Maily
A Rails Engine to preview, manage, and test email templates directly in the browser.
What is Maily?
Maily is a Rails Engine that provides a dashboard for previewing, managing, and testing email templates in Rails applications. It automatically collects all email templates from the app and allows developers to view them in the browser, edit content in development, and send test emails. It solves the problem of cumbersome email testing by integrating directly into the Rails environment.
Rails developers and teams who need to preview, test, and manage email templates within their applications, particularly those working on apps with complex email systems.
Developers choose Maily because it integrates seamlessly as a Rails Engine, offers a clean interface for email management, supports flexible data hooks and versions, and eliminates the need for external email testing tools.
Overview
📫 Rails Engine to preview emails in the browser
Use Cases
Best For
- Previewing Rails email templates directly in the browser
- Testing email layouts and attachments during development
- Managing multiple email versions for different user segments
- Editing email templates on the fly in development environments
- Sending test emails from a centralized dashboard
- Integrating email testing into Rails apps without external services
Not Ideal For
- Projects requiring email template editing in production without server restarts
- Non-Rails applications or teams using frameworks outside the Ruby ecosystem
- Teams preferring lightweight, external email testing tools like mailcatcher over integrated dashboards
- Applications with minimal email needs where Rails' built-in previews are sufficient
Pros & Cons
Pros
As a mountable engine, Maily can be added with a generator that automates routing and setup, minimizing manual configuration for Rails apps.
The hooks system supports lazy evaluation with callable objects, allowing dynamic data population for emails and easy testing with realistic scenarios.
Enables multiple versions of emails for different cases, such as trial vs. gold accounts, through a simple DSL, enhancing template organization.
Offers authorization via custom base controllers or HTTP basic authentication, providing flexibility to restrict dashboard access based on team needs.
Cons
Template editing is blocked in production due to Rails' code reloading limitations and security risks, hindering real-time updates without server restarts.
Designed solely for Rails, making it unusable for other frameworks and adding engine overhead compared to framework-agnostic tools like mailcatcher.
Requires setting up hooks and initializers, which can be more complex than simpler alternatives, especially for apps with many email templates.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
Postal📮 A fully featured open source mail delivery platform for incoming & outgoing e-mail
letter_openerPreview mail in the browser instead of sending.
MailA Really Ruby Mail Library
premailer-railsCSS styled emails without the hassle.
Found a gem we're missing?
Open-Awesome is built by the community, for the community. Submit a project, suggest an awesome list, or help improve the catalog on GitHub.