What you get
- Mailing lists & subscribers with custom fields, tags, and saved segments
- Drag-and-drop email composerbuilt on Umbraco’s Block Grid with email-safe blocks
- Campaign lifecyclewith draft → review → schedule → send states and role-based approvals
- Send pipeline with throttling, retries, and automatic bounce / complaint handling
- Digest campaigns that auto-assemble a newsletter from recent Umbraco content on a schedule
- Open & click tracking with live analytics and a subscriber-level activity timeline
- Five ESPs supported— SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, Resend, and SMTP fallback
- GDPR-ready— double opt-in, one-click unsubscribe, consent audit trail, right-to-erasure
Integration with Forms
The Newsletter module shares a licence, a section, a database, and an audit trail with the Forms module. Any CampaignCanvas form can become a signup form by adding the Add to Mailing List workflow, and the anti-spam, rate-limit, and GDPR protections from the Forms side apply automatically to newsletter signups.
Ways to collect subscribers
| Method | When to use it |
|---|---|
| Subscribe to List field | Quick email-only signup on a regular form. Drop the field on any form, pick a list, done. |
| Inline signup view component | Drop-in widget for pages or partials — no form builder needed. Optional name fields, CAPTCHA, and AJAX response. |
| Add to Mailing List workflow | Richest option. Use any form builder fields (name, consent, custom fields) and attach the workflow to tie them to a list. |
| Mailing list checkboxes | Opt a visitor into several lists from one form — one checkbox per list, tied in via the Add to Mailing List workflow. |
Licence gating
The Newsletter module is a separately-licensed feature. Editing and reading always works so you can browse, clean up, and export subscriber data without a valid licence — but any send operation (campaign send, digest run, confirmation email, unsubscribe confirmation) is gated on the Newsletter feature flag.
When the licence is missing or invalid:
- The Newsletter section stays visible and navigable
- Mailing lists, subscribers, and campaigns can all be read and edited
- Transitions to
Sendingare blocked — the UI shows a banner prompting you to activate a licence - Localhost and development environments automatically get a trial so you can test the full send pipeline locally
See the licence portal to activate or upgrade.
Core concepts
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Subscriber | A person identified by email address. Global to the workspace — one row per address, shared across all lists. |
| Mailing list | A named audience. Subscribers are attached to lists via memberships with per-list state (subscribed / pending / unsubscribed). |
| Segment | A saved filter (by tag, custom field, list membership, language, etc.) that resolves to a subscriber set at send time. |
| Campaign | A single email send. Has content, a recipient audience (lists and/or segments), and a send state machine. |
| Digest campaign | A recurring campaign that auto-assembles content from Umbraco on a schedule and sends when enough new items are available. |
| Template | A reusable campaign blueprint — subject, preheader, content blocks, theme, and UTM — used to seed new drafts. |
| Theme | A reusable brand kit (colours, fonts, logo, outer HTML shell) applied to a campaign at render time. |
| Suppression | A global do-not-mail list. Addresses enter automatically after hard bounces or complaints and can also be added manually. |
Quick start
- Activate the Newsletter feature— either run on localhost (auto-trial), or enter a Newsletters licence key in the backoffice.
- Configure an email service provider— pick SendGrid, Postmark, Mailgun, Resend, or SMTP fallback in
appsettings.json. See the Providers page for details. - Create a mailing list under CampaignCanvas → Mailing Lists. Decide whether it requires double opt-in.
- Add subscribers— manually, via CSV import, or by hooking up a signup form.
- Compose a campaign with the drag-and-drop Block Grid editor, pick your audience, and hit send.
- Watch the dashboard— open rates, click rates, and subscriber growth all update in real time.
- Configure lists and subscribers: Mailing Lists
- Set up compliant signups: Compliance and Signup
- Compose and send your first campaign: Campaigns
- Automate recurring sends with Digest campaigns
- Measure the impact: Tracking & analytics