I recently started exploring Node.js then some platforms for blogging and stuff. Hopping around, I found Ghost to be pretty simple, efficient and light-weight compared to WordPress.
But there was an issue, see I found the newsletter feature very good and very intrigued to use it but Ghost has hardcoded Mailgun integration for sending newsletter to users via emails. It's okay but the pricing is not.
There are a lot of posts on their support forum about this but the team is pretty adamant on using Mailgun only for the foreseeable future. They claim there are no ties between the companies while some users had some other speculations.
Anyway, since I wanted to use the newsletter thingy to explore, I had to build a solution of my own (thanks to Ghost supporting integrations) which worked as just fine. I mean there were a few limitations, but anyway gets the main job done. Its key features are:
- Emails delivery & email opens.
- Send email using your email credentials.
- Use multiple emails to split userbase & send newsletter.
In case you are planning to move to Ghost & intend to start a newsletter, you can try this project of mine, its completely open sourced: https://github.com/ItzNotABug/ghosler.