Comments on: My dream HTML email editor…does it exist?

By: Alex Parsonage

Alex Parsonage — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 12:44:27 +0000

Yep – I’m having exactly the same problem. I’m amazed there’s no solution out there. Please do let me know if anyone finds anything!

By: John

John — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:12:57 +0000

Wow. I wonder how many people are out there looking for a brilliant solution to this problem? If this post is the #1 hit, and I’m leaving a comment only a couple days after the last one, there’s gotta’ be a market opening here…

Hey software designers! We’re here! Please help us! We pay money! Really, we do!

By: Michael Flynn

Michael Flynn — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 04:01:48 +0000

So depressing that this post was written 3 years ago… And that there’s still nothing out there that does this.

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:26:30 +0000

Wow, I had absolutely no idea that my post ranked so high. And no, I’m not in any better shape now than 3 years ago. Sad, huh?

By: Charles H.

Charles H. — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:24:26 +0000

Hi Judi! Are you aware that this blog entry is the number one (unpaid) result when Googling “HTML email editor”? Surprising, considering that your post is close to 3 years old now. And a little depressing, maybe, because my guess is that you still haven’t found your dream editor. I’m looking, too. I’ve used iContact for about 3 years almost on a daily basis, and it’s a pain in the rear. Nowadays, I have a pretty good stock of templates that I’ve cleaned up to the nth degree so that they display well in all the major email clients. But when I get a new layout from our graphic designer, it’s like starting from scratch to make sure the HTML doesn’t hold any surprises. Even if you haven’t found your dream editor, have you found any tools that work better than what you had 3 years ago? Thanks for posting!

By: David Radovanovic

David Radovanovic — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:40:31 +0000

Email newsletters are a real treat to design… especially since standards are pretty much non-existent. Some tips:

1. Use only tables

2. No background images

3. Inline CSS only

4. Everything before the tag and after is usually useless

5. And, make the code super clean

Here are some useful resources:

http://www.email-standards.org/

http://code.dunae.ca/premailer.web/

for the adventurous:

http://css-tricks.com/sending-nice-html-email-with-php/

Please let me know if any genius creates that perfect email html editor you described!!

Thanks

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 15:39:53 +0000

Thanks, Thomas. That looks very similar to the Campaign Monitor solution we were using, except it’s nice that I don’t have to directly upload the HTML. I may try the free version on our next email to at least get Outlook 2003 testing in. Would love if the free one tested Outlook 2007 as well, as there were huge changes between 2003 and 2007, as you probably know.

BTW, I’m considering implementing VR for some smaller-scale emails directly from Salesforce. Sometimes doing it all through Convio can be more trouble than its worth.

By: Thomas Taylor

Thomas Taylor — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:07:43 +0000

We've signed up for Litmus, which does a very nice job of rendering screen shots from a bunch of different web and desktop clients. It's a little tricky with Vertical Response because VR sends out two test mails, text and HTML, when you test. So sometimes the text one arrives at the test address second, and that's obviously a pain, as it only shows you the last message received. You can also upload your HTML directly. It's a little pricey for an individual organization for ongoing use, but if you're refining a template on an occasional basis, it's not too bad. MailChimp has a similar tool, but it looks like you have to be building the e-mail in their system in order to use it.