Beautiful emails aren’t just easy on the eye. They boost readability and engagement, and the overall success of your internal and external email campaigns.
With the right email creation software, you can create professional emails without any design or coding experience.
Instead of wasting time trying out the different email template builders, read this guide. We’ve rounded up five of the best email builders, along with the features that make them great.
An email template builder is an online tool or software that lets you design emails, even without prior design or coding experience.
The best email creation software comes pre-loaded with a wide variety of highly customizable, responsive and engaging templates. In most cases, these templates are designed for specific industries or purposes, like promoting an event or introducing your Employee of the Month.
With these templates at hand, there’s no need to design marketing emails from scratch, saving hours and the costs of hiring coders and designers. Marketing teams can focus less on templating individual emails, and have more time to focus on coming up with engaging content ideas and the other many tasks on your list.
You use a simple drag-and-drop editor to customize the templates with your content and branding. So, it’s easy to ensure every email you send is on-brand so it’s professional and instantly recognizable by your subscribers.
Then, simply export the HTML emails to Gmail or your preferred email service provider. Since the templates on most email builders are responsive, you know they’ll render well across all devices and platforms.
Save yourself the hassle of searching for the best email template creation software and use our guide instead. We’ve rounded up five of our favorite pieces of email creation software, so you can start designing beautiful emails quickly.
Publicate is a drag-and-drop email editor with hundreds of fully customizable, professionally-designed templates to choose from, which are free for all users.
Used by small teams through to global organizations like Pepsi and Amazon, Publicate is packed with features that make the email design process fast, simple and enjoyable.
As well as templates, it gives you access to a content library of over 2 million royalty-free stock images, GIFs and videos. Plus, its content scraping capabilities let you instantly add all the important details from web pages, Slack, Pocket and other sources.
This saves users time searching multiple web sources for suitable content, and downloading and uploading images and other multi-media.
Publicate integrates with over 57 email service providers including Gmail and Outlook so you can keep using the tools you love without needing to switch. There is even a direct integration!
Publicate also provides powerful post-send analytics to track performance from heat maps to open rates and click-through rates; you can monitor and optimize every email campaign.
It’s the only email builder with built-in analytics that are available no matter where you send your emails from, so you can continually improve your email marketing engagement using data. This is great news for your marketing budget, as you can work to maximize your ROI from emails.
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Stripo is another drag-and-drop HTML editor that lets you customize your email designs with ease.
Stripo users with coding knowledge have the option to code from scratch, switching between the tool’s HTML and CSS code editor and its drag-and-drop builder.
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Beefree is a user-friendly HTML email builder that lets users export emails to any sending platform in a few clicks.
It’s most suitable for SMEs, freelancers, marketers and agencies.
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A no-code drag-and-drop email builder, Chamaileon offers responsive, modern-looking templates to its users.
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An email template builder that’s suitable for beginners, Topol offers over 150 responsive templates to its users on the Pro Plan.
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While it’s tricky to create a template in Gmail and other ESPs, some platforms make it easier to create templates and send emails all in one platform.
ESPs with email template builders don’t allow you to export your email to send it somewhere else, such as Gmail or Outlook, or share it on social media platforms or internal channels like Teams or Slack. Instead, users must send emails within the template platform itself.
Explore the options with these 5 ESPs that include template builders.
The Moosend email creation software has a library of email templates, which you can send directly from the platform itself. Alternatively, users can copy the HTML or download the JSON file and send the templates from another ESP, although the second option is quite time-consuming.
Keep in mind that Moosend doesn’t offer a free plan, and some of its templates are a little dated.
SendPulse contains over 100 modern templates and other email marketing tools to help streamline the process. While the stock images and image editing tools are limited, users can still design emails and send them from SendPulse.
MailerLite doesn’t have any export options, so users have to send their designs from the platform itself. There are some beautiful templates available, but these aren’t accessible on the free plan.
HubSpot is a CRM platform that covers almost all marketing and sales bases for businesses. You can send emails directly from HubSpot or export them to your email service provider.
The pre-made templates aren’t available on the free plan and the software only has 5 basic customizable HTML templates.
Mailchimp users can switch between a drag-and-drop email builder and the platform’s new AI builder. There are over 100 pre-made templates, although most aren’t accessible in the free plan, and many don’t automatically render well on mobile. This limits the process for users, as Mailchimp only allows you to send emails from Mailchimp itself.
Modern-day consumers expect well-designed, engaging emails. Plain text emails don’t always stack up. An HTML email builder provides a way to create professional emails that get results. Plus, they’re user-intuitive with barely any learning curve involved.
Let’s look at some other benefits of email builders.
Email creation software comes with ready-made templates that look great, and drag-and-drop functionality.
With so much content already saved in the platform (such as stock images, buttons and other multi-media) you can design emails in minutes.
Your email designs are saved in the cloud.
This is ideal for teams who want to collaborate on an email campaign. There’s no need to download software or send documents, photos and other items back and forth.
Email builders like Publicate, for example, excel when it comes to collaboration. For example, it offers the chance to co-edit, review, edit and approve emails in real-time, to streamline the workflow and scale the process.
The best email template builders include a folder for brand assets, or a “Brand Kit”.
The Brand Kit is a dedicated folder in your workspace to set your brand’s color pallet, upload a brand font, and store assets like logos and photography. It couldn’t be simpler to customize HTML templates and ensure each one is consistently on-brand.
Templates are already designed for engagement, with the layouts and content people like to read.
Plus, if your email builder has powerful analytics, you can monitor engagement and discover ways to improve with every email you create.
The best email template builder varies from one business to another. While some require some coding knowledge and offer customized elements, others like Publicate provide a full-featured drag-and-drop editor that’s suitable for every skill level.
Look out for the following features that we think make a good email template builder:
Email creation software is commonly used by marketing teams who want to create promotional emails or improve their internal communications.
Everyone from startups to marketing agencies and global brands and organizations can benefit from email-building software.
Often, professionals choose a platform, such as Publicate, because they can design highly engaging, beautiful emails without coding knowledge and then track their performance, even if they send through Gmail or Outlook. There are cost benefits, too, as email builders remove the need to hire coders or designers.
To make sure you’re using the best drag-and-drop email builder for you, ask yourself the following questions.
Will your designs render well across various email clients and devices – especially mobile? Collectively, 85% of businesses and individuals use their smartphones to access emails.
It’s important to use software that prioritizes great designs on mobile, without the need for manual optimization from you.
Most free email builder software is limited. Don’t just look for free plans, but do ensure the software has a free trial so you can try it out before signing up.
An email builder like Publicate offers a no-obligation, 14-day free trial. You can sign up without a credit card and start designing emails today.
Does the software integrate with multiple email service providers and offer easy export options?
Look for plug-ins and one-click downloads that make the process quick and easy.
Choose software with hundreds of pre-designed, professional newsletter templates.
Ideally, they should be organized by type, industry and other helpful filters.
Get to know the key features of email builder software, so you know what to expect from the best platforms. These include:
Whichever email design software you go for, you’ll get the best results if you follow some email design best practices.
Below, we’ve summarized some ways to ensure professional emails people want to read:
The best email creation software prioritizes user-friendliness and responsive, modern designs. With the right features, your software can trim the email design process down to minutes – saving your company time and money in email marketing.
Explore your options by making use of the free trials available. An email creation tool like Publicate offers a 14-day free trial with the software trusted by over 10,000 companies.