An email editor should be a library, not a subscription.
Sooner or later, an app that sends email needs a way for the people using it to design that email. Mail Quilt is the packages to build that with: a ready-made editor, and the document model and renderer under it, all yours to install and own.
The gap it fills
The polished editors you can embed are mostly products you rent. They charge by the month, load from someone else's servers, and keep the features you'll want next on a higher plan.
The open-source ones are often tied to one framework, or leave you with HTML as the only saved form of an email, which is hard to check and harder to change later.
Mail Quilt is MIT licensed, works in any framework, and saves each email as a documented JSON format that belongs to your app. The comparison sets it beside the alternatives, including where they're the better choice.
Six ideas it's built on
The document is the email
A saved email is a JSON document, not HTML. HTML is something the document can be turned into at any time, so your app is never left holding markup it can't edit again.
Every change goes one way in
A drag, a key press and a line of your own code all send the same kind of request, called a Command. The email accepts it or refuses it. Because there's one way in, undo works the same for all of them.
The grid is small on purpose
An email is Rows, Rows hold one to four Columns, and Columns hold Blocks. Nothing can be dragged to an arbitrary position, because email clients can't render arbitrary positions.
It refuses what it can't trust
Given a document it doesn't understand, the editor refuses it, tells your app why, and changes nothing. It never repairs an email quietly, so an auto-save in your app can't overwrite the original with a guess.
The editor is optional
The document model and the renderer run without a DOM. A server can check an email, change it or turn it into HTML without loading any editor code.
One editor for every framework
The editor is a Web Component, written once. The React component is a thin wrapper around it, and the Vue and Svelte ones will be too, so no framework gets a lesser version.
What it will never do
Mail Quilt is an editor. It's meant to sit beside the email service you already use, not to replace it.
- Send email, or manage the people you send it to
- Track opens and clicks, or run A/B tests
- Charge for a feature, or keep one back for a paid plan
- Host your emails, or need an account
Who makes it
One person builds Mail Quilt, in the open. That's why the roadmap has no dates on it, and why the first release is small: six Blocks, one framework component, and no testing in Outlook.
Everything is free and stays free. If the project ever takes money, it will be through sponsorship, and sponsors won't get features that others don't.
Bug reports, questions and requests all go to GitHub Issues, which is also where the roadmap lives.