MarketingAsAService
Self-hosted marketing for a business: social media posts, online ads, print, letters by post and video or radio spots, planned in campaigns with one brand and one recurring brand character. Connect your accounts with one click, write once, publish everywhere.
Documentation: schulzoli.github.io/MarketingAsAService: getting started, configuration, a guide for every network, and the marketing tools.
- Campaigns across channels. One goal, one key message and one budget split across social posts, Google search ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, YouTube video ads, print, mail, radio, TV, cinema and outdoor. Every ad, print piece and spot needs an approval before it goes out; results per channel show spend, cost per lead and return on ad spend (docs/marketing).
- One brand, one character. A brand kit with tone of voice, colors, typeface, logo and a recurring brand character (look, voice, catchphrase, reference pictures) that every piece builds on.
- Print and letters by post. Flyers, posters, newspaper ads, postcards and letters as print-ready PDFs with 3 mm bleed and CMYK colors; personal letters go out by post through Pingen (docs).
- Spots. Scripts for video, TV, cinema and radio spots that fit their length and pace, a briefing PDF for production, and the finished video uploaded to YouTube (docs).
- Paid ads. Search and YouTube video ads on Google Ads, image ads on Meta Ads: created paused from approved pieces, started and paused here, with their numbers read back every hour (docs).
- AI studio (optional). With an Anthropic API key, Claude drafts ads, print texts, spot scripts and post ideas in the brand's voice; drafts land in the campaign for you to edit and approve (docs).
- One big canvas. Networks, accounts, flows, the composer and your posts live in a single zoomable 2D world. Drag things where you like, and link to any node or view (
/canvas#n=network:instagram, /canvas#@x,y,zoom).
- Flows. Build reusable publishing pipelines on the canvas: New post → add hashtags → shorten to fit → wait 30 min → publish to these accounts. Each account receives its own adapted version.
- Plan on a calendar. Week and month views on the canvas; drag a post to move it, double-click to plan one. Edit or retry posts until they go out, and give each network its own version of the text.
- Work as a team. Several workspaces, invite links, roles (owner, admin, editor), an activity log, and an email when a post fails.
- German and English. The UI, validation and emails follow the browser's language or the account setting.
- Make it yours. The look is a plugin. Three themes come installed — Aurora, Paper and Blueprint, each with a light and a dark mode — and everyone picks their own. Uninstall the ones you don't want, or build your own in the theme editor on the canvas (docs/themes.md).
- 15 networks behind one interface. Mastodon, Bluesky (sign in on your own server, no app password needed), Telegram and Discord work out of the box. Facebook, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn (profiles and pages), X, TikTok, YouTube, Google Business Profile, Pinterest and Reddit work through the Zernio bridge with just an API key, or through the server's own developer apps once they are approved — users then just click "Connect" (docs/bridge.md).
- Validates as you type. Each network's limits, media rules and required fields (subreddit, video title, TikTok privacy…) are checked live in the composer.
- Reliable publishing. Every network is published and retried independently, with backoff, token refresh, crash recovery and clear "reconnect needed" states.
- Your data stays yours. Tokens are encrypted at rest; runs anywhere Docker runs.
| Flow builder | Composing through a flow |
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| A campaign | A print-ready flyer | AI drafts |
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Status
Phases 0 (foundation), 1 (uploads, editing, calendar, teams, email, Bluesky sign-in, German and English) and 2 (the bridge: every network without app reviews, through Zernio) are done, and so is marketing beyond social media (brand kit, campaigns, print and letters, spots, paid ads, the AI studio). Phase 3 is prepared: every network integration is implemented, and each server's admin chooses per network between their own developer app, the Zernio bridge, or switching it off (guide). Every server registers its own apps; the project applies for none on anyone's behalf. MarketingAsAService serves the about, privacy, terms, imprint and data deletion pages the reviews ask for (docs/legal.md). Networks become "live-verified" as operators run them with their own apps (docs/platforms.md). The canvas with flows is the main interface (the classic list pages remain under “List view”); its look comes from theme plugins. Roadmap: docs/plan.md.
