Email template builder might not be the best solution.

All online service, none self-host.

This’s the first thing to keep in mind when using the editor. Mostly it because the rule of the market that selling template not a software/plugin bundle with a template. As a result, all of the builders is an online service that host on someone hosting.

One of the most requested from customer is to use it offline.

If your email content is privacy or classify. It might not a good idea to do it on someone server.

Don’t lose your purchased code

Yes, I mean the long line of a random number,character. Surely this is like an authenticator use to verify that you purchased their product and want to use their builder. You might notice that you don’t even have to import template file before using, just enter the code of template you purchased and the builder gives you a builder page of your template. All the template modules will be generated from their server and export to you.

Basically, what you purchasing is a code to use their fancy builder.

What if you lose the code? or your account has been ban(for some reason) and you haven’t download the file yet because they no need to. since you able to export from builder anyway.

Moreover, some author might never update their own file because they can update the template on their own server for the user to export from them.(also bypass Envato stuff review/check to approve the update) Most of the time template you purchased might be an outdated version compare to the one you export from the their editor.

Too many template builder

Each template designer author in Themeforest has their own email template builder. What if some of them are quite off the market and shut down their builder site. That’ll leave you a useless purchased code and maybe an outdated template file.

Builder with import template function.

Sorry if it sounds like an advertisement, but I would prefer to have a builder with import template function instead of fill-in purchased code to use generate version from their server.

Why? the main reason is the template author will regularly update the files because the file is not stored and generate from the builder server; user have to download import the file > modify > export. If the file is not up to date, the export file won’t as well. For this reason, even you lose a purchased code or template builder server go offline — at least you still have the latest version of the template file on your computer, not just a useless purchased code.

Builder limitation

The customer always requests more and more feature function to modify a template to suit their business. It never ended. Instead, the builder only able to provide some of them compares to what you can do in Photoshop or Dreamweaver and code editor in template builder is not very useful at all.

The HTML for email is not too difficult if you just want to modify not to build from the ground up. Most of the <style> were inline no fancy CSS effect able to use with HTML email(forget about java) everything is <table> base like a website 10 years ago. Just a basic knowledge of HTML would be enough for customize on your own and don’t worried about inline CSS all code editor has a “find and place” function and you can do it offline :)

If you’re a Dreamweaver user I’ll familiar with a design preview. You can use it just like a template builder and edit directly to the HTML file.

A “Properties” section in DW is like a superior version of all template editor.

in the end, a good UI/UX is one thing that lures customer to buy some template. It would be better to focus on template quality and customer support quality than a nice looking UI template builder because it’ll worth your money for a long run you want to continue to develop the template.