.
You can’t use Postfix for newsletter delivery; only transactional mail. Moreover, when configuring Mailgun for newsletters, you’re not sending the emails from your server since this uses an API. I’d recommend using Mailgun; it’ll most likely be free to use for your list, and can also handle transactional email.
This depends entirely on what you intend to do. Your easiest route is Mailgun:
Create a free account (sign up for the trial, and then downgrade–posts in the forum about this)
Configure bulk email in Mailgun; you’ll be guided through the DNS settings
Configure transactional email in Mailgun
Create an A (and AAAA) address for your hostname (this differs to the WWW address)
Most likely, you will need to set up a relay in Postfix (you may find that this is the only way to send from your host.) I use Postfix with a Mailgun for this, using StartTLS. I’m happy to share the steps, but for Ubuntu 22.04 only, so this may not work for you.
Depending on what you decide to do, I can walk you through the steps needed to configure Postfix with Mailgun.
Hey ! that’s a really interesting article ! Thanks
But I don’t think that mailgun has a free tier. It has a free trial, as far I can tell. I mean, that’s what the tiers page seems to indicate.
I use Mailgun as an SMTP relay with Postfix for transactional email. For newsletters, I use Ghost with the Mailgun API.
You can’t use Ghost and Postfix (SMTP) to send bulk email.
And, to be clear, Mailgun is free for small lists of up to 1,000 emails, and $1 per 1,000 thereafter. Simply start the trial, and then downgrade to the Flex pay as you go model.
They’ve quit advertising the flex plan, but several folks on the forum have reported getting it on request, so that appears to be an option still, as mjw says.
Unless I’m misquoting, the entire point of Ghost requiring Mailgun for newsletters is because you shouldn’t (or can’t, or will have a really bad time if you) use a transactional sending client for bulk email. Ghost uses the Mailgun API to send newsletters, and the mail client configured in your config for transactional emails. This also allows for more personalized newsletters (e.g. Hey {first_name},)
@GregFdz: As @mjw and @Cathy_Sarisky have mentioned, if you’re on the free tier, and you send out 1 newsletter a week to 2,000 people, that’s 8,000 emails being sent for $8. If that’s too much, it would probably be better to use a different ESP (as in, don’t use Ghost’s built-in newsletter functionality, but use the other parts of it). If you really want Ghost to support more bulk email providers than Mailgun, there’s an open call for help: Support sending bulk email from other providers - #5 by Hannah
Oops - MJW points out that Postfix is a sendmail drop-in, I was thinking of Courier.
And I see that MJW has confirmed that Ghost doesn’t just use a sendmail compatible multi-address bcc, but is tied into a Mailgun API - kind of limits your options.
Can you modify MX records with your domain provider? What hosting are you using? Clouds like AWS will require reverse-domain lookup to be allowed so your emails look legit.