OpenCampaign

OpenCampaign

Self-hosted email marketing: accounts, campaigns, audiences, automations, signup forms, open/click tracking and AI-assisted campaign review — in one Next.js app backed by SQLite.

Features

• Accounts — multi-account with per-account workspaces: each account gets its own audience, campaigns, templates, automations, settings and AI keys. Sessions are DB-backed httpOnly cookies; passwords hashed with scrypt.
• Campaigns — HTML editor with live preview, personalization tokens ({{first_name}}, {{company}}, …), test sends, and a guided send flow with simulation mode.
• Audience — contacts with statuses (subscribed / pending / unsubscribed / cleaned), tags, search and filters, CSV import/export.
• Automations — signup- and tag-triggered emails with optional delay. A 60-second in-app heartbeat processes jobs; an external cron can drive it too.
• Templates — reusable HTML layouts with per-template preview, start campaigns from any of them.
• Reports — open/click rates per campaign and per contact, 30-day engagement timeline. No demo numbers: every metric reflects real activity on your account.
• Signup forms — embeddable form snippet with honeypot spam protection, optional double opt-in. The snippet carries your account id so signups land in the right workspace.
• Tracking & compliance — open pixel, click redirects, one-click unsubscribe page; an unsubscribe footer is appended automatically when missing.
• AI review — pre-send analysis of every campaign (see below).

No demo data ships with the app — workspaces start empty, so dashboards and reports only ever show your real numbers.

Environment variables

Variable	Purpose
DATABASE_URL	SQLite file path, e.g. file:./db/custom.db
APP_URL	Public base URL used in tracking links, pixels and unsubscribe URLs

Everything else (SMTP credentials, AI keys) is configured in the app under Settings and stored in the database — no extra env vars needed.

AI analysis

Open any campaign → AI review → Analyze campaign. Four interchangeable engines, all returning the same score / strengths / issues / suggestions / subject-ideas report. Keys are stored per account and can be tested from Settings → AI analysis:

Provider	Notes
Local	Built-in heuristics: subject quality, spam trigger words, caps/punctuation, image-to-text balance, link count, CTA verbs, personalization, unsubscribe compliance. No key, nothing leaves the server.
OpenRouter	Uses your key and picks a free model automatically — fetches the live model list, filters for $0/$0 pricing, prefers strong known free models, retries down the list. Caches for an hour.
OpenAI	Chat Completions with JSON-mode output (gpt-4o-mini).
PublikHQ	Posts to a PublikHQ-compatible AI endpoint.

PublikHQ endpoint contract

POST {publikhqUrl}/api/v1/ai/analyze
Authorization: Bearer {apiKey}
{ "campaign": { "name", "subject", "previewText", "content", "fromName", "fromEmail" } }

Responses are parsed flexibly: a JSON object with score / summary / strengths / issues / suggestions / subjectIdeas, the same wrapped in { "data": … }, a { "analysis" | "content" | "text": "…" } string (JSON or prose), or raw prose — which is then merged with local scoring. When OpenCampaign itself is deployed on publikhq.com, set the endpoint to your own domain for fully self-hosted AI.

Sending email

• Simulation mode (default): records recipients, tokens and tracking without delivering — safe for testing the whole pipeline.
• Live SMTP: fill in Settings → Delivery (host, port, user, password, TLS). Campaigns and automations then send real email through nodemailer. Test sends always render the exact final email (personalization + tracking + unsubscribe).

Automations processing

The dashboard pings POST /api/automations/process every 60 s. For server-side processing independent of the UI, add a cron:

* * * * * curl -fsS -X POST https://your-domain.com/api/automations/process > /dev/null

Deploying to publikhq.com

Option A — Docker on a VPS (recommended)

1. Point DNS: an A record for publikhq.com (and www) at your server's IP.
2. On the server:

git clone <your-repo-url> opencampaign && cd opencampaign
APP_URL=https://publikhq.com docker compose up -d --build

Schema migration and server start happen automatically; SQLite persists in the opencampaign-data volume.

3. TLS + reverse proxy with Caddy:

# /etc/caddy/Caddyfile
publikhq.com, www.publikhq.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:3000
}

sudo systemctl reload caddy

Caddy issues and renews certificates automatically. (Nginx + certbot works the same way: proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000; with standard upgrade headers.)

Option B — Node process (no Docker)

git clone <your-repo-url> opencampaign && cd opencampaign
npm install
cp .env.example .env          # DATABASE_URL=file:/var/lib/opencampaign/app.db  APP_URL=https://publikhq.com
npm run db:push
npm run build
npx pm2 start "npm run start:node" --name opencampaign
pm2 save && pm2 startup

Then reverse-proxy port 3000 as above.

Option C — any Node hosting platform

Set these on the platform dashboard:

Setting	Value
Build command	npm install && npm run build
Start command	npm run start:node
Env vars	DATABASE_URL (persistent disk path!), APP_URL=https://publikhq.com, NODE_ENV=production

SQLite needs a persistent disk mounted at the path in DATABASE_URL. On ephemeral filesystems use a hosted Postgres/MySQL by swapping the Prisma datasource in prisma/schema.prisma.

Post-deploy checklist

• APP_URL set to https://publikhq.com (tracking links in emails must be absolute and public).
• Open /settings: sender defaults, SMTP credentials, AI provider + keys.
• Add the automations cron from the section above.
• Send yourself a test campaign and click through the unsubscribe link.

Project structure

src/
  app/
    page.tsx                  # auth gate + single-page app shell (sidebar + views)
    api/                      # REST API + auth + tracking endpoints
      auth/{signup,signin,signout,me,password}
      campaigns/[id]/{send,test,analyze}
      contacts/{import,export}
      automations/process     # cron-friendly job processor
      track/{open,click,unsubscribe}/[token]
      signup                  # public form endpoint (routes by account id)
  components/oc/              # feature views (auth, dashboard, campaigns, audience, …)
  lib/
    ai/                       # local engine + openrouter + openai + publikhq
    auth.ts                   # scrypt hashing, sessions, per-account settings
    mail.ts                   # personalization, tracking rewrite, SMTP
    automations.ts            # enqueue + process due jobs
    csv.ts, oc-client.ts, db.ts
prisma/
  schema.prisma               # data model (User, Session, Campaign, Contact, …)

No seed script — accounts start empty on purpose.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.