Add newsletter subscriptions to Rails 8 signups

Users are creating accounts on your new Saas. Yay (and not just family and friends or bots). Yay! Now comes the next step from every marketing handbook: capturing newsletter subscriptions. This article builds on Add Sign Up to Rails 8’ Authentication . Add a simple checkbox to let users opt in to product updates during signup. Store their preference using Rails Vault and manage the subscription with Rails Courrier . First, add Rails Vault and Rails Courrier to your Gemfile: gem "rails_vault" gem "rails_courrier" Rails Vault adds simple and easy settings, preferences and so on to any ActiveRecord model (I recently pushed 1.0.0). Courrier is API-powered email delivery for Ruby apps with support for Mailgun, Postmark, Resend and more. Rails Courrier is the Rails “wrapper” for Courrier. These two gems work really nicely together for this feature. Run bundle install and generate the Rails Vault migration: rails generate rails_vault:install rails db:migrate It creates a new file app/models/user/subscriptions.rb : class User::Subscriptions < Vault vault_attribute :product_emails_subscribed_at , :datetime # Add more subscription types as needed: # vault_attribute :marketing_emails_subscribed_at, :datetime # vault_attribute :weekly_digest_subscribed_at, :datetime end And updates your User model to use this vault: # app/models/user.rb class User < ApplicationRecord + vault :subscriptions has_secure_password has_many :sessions , dependent: :destroy end This keeps subscription data organized without cluttering your User table. More subscription types can be added later without database migrations. Now the plumbing is done, add a checkbox to your signup form in app/views/signups/new.html.erb : <%= form . check_box :product_emails %> <%= form . label :product_emails , "Subscribe to product updates" %> Update the Signup model to accept this parameter: # app/models/signup.rb class Signup include ActiveModel :: Model include ActiveModel :: Attributes attribute :email_address , :stri