Quick start (development)
Requirements: Node 22+, Docker.
npm install
cp .env.example .env
sed -i "s|^ENCRYPTION_KEY=.*|ENCRYPTION_KEY=$(openssl rand -base64 32)|" .env
npm run services:up # Postgres on localhost:5432
docker compose exec postgres psql -U maas -c "CREATE DATABASE maas_test" # for tests
npm run db:migrate
npm run dev # web on http://localhost:3000 + worker
Sign up, add a Sandbox account and schedule a post. Put #fail or #flaky in the text to see error handling.
Self-hosting
cp .env.example .env # set ENCRYPTION_KEY, APP_URL, POSTGRES_PASSWORD
docker compose --profile app up -d --build
This starts Postgres, runs migrations, and launches the web app (port 3000) and the worker. Put a reverse proxy with HTTPS in front of the web app and set APP_URL to the public URL — OAuth callbacks and links in emails depend on it. The proxy should set X-Forwarded-For; login rate limits per IP rely on it (limits per email address do not).
| Variable | Required | Description |
|---|
DATABASE_URL | yes | Postgres connection string |
ENCRYPTION_KEY | yes | 32 random bytes, base64 (openssl rand -base64 32). Encrypts account tokens; do not change after accounts are connected |
APP_URL | yes | Public URL without trailing slash |
ENABLE_SANDBOX | no | true shows the fake Sandbox network |
WORKER_POLL_INTERVAL_MS | no | How often the worker checks for due posts (default 10000) |
MEDIA_STORAGE | no | local (default) keeps uploads in MEDIA_DIR (a Docker volume), s3 uses any S3-compatible storage (S3_ENDPOINT, S3_BUCKET, S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID, S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY, see .env.example) |
MEDIA_MAX_VIDEO_MB | no | Largest video upload (default 512; images up to 20 MB) |
SMTP_URL | no | Outgoing mail for password resets, invites, email confirmation and failed-post alerts, e.g. smtp://user:[email protected]:587. Without it, emails are printed to the log |
MAIL_FROM | no | Sender address, e.g. MarketingAsAService <[email protected]> |
OPERATOR_NAME, OPERATOR_EMAIL | for app reviews | Who runs the server. Turns on /about, a privacy policy, terms and data deletion instructions; with OPERATOR_ADDRESS also an imprint. LEGAL_*_URL links your own pages instead. See docs/legal.md |
<NETWORK>_CLIENT_ID / _CLIENT_SECRET | no | Operator developer apps, e.g. INSTAGRAM_CLIENT_ID. See docs/platforms.md |
Project structure
apps/web Next.js app: canvas (components/world), list pages, server actions, OAuth callbacks
apps/web/messages UI texts in English and German, one catalog per area
apps/worker Worker: publishes due posts, sends letters, reads ad numbers
packages/core Posts, accounts, flows, campaigns, print, ads, AI studio, theme plugins, publishing loop, encryption
packages/db Drizzle schema + SQL migrations
packages/providers Network and ad platform integrations behind common interfaces
docs/ Documentation website: guides per network, marketing, plan, screenshots
Languages
The UI is in English and German. Texts live in typed catalogs — apps/web/messages/*.ts for the app, packages/core/src/messages.ts for errors and emails, packages/providers/src/messages.ts for validation and network texts. Each catalog has an en and a de object, and TypeScript refuses a German catalog that misses a message or takes other values. To add a language, add it to locales in packages/providers/src/i18n.ts and follow the type errors.
Scripts
| Command | What it does |
|---|
npm run dev | Web app + worker with hot reload |
npm test | Unit tests; integration tests run when TEST_DATABASE_URL is set |
npm run typecheck | TypeScript across all packages |
npm run build | Production builds of web and worker |
npm run db:generate | Create a migration after changing packages/db/src/schema.ts |
npm run db:migrate | Apply migrations |
Contributing
Contributions are welcome — bug reports, ideas, translations and code. Read CONTRIBUTING.md for the setup, checks and conventions, and report security problems privately as described in SECURITY.md. Everyone taking part follows the code of conduct.
License
MarketingAsAService is open source under the MIT License. Its dependencies have their own licenses, almost all MIT, Apache-2.0, ISC or BSD; the image library sharp that Next.js installs includes libvips under LGPL-3.0.
