Mail Quilt and the alternatives
There are good email editors you can embed, and some will suit you better than this one. This page says which, and when.
At a glance
| Editor | What it is | License and cost | Works with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mail Quilt | Packages for building an email editor into an app: a ready-made drag-and-drop editor, and the document model under it. Emails are saved as JSON. | MIT. Free, with no paid plan. | Any framework, as a Web Component. React component. |
| Unlayer | A drag-and-drop editor you embed, for emails, pages and more. | Commercial. A free plan, then paid plans from $250 a month. | React, Angular and Vue components. |
| Beefree SDK | A drag-and-drop editor you embed. | Commercial. Free to sign up, with paid plans. | React, Angular and Vue. |
| GrapesJS | A framework for building visual editors, with a plugin for MJML emails. | Open-source core under BSD-3. A paid SDK is built on it. | Plain JavaScript, with a React wrapper. |
| Easy Email | A drag-and-drop editor you embed. | An MIT version, which doesn't support React 19, and a Pro version from $99 a month. | React. |
| Maily | An editor that works like writing a document, built on Tiptap. | MIT. Free. | React. |
| EmailBuilder.js | A block editor that saves JSON or HTML. | MIT. Free. | React. |
Each line about another project was read from its own site or repository on 10 November 2026. Prices and features change, so check theirs before you decide. If a line here is wrong, open an issue and it will be fixed.
Choose something else when
You need someone to call
Unlayer, Beefree, Stripo and Topol are companies with support teams, and you can sign a contract with them. Mail Quilt is one person and a public issue tracker.
Your emails must work in Outlook today
Nobody has checked a Mail Quilt email in Outlook. Topol says it tests there, and Beefree and Unlayer say they support it. If Outlook is where your readers are, use one of those, or test Mail Quilt's output yourself first.
You want templates and a large set of Blocks
Mail Quilt has six Blocks, no template library and no image upload. The commercial editors have many more Blocks and ready-made templates.
Your emails are written in code
If developers write your emails and nobody else edits them, you don't need a visual editor. React Email, MJML and Maizzle are built for writing email as code.
You're building pages as well
Mail Quilt only makes emails. GrapesJS, Unlayer and Beefree also build web pages.
You'd rather write than lay out
Maily feels like writing in a document rather than arranging Blocks, which suits emails that are mostly text.
Choose Mail Quilt when
- You want the editor inside your product, with no fee and no other company's servers involved.
- Your app isn't a React app, or you don't want the choice of editor to depend on your framework.
- You want each email saved as a documented JSON format that you can check, change and render on your own server.
- You want everything that can be dragged to work from the keyboard too.
- A small set of Blocks is enough for the emails you send.