Best Drag and Drop Newsletter Builder 2024
Try Publicate For Free Today
Start Now
When your HTML knowledge is lacking, or you don’t have time to design and code emails from scratch, a drag and drop newsletter builder is a powerful tool.
Streamline and optimize your email marketing by finding the tool with the most useful features. We’ve broken down five of the best email builders, and covered the benefits and key features to look for in your drag and drop email builder.
A drag and drop newsletter builder is an email design tool that lets you customize templates using pre-built content blocks.
It’s one of the easiest (if not the easiest!) design tools out there. Simply “grab” a component using your mouse or trackpad, and move it to the desired location.
You don’t need HTML knowledge so the learning curve with drag and drop tools is minimal. All changes are visual and instant, so you can see exactly what the email will look like during the design process.
Generally, an HTML email builder is an email design tool that lets you use HTML and responsive CSS to customize emails.
A drag and drop email builder, on the other hand, offers the same results without the need to know how to code. It contains pre-built content blocks you simply drag into place, and edit through a live preview-style interface.
Sometimes, the terms “drag and drop email builder” and “HTML email builder” are used interchangeably. That’s because drag and drop builders actually let you create HTML newsletters, even without HTML knowledge.
This sounds confusing, but it simply means you can build highly engaging newsletters with formatting, styling, multi-media, call-to-action buttons and other rich media in just a few clicks.
You don’t need technical know-how or design savvy to create beautiful email newsletters.
All you need is a robust, user-intuitive newsletter builder like Publicate. Here are just some of the reasons to power up your marketing with a drag and drop newsletter tool.
Let pre-made templates spark your creativity.
A drag and drop newsletter builder takes away the overwhelming feeling of starting with a blank page, thanks to hundreds of beautifully-designed, engaging templates.
Organize your brand assets (like logos, colors and typography) in a specifically designed Brand Kit and content (like headers, footers, call to actions and multimedia like images and videos) into folders in the content library.
Having one centralized place for your assets keeps remote teams, departments and clients on the same page. This ensures your newsletters are on-brand every time, too.
The best email newsletters are responsive across different devices and email clients.
A drag and drop newsletter builder takes care of responsiveness on your behalf. Templates and reusable prebuilt content blocks, like professionally designed dividers, headers, footers and content sections take you from idea to ready-to-send email newsletter in minutes.
Store brand assets and approved template designs in your email builder platform, so anyone with access permissions can find what they need and create on-brand emails.
The best email template builders, like Publicate, also offer real-time editing and approvals, enabling remote teams to work together without leaving the platform.
Export your fully HTML-responsive email to Gmail, Outlook or any other email service provider (ESP).
Third-party integrations couldn’t be easier, and plug-ins are available for one-click exports.
Create beautiful, professional emails without learning how to code or blowing the budget on hiring coders.
Drag and drop platforms are suitable for complete beginners.
Swap plain text and basic emails for professional HTML emails that engage the reader.
A great layout, rich media and unmissable CTA buttons make newsletters more fun to read, and usually contribute to a healthier conversion rate.
More conversions have a positive knock-on effect on your ROI.
While we don’t recommend making every email promotional, you can use your newsletter to build deeper connections with your audience, and drive awareness and traffic to blog posts and websites. When it is time to announce a sale or product launch, they’ll be more receptive.
If you don’t track the results of your campaigns, it’s impossible to know the value of an email newsletter.
Publicate is the only HTML email builder that lets you track performance when you send through Gmail, Outlook or any other ESP. Find out exactly which content is read or engaged with, alongside analytics like open rate, click-through rate, geo-location and social sharing.
With so much clear data at your fingertips, you can make every campaign even better than the last.
We’ve rounded up 5 of the most important features of drag and drop newsletter builders. When you want to save time while designing the most stunning newsletters, look out for an email builder that offers the following features.
Say goodbye to endless hours scouring the web for content. The best email builders come fully loaded with integrations with platforms like Feedly, Slack and royalty-free image and GIF sites.
Some drag and drop tools, like Publicate, also have dynamic web scraping enabled. Save time spent downloading and uploading images, giving content titles, descriptions and calls to action. Instead, let the tool populate the information you need automatically.
Look for a drag and drop newsletter builder that enables in-line image editing, like Publicate.
This lets you crop, adjust and align images right inside the editor, so you can ensure everything looks perfect, live.
With one place to store your brand’s assets, collaboration is easy - even across remote teams.
