Stripo ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• Stripo (link)
• Headquartered in Ukraine

Pros

• Split editor and HTML pane and CSS pane so can edit HTML and see the result in real-time
• Global presets for headings, buttons, links, header, footer, etc.
• Mobile specific settings
• Accelerated mobile pages (AMP) support
• Preview mode with mobile view
• 800+ free designed templates
• Import your existing email HTML and tweak it with their builder
• Code validator
• Version history and template recovery
• Synchronized modules between projects
• Vector markup language (VML) buttons for Outlook
• Preheader/preview text
• New for September 2023: Calendar Link Generator
• Automated product cards
• User roles
• Brands per project
• Export emails to Gmail and Outlook
• UTM parameters applied to links
• Copy and share your own saved modules to another projects in the agency organization
• Good support
• NEW for Spring 2023: direct email template export integration to Pardot
• Select the business unit and folder where to save your template.
  • Looks like you need to add a Connected App in Salesforce setup, then once authorized it provides a modal to:
    – select Campaign;
    – select Folder;
    – select Tracker domain;
    – enter Sender emailAnd also, define the email type for Pardot:
    – one-to-one (personal) email;
    – autoresponder email;
    – drip (trigger) email;
    – list email (emailed to a list of recipients).

    So you will need Salesforce Admin permissions, and that might be a battle, but seems it is more than just an API call.

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Cons

• FIXED: Copy/paste HTML to Pardot (no direct integration)
• No editing of blocks, no drag-and-drop after export. When using direct API export to your ESP or exporting to an HTML file, Stripo cuts out the styles in order to provide you with the code that is ready to send, so the result is you are not able to edit without going into HTML once you export to your ESP. This is very disappointing since we hoped to use the Stripo editor to create, then let our clients make content edits within their ESP. But that won’t work since most editing functionality is lost and our clients in most cases won’t want to edit HTML. You are left with three choices: 1) return to Stripo for any content changes then re-export, 2) create using Stripo then edit HTML in your ESP for any changes, 3) create and edit only using your ESP (not using Stripo at all).
• No SSO until sometime 2023

Pricing

• $480/yr

Summary

• We have had good success with this product, but the lack of drag-and-drop after export issue has been a workflow problem for us
• Easy to learn and use, with enough features for most smaller to mid-sized orgs
• The split editor where you can edit HTML/CSS and see the result in real-time is fantastic, maybe a game changer
• We use Stripo internally (syncing our email templates to ActiveCampaign and HubSpot, and we also recommend Stripo to our clients

Download Stripo’s one-sheet comparisons to other email building tools including Beefree, Chamaileon, Topol, and Unlayer (opens shared Google Drive folder with PDF and PNG comparisons).

Chamaileon ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• Chamaileon (link)
• Headquartered in Hungary

Pros

• Features similar to Stripo
• Sophisticated access control with user roles
• Asset management (email content blocks, images)
• Simultaneous editing (like in google docs)
• Import your existing email HTML and tweak it with their builder
• Workflow support for teams of any size
• Can have as many accounts as needed
• Variables for things like colors
• Nested structures, blocks acts like layers
• Preview text
• Custom utm parameters
• Editable merge tags
• Conditional logic/content
• VML for outlook backgrounds

Cons

• No code view available, can’t view/edit raw HTML in their editor (except for custom HTML block). Must export HTML to edit. This will not change since software uses JSON not HTML (only exports in HTML)
• Copy/paste HTML to Pardot (no direct integration)
• No VML for Outlook buttons, they are still square in Outlook
• No AMP support

Pricing

• $2500/yr 5 users [$7500/yr including SSO]
• SSO added to lower plans +$500/m

Summary

• We recently did a demo of this product and were impressed, but we would need to test it out for a more thorough comparison
• Looks like a good product if you don’t need AMP
• Biggest issue we see is no code view available so can’t edit HTML, so you would need to export HTML to your MAP and not make any changes

Knak ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• Knak (link)
• Headquartered in Canada

Pros

• Feature rich
• Good for workflows and enterprise features
• Enterprise security (Enterprise)
• Direct to Pardot integration for email & landing pages (Pardot direct integration, including text version)
• Audit changes with version history and restore points
• Multi-brand management (Enterprise)
• Infinitely set column widths
• UTMs and link parameters can be per brand, per template, and per link
• AMP support
• Preheader/preview text
• Landing page builder
• Partner sub-accounts or mix of end user access
• 24/7 chat support
• Email On Acid in-tool view coming (Q3 2022)
• Sync to multiple marketing automation instances (Enterprise)

Cons

• No HTML view, can’t view raw HTML in Knak editor (except for custom HTML block). Must export HTML to edit (but cannot bring edited HTML back into Knak)
• No way to upload or import existing templates or HTML from another source
• Doesn’t integrate with HubSpot (contrary to their website), must copy/paste HTML to HubSpot (no direct integration)
• Not able to have more than one person editing at same time
• Can’t insert dynamic content from Pardot
• SSO is enterprise plan only
• Requires ‘premium plus user license’ to build emails & landing pages (but can mix and match ‘premium user license’ for some users to build emails and some users to build landing pages)

Pricing

• Expensive @ $15K/yr for 5 users, ~$25K/yr enterprise (platform annual fee + annual per user license + one-time onboarding implementation packages)
• Nonprofit discounts

Summary

• Probably the tool/service of choice if your organization is large enough and/or doing enough email marketing to justify the cost
• We recently did a demo of this product and were impressed with the enterprise features, but it still lacks HTML editing which is a big negative for us and most of our clients

Dyspatch ⭐️⭐️⭐️

• Dyspatch (link)
• Headquartered in Canada

Pros

• Features similar to Stripo
• Approval workflows
• Conditional data
• AMP support
• Integrated Litmus testing
• Localizations

Cons

• Uses Dyspatch markup language (DML) rather than standard HTML, so another language to learn
• We asked a simple question on their web chat twice and never got an answer (update: finally got response several weeks later)
• Not clear if supports enterprise security (they finally said it has SSO)
• Blocks structure may prove to be difficult to work with (unknown at this time)
• They refuse to work with certain conservative organizations

Pricing

• $5,389/yr limited to 100 templates

Summary

• May be good but we haven’t tried it yet. We would need to test it out for a fair comparison
• Their website doesn’t provide enough information about product features
• We can’t recommend this product since there is a chance of ‘deplatforming’ organizations if their values don’t align

Stensul

• Stensul (link)
• Headquartered in New York, United States

Pros

• Annotated comments
• Approval workflows
• Integrations with project management tools: Asana, Wrike, and Workfront
• Brand compliance features like guardrails and permission levels

Cons

• Targeted at enterprise
• No pricing available
• Requires API to send HTML to Pardot
• No AMP support
• May not be a cultural fit for some organizations

Pricing

• No pricing available

Summary

• Can’t compare since no pricing and haven’t tried it