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Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

mailstudio.app

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Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#11

Post by JimDabell »

martinaglv wrote: post #2

Hey! I am one of Mail Studio's authors. Will be happy to answer any questions.

Your features page says this:

> Email Previews

> Quickly preview your design on real devices or share it with your team by sending it as an email message.

But when I read the documentation, it seems like you just assume the user has a Litmus account. Is that correct?

Given your paid plans start at $19.99/mo, I think it would be wise to be upfront about the fact that you need a $99/mo Litmus account for this feature to work. Mail client compatibility is the most complex and difficult thing to get right with HTML email design. If you need an external service to get this right, this needs to be clearer. Right now it seems you’re selling Litmus as if it’s your own functionality then expecting your customers to then go and pay much more to Litmus to actually get that functionality.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#13

Post by prepend »

This is desktop software, why is there a monthly fee?

I occasionally want to send “nice looking” emails but get asked by lots of comms people about it. Recommending a monthly fee service is a non starter, but buying some software is pretty easy to decide. “Should I pay once? Or pay forever?”

Is there anything in the functionality that takes advantage of SaaS? Other than updates and whatnot?

Of course the price/value computation is up to y’all and your customers but office365 only costs $10/month. Seems tough to value authoring email as higher value than cloud productivity suite.

It would be nice if there was a way people like me could use since our competition is an outlook template but still scale up to people who may do this all the time and be willing to pay $20+/month.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#14

Post by martinaglv »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4
martinaglv wrote: post #2

Hey! I am one of Mail Studio's authors. Will be happy to answer any questions.

Do you help users ensure your emails degrade gracefully when remote images aren't loaded or HTML email is disabled?

Designs created in Mail Studio behave pretty much the same way as regular emails do if images are disabled. You should add alt text to your images and plan your design so that a missing graphic doesn't cause problems. Still, we're at version 1.0 so I imagine we can do more about this.

The app handles the HTML part of the email, while the plaintext is entered by the user when preparing their campaign. We won't be of much help there.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#16

Post by ocdtrekkie »

martinaglv wrote: post #14
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you help users ensure your emails degrade gracefully when remote images aren't loaded or HTML email is disabled?

Designs created in Mail Studio behave pretty much the same way as regular emails do if images are disabled. You should add alt text to your images and plan your design so that a missing graphic doesn't cause problems. Still, we're at version 1.0 so I imagine we can do more about this. The app handles the HTML part of the email, while the plaintext is entered by the user when preparing their campaign. We won't be of m…

As a suggestion, you might consider recommending where missing alt text is, especially on call to action buttons, and perhaps providing a preview of what the email looks like with remote images disabled.

Good mail providers will block remote images by default, and that's a trend I'd expect to become more prevalent over time.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#17

Post by dnh44 »

martinaglv wrote: post #7
arkitaip wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electron or React Native? Why? Are you planning to support seamless integration with ESP so that the entire lifecycle from design to sending emails is supported?

The application is built on Electron. I think that visual editors like Mail Studio are one of the cases where this choice makes sense, since you are editing a live HTML page. You would need some a webview regardless of platform, but Electron makes the implementation easier. At the moment, we support ESP syncing, which create/update a template on the linked platform. You can then use it as the basis of a campaign.

It looks really useful and the rationale behind using Electron makes sense, but I really dislike using non-native macOS apps. Still, I suppose it's better than not being able to run it at all. Good luck with the project!

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#18

Post by dnh44 »

ponytech wrote: post #10
martinaglv wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The application is built on Electron. I think that visual editors like Mail Studio are one of the cases where this choice makes sense, since you are editing a live HTML page. You would need some a webview regardless of platform, but Electron makes the implementation easier. At the moment, we support ESP syncing, which create/update a template on the linked platform. You can then use it as the basis of a campaign.

Why not a web app then?

This is just a guess but if it were a web app then they'd have to support multiple browsers.

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#19

Post by leetrout »

ericcholis wrote: post #15
cies wrote: post #12

MJML deserves a mention. We use it, together with mustache, to let users create their own mailings from some building blocks we offer. Works quite well!

Curious, is this an in internal product?

No

https://mjml.io/

Re: Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails

#20

Post by martinaglv »

JimDabell wrote: post #11
martinaglv wrote: post #2

Hey! I am one of Mail Studio's authors. Will be happy to answer any questions.

Your features page says this: > Email Previews > Quickly preview your design on real devices or share it with your team by sending it as an email message. But when I read the documentation, it seems like you just assume the user has a Litmus account. Is that correct? Given your paid plans start at $19.99/mo, I think it would be wise to be upfront about the fact that you need a $99/mo Litmus account for this feature t…

Apologies for any confusion that this line might have caused.

> Quickly preview your design on real devices or share it with your team by sending it as an email message.

This refers to the ability to send the design you are working on as an email message. When I wrote it I didn't even consider that it might be interpreted to state that we offer device testing. We don't. You can choose to send to a real device, or Litmus, or a colleague. But we don't offer testing on real devices.

Still Mail Studio takes a lot of care to generate code that works cross-device so if you stick to visual editing (without writing custom HTML or CSS), your designs should work well everywhere even if you forgo real device testing.

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