---
title: Packages
description: The four Mail Quilt packages, what each one is for and which one to install.
---

Most apps install one package. Which one depends on whether you want the editor, the HTML, or the email as data.

| Package | What it gives you | Install it when |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `@mailquilt/editor` | The `<mail-quilt>` and `<mail-quilt-shell>` elements, and a build to load from a CDN. | Your app isn't a React app, or your page has no build step. |
| `@mailquilt/react` | The `MailQuilt` and `MailQuiltShell` components. | Your app uses React 19. It installs the editor for you. |
| `@mailquilt/renderer` | `renderEmail()`, which turns a saved email into HTML. | You want the HTML on your server, such as just before you send. |
| `@mailquilt/core` | The document's types, `createEmail()`, `loadDocument()` and the Commands that change an email. | You create, check or change emails in code. |

## How they fit together

`core` knows what an email is. `renderer` turns one into HTML. `editor` lets a person change one, and `react` wraps the editor.

| Package               | What it brings with it                        |
| --------------------- | --------------------------------------------- |
| `@mailquilt/react`    | The editor, and so the renderer and the core. |
| `@mailquilt/editor`   | The renderer and the core.                    |
| `@mailquilt/renderer` | The core.                                     |
| `@mailquilt/core`     | Nothing else from Mail Quilt.                 |

`core` and `renderer` need no DOM, so they run in Node as well as in a browser. Installing `renderer` on a server doesn't bring the editor with it.

## The editor in your app

Install `@mailquilt/editor`, or `@mailquilt/react` in a React app. The [quick start](/docs/quick-start) has working code for a bundler, a CDN and React.

```bash
npm install @mailquilt/editor
```

If the editor is a page of its own, the [Shell](/docs/shell) is that page ready-made, and it comes in the same two packages.

## HTML on your server

The editor's `exportHtml()` gives you HTML in the browser. To make it on your server from the JSON you saved, install the renderer there:

```bash
npm install @mailquilt/renderer
```

[Render on a server](/docs/render-on-a-server) shows how, and when you'd choose it over exporting in the browser.

## Emails as data

To create an email without the editor, or to check one before you save it, install the core:

```bash
npm install @mailquilt/core
```

[Change emails in code](/docs/change-emails-in-code) covers creating an email, applying Commands to it and checking one that came from somewhere you don't control.