How Mailement works.

01What Mailement is

Mailement is built for serial entrepreneurs, agency operators, and editorial teams who run more than one newsletter. Where most tools assume one author equals one publication, Mailement assumes one operator manages several brands and gives each brand its own subscribers, sending domain, from-name, visual identity, topics, custom fields, signup forms, API keys, webhooks, and drip series — all from a single login.

Under the hood: PHP 8 + MySQL on Dreamhost; Resend for delivery (default region eu-west-1 to keep European subscribers close to the sender). The composer is a full WYSIWYG built on TipTap with toolbar, slash menu, drag handles, image upload, and a brand-themed live preview. Sends are tracked per-recipient with open/click events and Apple Mail Privacy Protection acknowledged in the open math.

02Create your workspace

Sign up at /signup. You pick a workspace name (your organization), an email, and a password. A default brand is created for you on the spot, and you land in the admin at /admin. From there the sidebar brand switcher will eventually show every brand you create.

Free workspaces include up to 500 subscribers and 1–2 brands, no card on file. You can upgrade later from Settings → Billing without losing any data.

03Brands & sending domain

A brand is the unit subscribers experience. Each brand has its own:

• Identity: name, slug, primary color, logo, body font, heading color, body font size, footer postal address (required for CAN-SPAM compliance).
• Sending domain: a subdomain of your real domain (e.g., now.nownessfield.com, news.example.com, letters.example.com). Avoid mail. — it conflicts with Google Workspace's default MX usage.
• From address & from name: set once verified.
• Opt-in mode: double opt-in (default, recommended for deliverability and GDPR) or single opt-in.

Identity and sending domain both live at /admin/branding. The sending setup section on that page takes the subdomain you pick, calls Resend, and rerenders with the DKIM, SPF, and return-path records you paste into your DNS provider (Cloudflare, Squarespace, GoDaddy, etc.). Record names are relative to the zone apex, so what looks like a "weird" name in the panel is usually correct. Click Recheck after the DNS propagates — status moves from pending to verified when Resend confirms the records.

Once verified you can set a default from address on the verified domain (e.g., david@now.nownessfield.com) and you're cleared to send.

04Topics (interests)

Topics are how you segment a brand's audience. Internally they're called Topics; in subscriber-facing signup forms and the preference center they appear as Interests — same data, friendlier label. Manage them at /admin/topics: name, description, slug, visibility toggle (public-visible topics show up in signup forms), and sort order.

When you compose mail you pick which topics to send to. The audience count updates live as you toggle topics. Subscribers join topics via the signup form, via the preference center, by admin edit, or via the API (topic_ids in /api/v1/subscribe, or topic slugs via /api/v1/subscribers/tags).

05Custom fields

Per-brand custom data per subscriber. Define them at /admin/fields — each gets a field key (e.g., favorite_genre) and a label. Values are stored as JSON on the subscriber row and exposed in the composer as personalization tokens ({{favorite_genre}}) you can drop into subject lines and bodies. Custom fields also appear automatically on the signup form editor as optional columns, and accept values via the API in the custom_fields object.

06Signup forms

Every brand starts with a default signup form. Edit it (or add additional forms for different landing pages and campaigns) at /admin/forms. You choose which fields appear: first_name, last_name, city, plus any custom fields you've defined.

Each form has three distribution options on its edit page:

• Hosted link: https://mailement.com/<brand-slug>/subscribe/<form-slug>. Drop it in social bios or share anywhere. The default form is reachable at the shorter https://mailement.com/<brand-slug>/subscribe.
• iframe embed: a one-line snippet you paste on any website. The embedded view renders chrome-free thanks to a ?embed=1 query param.
• JSON API: if you want full design control, POST to /api/v1/subscribe with a bearer token from /admin/api-keys. See /docs/api.

The Save & Preview Form button on the form editor opens the live form in a new tab so you can experience it the way a subscriber would.

07Subscribers & CSV import

The subscribers list at /admin/subscribers shows every subscriber for the active brand with status (pending, confirmed, unsubscribed, bounced, complained), source, signup form, topics, custom fields, last activity, and engagement counters.

Three ways to add subscribers:

• Add manually — single email, optional first name, last name, city, custom fields, and topics. Treated as already-confirmed because an admin attested to consent.
• CSV import — three-step wizard at /admin/subscribers/import: upload, map columns to fields and topics, review and confirm. See /docs/migrate for a per-platform migration guide.
• Public signup form or API — anything that comes in through a form respects the brand's opt-in mode.

The subscriber detail page (/admin/subscribers/<id> — open it from the list) shows full engagement history, lets you edit topics and custom fields, and includes an Enroll in drip card for manually starting a sequence.

08Compose, schedule, send

Open the composer at /admin/mail/new. The toolbar covers bold, italic, strikethrough, H1–H3, ordered and unordered lists, blockquote, link, image, CTA button (mailto or web link modes), divider, callout, undo/redo, and an HTML toggle for hand-editing. A slash menu and drag handles let you reorganize blocks quickly. The right-side preview is brand-themed live: change the active brand and the preview reskins.

