Kill the Newsletter!

Convert email newsletters into Atom feeds

Support

Patreon (recurring) · PayPal (one-time)

Watch the Code Review!

Usage

Hosted Version

The simplest way to use Kill the Newsletter! is with the hosted version at https://kill-the-newsletter.com.

The service is and will always be free; you don’t have to create an account; and I don’t collect your data or share it with anyone.

Self-Hosted Version

You may run Kill the Newsletter! on your own servers if you wish. This guarantees the utmost privacy, and it’s also a fun system adminstration project. Kill the Newsletter! strikes a good balance between being relatively easy to self-host and being non-trivial at the same time, because it is a web application as well as an email server.

Send test emails manually from the command line with the following:

cat << "EOF" > /tmp/example-email.txt
From: Publisher <publisher@example.com>
To: ru9rmeebswmcy7wx@localhost
Subject: Test email with HTML
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2021 11:30:40

<p>Some HTML</p>
EOF

curl smtp://localhost:2525 --mail-from publisher@example.com --mail-rcpt ru9rmeebswmcy7wx@localhost --upload-file /tmp/example-email.txt

Deploy Your Own Instance (Self-Host)

1. Create accounts on GitHub, Namecheap, and DigitalOcean.

2. Fork this repository.

3. Create a deployment SSH key pair:

   $ ssh-keygen
   

   Private key (id_rsa): Add to your fork under Settings > Secrets as a new secret called SSH_PRIVATE_KEY.

   Public key (id_rsa.pub): Add to your fork under Settings > Deploy keys and to your DigitalOcean account under Account > Security > SSH keys.

4. Buy a domain on Namecheap.

5. Create a DigitalOcean droplet:

   Image	Ubuntu 18.04.3 (LTS) x64
   Plan	Starter Standard $5/mo
   Additional options	Monitoring
   Authentication	Your Deployment SSH Key
   Hostname	<YOUR DOMAIN, FOR EXAMPLE, “kill-the-newsletter.com”>
   Backups	Enable

6. Assign the new droplet a Firewall:

   Name	<YOUR DOMAIN, FOR EXAMPLE, “kill-the-newsletter.com”>
   Inbound Rules	ICMP
   	SSH	22
   	Custom	25 (SMTP)
   	HTTP	80
   	HTTPS	443

7. Assign the new droplet a Floating IP.

8. Configure the DNS in Namecheap:

   Type	Host	Value
   A	@	<FLOATING IP>
   CNAME	www	<YOUR DOMAIN, FOR EXAMPLE, “kill-the-newsletter.com”>
   MX	@	<YOUR DOMAIN, FOR EXAMPLE, “kill-the-newsletter.com”>

9. Configure the deployment on package.json, particularly under the following keys:

   • apps.env.BASE_URL.
   • apps.env.EMAIL_DOMAIN.
   • apps.env.ISSUE_REPORT.
   • deploy.production.host.
   • deploy.production.repo.

10. Configure Caddy, the reverse proxy, on Caddyfile.

11. Setup the server:

    $ ssh-add
    $ npm run deploy:setup
    

12. Migrate the existing feeds (if any):

    $ ssh-add
    $ ssh -A root@<YOUR DOMAIN, FOR EXAMPLE, “kill-the-newsletter.com”>
    root@<YOUR DOMAIN, FOR EXAMPLE, “kill-the-newsletter.com”> $ rsync -av <path-to-previous-feeds> /root/kill-the-newsletter.com/current/static/feeds/
    root@<YOUR DOMAIN, FOR EXAMPLE, “kill-the-newsletter.com”> $ rsync -av <path-to-previous-alternate> /root/kill-the-newsletter.com/current/static/alternate/
    

13. Push to your fork, which will trigger the GitHub Action that deploys the code and starts the server.

Run Locally

Install Node.js and run:

$ npm install
$ npm run develop

The web server will be running at http://localhost:8000 and the email server at smtp://localhost:2525.

Run Tests

Install Node.js and run:

$ npm install-test

Docker Support (Experimental)

Install Docker and run:

$ docker build -t kill-the-newsletter .
$ docker run kill-the-newsletter

The web server will be running at http://localhost:8000 and the email server at smtp://localhost:2525.

For use in production, start with the example Dockerfile.