Deploy and Host SendPortal with Railway

SendPortal is an open‑source, self‑hosted email marketing app (built on Laravel) for creating lists, tags, templates and sending campaigns via your own email provider. It is lightweight, database‑backed, and supports multiple ESPs (Postmark, SES, Mailgun, SendGrid, Mailjet, SMTP).

About Hosting SendPortal

This template provisions a ready‑to‑run container that serves SendPortal (via FrankenPHP/Caddy), a PostgreSQL database for application data, and Redis for queues/caching. Laravel Horizon is enabled to process SendPortal queues (sendportal-message-dispatch, sendportal-webhook-process) and the Laravel scheduler runs every minute to progress campaigns and housekeeping tasks. A health endpoint is exposed at /health for Railway checks.

Common Use Cases

Self‑host newsletters with your own ESP billing (no per‑subscriber fees).
Run marketing campaigns and drip sequences using your existing infrastructure.
Keep data in your own database with team‑member invites and roles.
Control tracking (opens/clicks) via provider webhooks handled by SendPortal.

Dependencies for SendPortal Hosting

PostgreSQL: primary application database with persistent storage.
Redis: queues and cache; required by Horizon.
Queue workers: Horizon or queue:work consuming sendportal-message-dispatch and sendportal-webhook-process.
Scheduler: php artisan schedule:run executed every minute inside the container.
Email Service Provider (ESP): Postmark, SES, Mailgun, SendGrid, Mailjet, or SMTP account.
Verified sender domain at the ESP for deliverability and link tracking.
Application configuration: APP_URL, APP_KEY, APP_ENV, QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis, etc.
Health check: /health endpoint returning OK for Railway.

Important: App‑level mail settings (MAIL_*) are used only for user management emails (signup, invite, password reset). For campaign emails you must create an Email Service inside the SendPortal UI (left menu → Email Services) and select your ESP (SES, Postmark, Mailgun, SendGrid, Mailjet, SMTP).

Deployment Dependencies

PostgreSQL
Redis

One‑click deploy (what happens)

The container boots, publishes vendor assets, runs DB migrations.
Horizon is started to process queued jobs via Redis.
A cron inside the container triggers php artisan schedule:run every minute.
The app exposes /health returning OK for Railway health checks.

Environment variables (required / recommended)

The values below are examples. Replace them with your own credentials.

Core app

Variable	Required	Example	Notes
`APP_NAME`	✅	`SendPortal`	Display name used in emails/UI.
`APP_ENV`	✅	`production`	`production` recommended.
`APP_KEY`	✅	(random 32‑char)	Laravel encryption key. Generate once and keep stable.
`APP_URL`	✅	`https://your-app.up.railway.app`	Used to build links (unsubscribe, verification, webhooks).
`APP_DEBUG`	⛔	`false`	Keep `false` in production.
`SESSION_DRIVER`	✅	`redis`	Matches the bundled Redis.
`CACHE_DRIVER`	✅	`redis`	—
`QUEUE_CONNECTION`	✅	`redis`	Required for Horizon/queues.
`SESSION_LIFETIME`	➖	`120`	Minutes.
`APP_TIMEZONE`	➖	`Europe/Paris`	Requires `config/app.php: 'timezone' => env('APP_TIMEZONE','UTC')`.

Database (PostgreSQL)

Variable	Required	Example
`DB_CONNECTION`	✅	`pgsql`
`DB_HOST`	✅	Provided by Railway Postgres plugin
`DB_PORT`	✅	`5432`
`DB_DATABASE`	✅	Provided by Railway Postgres plugin
`DB_USERNAME`	✅	Provided by Railway Postgres plugin
`DB_PASSWORD`	✅	Provided by Railway Postgres plugin

Redis

Variable	Required	Example
`REDIS_HOST`	✅	Provided by Railway Redis plugin
`REDIS_PORT`	✅	Provided by Railway Redis plugin
`REDIS_PASSWORD`	✅	Provided by Railway Redis plugin

Mail (used only for user‑management emails)

Variable	Required	Example	Description
`MAIL_MAILER`	✅	`smtp`	App mailer for login/register/reset. Options: `smtp`, `sendmail`, `ses`, `mailgun`, `postmark`.
`MAIL_HOST`	✅ (if smtp)	`pro2.mail.ovh.net`	SMTP server host.
`MAIL_PORT`	✅ (if smtp)	`587`	Typically `587` (TLS), `465` (SSL), or `25`.
`MAIL_USERNAME`	✅ (if smtp)	`[email protected]`	SMTP username / full email.
`MAIL_PASSWORD`	✅ (if smtp)	`your-secure-password`	SMTP password.
`MAIL_ENCRYPTION`	➖	`tls`	`tls`, `ssl`, or `null`.
`MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS`	✅	`[email protected]`	From address for system emails.
`MAIL_FROM_NAME`	✅	`${APP_NAME}`	From name for system emails.

Provider‑specific (if not using SMTP):

Postmark: set MAIL_MAILER=postmark and POSTMARK_TOKEN=your-token
Mailgun: set MAIL_MAILER=mailgun and provide MAILGUN_DOMAIN, MAILGUN_SECRET, optional MAILGUN_ENDPOINT
AWS SES: set MAIL_MAILER=ses and provide AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, AWS_DEFAULT_REGION

SendGrid/Mailjet are available as Email Services inside SendPortal for campaign sending. They do not use the MAIL_* envs – configure them in SendPortal → Email Services.

Health check (Railway)

Set the health check path to:

/health

Expected status: 200 OK with body OK.

How campaigns are dispatched

You create a campaign, pick recipients (list/tag), and Send / Queue it.
The job enters sendportal-message-dispatch (visible in /horizon).
Horizon workers pull from Redis and send through your Email Service (configured in the UI).
Webhooks (provider dependent) are handled by jobs in sendportal-webhook-process.

If you do not see jobs in Horizon, verify:

QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis and Redis credentials are correct.
Your Email Service exists and sends a successful test email.
The scheduler is running (container includes cron to run schedule:run each minute).

Why Deploy SendPortal on Railway?

Railway is a singular platform to deploy your infrastructure stack. Railway will host your infrastructure so you do not have to deal with configuration, while allowing you to vertically and horizontally scale it. By deploying SendPortal on Railway, you are one step closer to supporting a complete full‑stack application with minimal burden. Host your servers, databases, and more on Railway.