Personalization tokens you can drop in subject, preheader, or body:

• {{first_name}}, {{last_name}}, {{full_name}}, {{name}} (full name with fallback), {{email}}, {{city}}
• {{preferences_url}}, {{unsubscribe_url}}, {{manage_token}} (the per-subscriber token used in preference and unsubscribe links)
• Any custom field token you've defined for the brand

Pick an audience by toggling topics. The count updates live. Send a test to yourself, then either Send now or Schedule for later. Drafts auto-save as you write.

09Templates

Templates are reusable mail starting points: subject, preheader, body, and a default audience. Manage them at /admin/templates. When you start a new mail you can pick a template; when you're editing a drip step, the "Start from a template" picker pre-fills the step body. The templates table is named mail_templates internally — not templates — which only matters if you're querying through the API in the future.

10Drip series

Drips are multi-step automated sequences — welcome series, nurture flows, course delivery, anything that ships on a schedule after a trigger. Build them at /admin/drips. Each drip has a name, a trigger, and an ordered list of steps. Steps have the same composer chrome as the main mail editor, plus a delay (days/hours/minutes) before they fire.

Five ways to enroll a subscriber in a drip:

• When someone signs up (subscriber_confirmed) — fires on confirmation, optionally filtered to a specific signup form.
• When someone picks a specific topic at signup (topic_added) — fires at signup only, not on later topic edits.
• Only when I enroll them (manual) — admin clicks Enroll in drip on the subscriber detail page.
• Public link click — /d/<slug> URL. Every drip has a 12-character hex slug; the link enrolls anyone who clicks (after confirming their email if double opt-in). Works on any drip regardless of trigger type. Also supports a personalized variant with {{manage_token}} so the click skips the email-prompt step entirely for an already-known subscriber.
• API enrollment — POST /api/v1/drips/<id>/enroll. See /docs/api.

Enrollment is idempotent on (drip, subscriber) — re-enrolling someone who's already in the drip is a no-op. Steps fire on a cron that runs every 10 minutes.

11Analytics & deliverability

The dashboard at /admin shows cross-brand subscribers, opens, deliveries, and a weekly trend chart. Each mail's detail page breaks down delivered, opens, clicks, bounces, and complaints per recipient with timestamps. Bounced and complained addresses are auto-suppressed at the brand level so you don't hit them again.

About opens: Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-fetches images for many recipients, which inflates raw open counts industry-wide. Mailement deduplicates per-recipient and labels opens as a "rough indicator" — delivery and bounce stats come straight from Resend webhooks and are accurate. If you need to remove an address yourself, the subscribers list has a delete action.

12Preference center & unsubscribe

Every mail footer carries a one-click unsubscribe link (RFC 8058 compliant for Gmail and Yahoo's 2024 sender requirements) and a "Manage preferences" link. The preference center lets subscribers toggle topics on or off instead of unsubscribing entirely — usually a better outcome for both sides.

Unsubscribing is reversible: the unsubscribe confirmation includes a "Wait, that was a mistake" link that restores the subscription. The full flow is at /u/<token> for unsubscribe and /preferences?token=… for the preference center; both work without an account.

13API & webhooks

Generate per-brand bearer tokens at /admin/api-keys. Token format: mlm_live_ followed by 32 hex chars. Each key is scoped to one brand; verifying a token returns its brand id.

Public endpoints today:

• POST /api/v1/subscribe — JSON body, topic_ids by id.
• POST /api/v1/subscribers — alternate "tag-flavored" subscribe.
• POST /api/v1/subscribers/unsubscribe — opt out.
• POST /api/v1/subscribers/tags — add or remove topic memberships by slug.
• POST /api/v1/drips/<id>/enroll — enroll by email or subscriber id.

Outbound webhooks fire on subscriber events (subscriber.confirmed, subscriber.unsubscribed, subscriber.bounced, subscriber.complained) to a per-brand URL you configure at /admin/webhooks. Payloads carry an X-Mailement-Signature header (sha256 HMAC) so you can verify the POST is from Mailement. Full reference: /docs/api.

14Account, billing, team

Profile (name), workspace settings, billing, and team invitations all live under /admin/settings. Free is $0 forever for 500 subscribers and 1–2 brands; Growth is $35/month for 2,500 subscribers and 3–5 brands; Studio is $100/month for 20,000 subscribers and unlimited brands plus teammates. Over 20,000? Email hello@mail.mailement.com.

Export is one click. Subscribers, mail history, and analytics export to CSV from their respective list pages. Your readers are yours, and you can take them anywhere.

15Contact support

Email hello@mail.mailement.com. A human reads everything. Free and Growth get next-business-day responses; Studio gets a four-hour SLA on weekdays.