Picoletter

Picoletter is a newsletter app for independent bloggers and writers. It uses SES to send emails. With their really generous free tier, you could run your newsletter on a $5 VM on DigitalOcean or Hetzner virtually for free.

More Screenshots

This is beta software, you can use it in production if you're feeling like going on a adventure, meanwhile here are the list of things that work and things that are pending

Features

• Run multiple newsletters from the same app
• Subscription, confirmation & unsubscription flow
• Schedule newsletter for sending
• Custom sending domains with DNS verification
• Handle bounces and complaints to ensure good reputation
• Embeddable forms for subscription
• Public archive
• Subscriber reminders
• Subscriber labeling and categorization
• Email analytics tracking (opens, clicks)

Pending features

• Subscriber import & export

Stack

• Ruby on Rails
• PostgreSQL
• SolidQueue (background jobs)
• AWS SES (email delivery)
• Tailwind CSS (styling)
• Hotwire/Turbo (dynamic interactions)

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Ruby 3.1+
• PostgreSQL
• AWS SES account

Installation

1. Clone the repository
2. Install dependencies:

   bundle install

3. Set up the database:

   bundle exec rails db:setup

4. Start the server:

   overmind start Procfile.dev

Testing

Run the test suite:

bundle exec rspec

Run linting:

bundle exec rubocop