It’s a secure way to give team members access to your brand, ensuring consistency across every newsletter.
You can organize everything from brand photos to approved components into folders.
With a library of reusable assets ready for future newsletters, this cuts down the design time even further. The library is already populated with content blocks (such as headers, footers, dividers and calls to action), which you can customize, save and re-use for future emails.
As a multimedia content library, you can also save images, videos and GIFs, and can access over 2 million royalty-free assets that are already saved in the library. Publicate has integrations with platforms like Slack and Feedly, so you can save content to your Publicate library as you naturally come across it, so it’s ready to use when you design your emails.
Not every drag and drop email builder has built-in analytics.
Publicate does. What’s more, is that Publicate lets you track the success of your newsletter, even if you send your HTML email from Gmail, Outlook or over 50 other email service providers.
Drag and drop newsletter builder blocks are pre-built content blocks, or components, like headers, footers, e-commerce sections and calls to action.
You can drag and rearrange these blocks in your design whether you’re working from a pre-made template or designing a newsletter from scratch.
These are customizable blocks that have been pre-designed for a range of purposes.
They could include content blocks (for images, text and CTAs), eCommerce blocks to showcase products or collections, and blog and social media blocks to share your latest content.
You could also choose from special blocks for content like surveys, countdown timers and events.
Dynamic blocks are personalized to each recipient to boost engagement in your newsletter.
It’s hassle-free for users. Simply add personalization tags relevant to the email service provider you will use to send the emails.
All blocks are designed to be responsive across every device type and email client.
Customize any block with your content and branding, and save it for future use in your content library.
Access all saved blocks whenever you create a new email template, so there’s no need to create new blocks from scratch every time.
There is a whole host of other features that make a good drag and drop email builder. Here’s a selection of some important features that simplify and optimize the newsletter design process:
It’s easy to spend hours browsing email builders, and even more time playing with their free plans.
The problem is free plans are often limited in their features, and designed so users upgrade to the paid plan after just a few uses. Get a head start with this guide to the best HTML email builder, to find out more about each platform’s features, pros and cons.
There are a few reasons we believe Publicate is the best email template builder.
To start, it includes an impressive selection of time-saving and collaborative features. Publicate has all the features already listed in this guide, and its drag and drop builder stands out for its ease of use.
What really separates Publicate from the pack is its ability to bring teams together - even those that work remotely. Real-time email editing and approvals streamlines the process when you need buy-in from more senior employees. There’s no delay, or a need to download and re-download PDF files to circulate them throughout the team.
You can organize content and brand assets using folders, so collaboration is a breeze and every newsletter can be built quickly and in alignment with your brand identity.
Unlike other platforms, Publicate focuses on design and doesn’t offer sending capabilities. This focus means the editor is among the best on the market. It’s user-intuitive and packed with helpful, unique features.
For example, you can crop and align images directly inline in the editor, so you can get images to line up without having to edit the image in a third-party platform, and re-upload it (which can be a repetitive process!) With dynamic web scraping, Publicate automatically populates all the key information from a web page, such as a title, description and image, so you don’t have to manually find and upload or type out the information. Just type the URL and let the tool do the hard work.
You can also track the performance of every email, even if you send it from Gmail or Outlook, so you can analyze which content works best and continually optimize your newsletter. Publicate tracks metrics like open rate and click rate, and has heat maps to help you visually see what is popular with your readers.
Pros:
Cons:
Beefree is another drag and drop newsletter builder that deserves a space on the list.
It offers a wide range of customization options so users can design newsletters and export them to their preferred ESP.
Pros:
Cons:
Stripo enables easy, fast HTML email design using drag and drop functionality.
Like most of the other tools, you don’t need design skills to get started, and you can use a preview feature to ensure emails look good before exporting them.
Pros:
Cons:
Tabular is an intuitive drag and drop builder that requires no coding knowledge. Access a range of responsive templates to create newsletters that look good on mobile and desktop.
Pros:
Cons:
Unlayer is a relatively new drag and drop email builder. It’s designed to be suitable for both coding novices and developers, and has plenty of modern templates to choose from.
Pros:
Cons:
A drag and drop newsletter builder is your secret weapon for creating on-brand, beautiful newsletters quickly and easily. After weighing up the features, and the pros and cons of each, our top pick has to be Publicate.
It offers the next level in customization and collaboration, and its editor takes care of the time-consuming jobs, so you can upload and edit content without leaving the platform.
See if Publicate is right for your business, with a 14-day free trial.
