Deploy Listmonk

Deploy and Host Listmonk on Railway

Listmonk is a self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager built as a single Go binary on PostgreSQL. It owns the lifecycle a hosted platform normally rents you: subscribers with arbitrary JSON attributes, opt-in lists, segmentation by raw SQL, campaign authoring, bounce processing, analytics, a public archive, and a REST API for all of it. Anyone whose Mailchimp bill scales with a list they already own ends up here — Listmonk's cost does not move when that list grows from five thousand people to half a million.

Self-host Listmonk on Railway and this template gives you the working shape rather than a bare container. Three services deploy together: Listmonk on a public URL with a volume for uploaded media, a managed PostgreSQL database holding subscribers, campaigns, settings and sessions, and Mailpit as the mail service Listmonk relays through privately. The source repository, gridalpha/listmonk-railway, wraps the official listmonk/listmonk image with a boot script that installs the schema, gives Listmonk a scoped non-superuser database role, and writes the public URL into the settings table — Listmonk reads those rows after the environment, so otherwise every link it mails would point at localhost.

Getting Started with Listmonk on Railway

Deploying asks for a username and password for the super admin. They are read once, while the schema is created — with no admin credentials Listmonk serves an open "create the first user" page instead, which on a public URL hands the instance to whoever finds it first. Once the deploy is green, sign in at /admin; a sample list, subscriber and draft campaign are waiting.

Create your own list under Lists → New, choosing Public and Double opt-in. Open /subscription/form in a private window and subscribe as a reader would. The confirmation email lands in Mailpit within seconds: open the Mailpit URL from your Railway project, sign in with its basic-auth credentials, and click the link inside. That subscriber flipping to Confirmed proves the database, the public pages and the mail path all work in one pass. Then write a campaign under Campaigns → Create new, point it at the list, and send. Before mailing real people, replace the Mailpit target under Settings → SMTP with your own provider — until you do, mail is captured rather than delivered, which is the safe default rather than a bug.

About Hosting Listmonk

Listmonk splits the two halves hosted platforms sell as one: it manages who you send to and what you send, but does not run mail servers. Point it at a relay — SES, Postmark, Resend, Mailgun — and per-message cost becomes that relay's raw rate.

• Segmentation by SQL — any expression valid in a WHERE clause targets a campaign, including queries against subscriber JSON attributes.
• Double opt-in with one-click unsubscribe — confirmation flows, unsubscribe pages, List-Unsubscribe headers and blocklisting, on by default.
• Bounce processing — webhooks for SES, SendGrid and Postmark, or a POP3 mailbox, with thresholds that blocklist automatically.
• Archive, API and roles — publish campaigns to a browsable archive with RSS; per-list permissions, API tokens, optional OIDC, CSV import at scale.

PostgreSQL is the only durable store that matters — subscribers, campaigns, analytics, settings and sessions all live there, which is why a redeploy never signs you out.

Why Deploy Listmonk on Railway

Railway removes the parts of self-hosting a mailing list that are pure overhead:

• Managed PostgreSQL with backups, no database administration
• Private networking between Listmonk, Mailpit and the database
• HTTPS and a public domain automatically, custom domains supported
• Persistent volumes, health checks and automatic restarts

Common Use Cases

• Product and release newsletters — announce changes to users who opted in, segmented by plan or signup date held in subscriber attributes.
• Independent publishing — run a newsletter with a public archive and RSS, with no per-subscriber platform fee.
• Lifecycle mail via API — the REST API sends templated one-off messages, so an application can drive onboarding sequences.

Dependencies for Listmonk

• Listmonk — gridalpha/listmonk-railway, a boot script layered on listmonk/listmonk:latest (v6.2.0). Serves the dashboard, public pages, archive and API on port 9000, and runs the campaign sender in-process.
• PostgreSQL — Railway managed postgres-ssl (PostgreSQL 18). Required; pgcrypto is created automatically.
• Mailpit — axllent/mailpit:latest (v1.30.7). Accepts SMTP privately and relays upstream once configured.

Environment Variables Reference

LISTMONK_SMTP_* and LISTMONK_FROM_EMAIL reach the settings table only while it holds the shipped default, so later edits under Settings survive every redeploy.

Deployment Dependencies

• Runtime: Go single binary on Alpine, PostgreSQL 12 or newer
• GitHub: knadh/listmonk · axllent/mailpit
• Docs: listmonk.app/docs

Hardware Requirements for Self-Hosting Listmonk

Raise app.concurrency and app.message_rate under Settings → Performance, keeping both under your relay's rate limit.

Self-Hosting Listmonk

The quickest local run uses Docker Compose:

curl -LO https://github.com/knadh/listmonk/raw/master/docker-compose.yml
LISTMONK_ADMIN_USER=admin LISTMONK_ADMIN_PASSWORD=changemeplease docker compose up -d

Listmonk is then on http://localhost:9000. Configuration is environment-driven when you pass an empty config path — dots become double underscores, so db.host is LISTMONK_db__host. Against an existing database:

docker run -p 9000:9000 -v listmonk-uploads:/listmonk/uploads \
  -e LISTMONK_app__address=0.0.0.0:9000 \
  -e LISTMONK_db__host=postgres.internal -e LISTMONK_db__user=listmonk \
  -e LISTMONK_db__password=secret -e LISTMONK_db__database=listmonk \
  -e LISTMONK_ADMIN_USER=admin -e LISTMONK_ADMIN_PASSWORD=changemeplease \
  listmonk/listmonk:latest \
  sh -c "./listmonk --install --idempotent --yes --config '' && ./listmonk --config ''"

How Much Does Listmonk Cost to Self-Host?

Listmonk is free and open source under AGPL-3.0, with no paid tier, subscriber cap or feature gating. The only bills are Railway usage for the three services and whatever your SMTP relay charges per message — commonly a few cents per thousand. Against per-subscriber pricing the saving grows with the list: a hundred thousand contacts cost the same to host as a thousand.

FAQ

What is Listmonk?

A free, open-source, self-hosted newsletter and mailing list manager written in Go and backed by PostgreSQL. It handles subscribers, lists, campaigns, opt-in, bounces and analytics, relaying mail through an SMTP provider you supply.

What does this Railway template deploy?

Listmonk on a public URL with a media volume, a managed PostgreSQL database, and Mailpit as the SMTP target and web inbox. The schema is installed on first boot and a super admin created from the credentials you supply.

Why does the template include a database and a mail service?

PostgreSQL is required — Listmonk stores subscribers, campaigns, settings and sessions there and will not start without it. Mailpit is there because Listmonk cannot complete a double opt-in with nowhere to send the confirmation: with no mail target, the very first public subscription fails.

How do I send real email instead of capturing it in self-hosted Listmonk?

Either point Settings → SMTP at your provider's credentials, or set MP_SMTP_RELAY_HOST, MP_SMTP_RELAY_USERNAME, MP_SMTP_RELAY_PASSWORD and MP_SMTP_RELAY_ALL=true on Mailpit. Railway allows outbound SMTP on Pro and above; on lower plans use a provider reachable over HTTPS. On a custom domain, also update Settings → General → Root URL — that value is what goes into unsubscribe and archive links.

Can I run more than one Listmonk instance on Railway?

Run one. Listmonk has a passive mode where extra instances serve traffic without processing campaigns, but a settings change reloads only the instance you made it on, so a second keeps stale SMTP settings until redeployed by hand.