Show HN: Mail Studio – IDE for designing responsive emails • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by munk-a » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

Cederfjard wrote: post #87

alpaca128 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably not a user of the average PC and internet connection out there. On low-tier equipment well-designed can turn very quickly into utterly frustrating. But you are right about the last part...when the user's UI locks up for a few seconds your email is certain to grab their attention. Just not in the way your carefully designed newsletter was intended to be remembered, though. Plain text mails work better…

Not to be overly cynical, but are people with low-tier equipment the ones that marketers usually care about? It’s not really about what ”works best” for the average recipient, because these emails are not sent out of the goodness of the senders’ hearts. If data show that fancy HTML emails translate into more paying customers, then that’s what drives these decisions. It’s of course possible that this is not the case,…

> Not to be overly cynical, but are people with low-tier equipment the ones that marketers usually care about?

Yes - they generally are. Sure the newest SV ETL pipeline might be catered towards folks with up-to-date hardware, but most marketing is directed toward having a large reach and you'll find that the distribution of gullible people is pretty even society wide - and so those low performance having folk actually do compose a fair chunk of the intended audience.

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

#112

Post by arendtio » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

I was pleasantly surprised to see that there is a Linux version available :-)

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

#113

Post by smilbandit » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #9

HTML in email is legacy hell. I wonder if someone wants to create a new MIME-type like text/html+css, and clients who want can implement it. In theory you could have representations of the message like video/mpeg4 and text/plain, and depending on the client capabilities and configuration, the receiver could watch a video or read plain text. The information content of the 2 (or more) don't even have to be the same! Fo…

Outlook on Windows is such a pain in the ass. Who ever thought using Word to render HTML emails was a good idea should be pink bellied.

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

#114

Post by colechristensen » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

zwaps wrote: post #73

I receive a lot of newsletters and communiqués, some of which I even signed up for. So, I don't know what designers use to receive e-mail, but here in the non-designer / non-linux world, Outlook is pretty popular. Now, Outlook - at least all configurations I have seen, has pictures via HTML disabled. I have sampled a few IT departments only, of course, but I feel like this is probably a pretty common policy. So let m…

People who use gmail/gsuite get html emails, the images are proxied by google. People using gmail are a huge chunk of the market.

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

#115

Post by maydemir » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

I've been looking for something like this for a very long time.

Can it be integrated with systems such as SendGrid? or will it be integrated in the future?

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

#116

Post by williesleg » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

Finally some hacker news and not political bullshit on my hacker news website.

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

#117

Post by anamexis » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:18 PM UTC

contravariant wrote: post #106

anamexis wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume that side has, in fact, established that proof.

It's a common assumption, but also a dangerous assumption when the people who you assume have established the proof are the same people who stand to profit a from it being proven.

I'm not sure I follow - if marketers proved that plain text emails are more profitable, they would use plain text emails.

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

#118

Post by nonameiguess » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

andylynch wrote: post #50

inetknght wrote: post #30

Any HTML email that arrives to my inbox is usually marked as spam and phishing. Emails need to be clear and concise. HTML facilitates far too much hidden shit.

As someone who lies in Excel, Outlook and too many different chat apps I think it’s far too useful to have proper formatted text in communications - Even very simple things like highlighting, tables, screenshots just don’t work or are unclear if you limit yourself to plain text. Marketing emails can be annoying but that’s what the unsubscribe button is for ;)

Cynically, the unsubscribe button is so phishing operations spamming every possible permutation of {, }@.com can confirm they hit a real email address and spam it out to all the various constant contact subscribers that pay them for leads.

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

#119

Post by uberswe » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #114

zwaps wrote: post #73

I receive a lot of newsletters and communiqués, some of which I even signed up for. So, I don't know what designers use to receive e-mail, but here in the non-designer / non-linux world, Outlook is pretty popular. Now, Outlook - at least all configurations I have seen, has pictures via HTML disabled. I have sampled a few IT departments only, of course, but I feel like this is probably a pretty common policy. So let m…

People who use gmail/gsuite get html emails, the images are proxied by google. People using gmail are a huge chunk of the market.

I did not know that images get proxied. Either way, I use gmail with images turned off by default and I rarely enable images for specific senders.

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

#120

Post by munk-a » Thu, Apr 01, 2021, 5:24 PM UTC

D13Fd wrote: post #31

prepend wrote: post #13

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…

Honestly I have no problem with monthly fees for software you use every day, or frequently, for professional use. I'm fine paying monthly for things like Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office, and 1Password. Those are all desktop apps, albeit with a cloud component that I mostly don't use. I easily get my money back 10x over (likely more) based on the income I generate with the apps. The pricing here seems targeted…

I would say this - 1Password has taken a real dive in quality. If the software was a single upfront cost I'd just shrug it off but the fact that my company is paying to sustain development that's actually ruined the UX for me is quite frustrating.

(Hey 1Password, don't have your "App" open as a little window in the corner of the screen for password entry that instantly closes as soon as I alt-tab anywhere. It takes too many ms for you to render a blank window with a text box to keep my focus on you so I'm going to context switch while you're loading all the libraries you need to support your text box entry form)