This sort of application is the reason HTML emails come with a text segment that just says "Your reader can't render this email" instead of just putting the text in the text segment.
I would love to see more guides on how to do plain text email newsletters and emails in general. But I guess that ship has sailed a long time ago and HTML will stay in emails.
How to write email, a self-documenting guide
--------------------------------------------
* Write to the correct person. If you don't know who you
are addressing, go do more research.
* Don't waste their time. That means be polite, get
directly to your point, and ask for precisely what
you want from them.
* Make it clear what they can gain from you. Sometimes
that's just the pleasant feeling of helping a fellow
human out.
* Your From: address must work and be correct. The natural
reply to an email is another email. If you don't read
the replies, why are you bothering to send this?
All of the above are applications of one principle:
Treat people with respect.
At every point, you should ask yourself if what you are
doing conveys respect for the person you are communicating
with, or whether you are trying any means you think might
be effective to gain their attention. Respect does not
mean being effusive or obsequious; it means awareness of
the limited time they have to conduct business.
Once you've made your point, stop.
If it works well (I didn't test the generated emails) sell a license for us to download it and embed into our SaaS offerings. I don't want to use an ad-monitized service to host it; cater for the SaaS firms who don't want to build their own template editors.
Check out Bee Plugin [0] (it’s a hosted SaaS offering, no ads).
We’ve been using it for one year this week, and while pricey, it works as advertised and they’ve continued development adding new features. We have ~1k users using the plugin monthly with minimal gripes.
It's a nice front-end wrapper on MJML. It's even using the MJML sample template in this case. I appreciate the front-end work and I bet it would be helpful for some users who aren't great at writing code. I do wish it was a bit more forward in explaining the use of MJML in the project, especially in the About section.
In addition to HTML, extra care should be taken for plain text rendering as well. Many users disable HTML and images to minimize tracking and malware. I'd definitely prefer a well formated plain text email with the option of viewing in the browser or email client if desired.
I absolutely agree that plaintext email should be kept alive, but is it really "many" for 99% of companies? I'd be shocked if anyone I know told me they disable html emails, even when I do it myself most of the time.
That's correct, the original version was BSD-licensed and has been fully attributed to in the 'about' section. I needed to fix a number of bugs and change a few things to make it work on outpan and its filesystem.
feels a bit off to me, doesn't seem HN worthy to take a massive library that gives nearly all the functionality, make a few tweaks / bug fixes and present it on HN as something noteworthy.
I think a regex match on emojis in the subject line would be a good heuristic too. It's a good indicator of a marketing email. A bicep / unicorn especially so.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 91.6 ms ] threadWe’ve been using it for one year this week, and while pricey, it works as advertised and they’ve continued development adding new features. We have ~1k users using the plugin monthly with minimal gripes.
[0] https://beefree.io/bee-plugin
Mandrill's was OK, and so far, so has Postmark.
But nothing beats a hand crafted text template.
No, plain text will do just fine.
hn@ycombinator.com
You can discuss this with them to find out what your options are.