Building a visual email builder for EspoCRM – looking for feedback

[rabii]

A few days ago I asked how people are currently handling email template creation in EspoCRM.

Based on the feedback, I've been working on a visual email builder extension that allows users to build email templates without needing to edit HTML directly.

The current prototype supports the following content blocks:

• Heading (H1, H2, H3)
• Text (Markdown supported)
• Button
• Image
• Avatar
• Divider
• Spacer
• HTML
• Columns
• Container

The interface works by allowing users to add and configure content blocks visually, with a live preview of the resulting email.

My goal is to make it easier for non-technical users to create professional email templates while still allowing advanced users to customise layouts when needed.

Before I continue refining it, I'd be interested to hear which features would be most valuable to the community:

• Dynamic merge fields (e.g. {contact.name})
• Branding colours / brand themes
• Image or media gallery
• Reusable content blocks
• Pre-built template layouts
• Something else?

Looking forward to hearing from you all. I guess this is the missing part in espocrm to build beautiful responsive emails.

[jamie]

You're a braver man than me, i remember back in the day doing nicely formatted HTML email being a dark art

* Yes, branding is very important, colours, but also fonts
* Ability to truly embed images would be nice
* Dynamic merge fields but also auto marked up fields, ie <a tel or <a mailto

Suggestion for version 2
* would be some kind of standardised footer that gives a standard format but inputs each user's details
* some kind of tracking so we can see when emails are read
* Unsubscribe functionality

best of luck with this noble endeavour

[rabii]

Thanks for teh feedback mate. I had this in mind for months and then started working on it - tough one but i enjoy it. will make sure all feature you mentioned above will be included

for v1

* Working on implementing a branding color on main email layout and then will be inherited by button - links etc
* Fonts already implemented (system fonts readable by all email clients) - working on adding more modern fonts like Inter - Lato etc
* Ability to truly embed images would be nice (Image block already accept a url for the image) but implementing espocrm side rendering modal to insert image from the attachment (only valid images) or allow to upload new images.
* Dynamic merge fields but also auto marked up fields, ie <a tel or <a mailto (cool will take this into consideration when implementing the fields merging feature).

Suggestion for version 2
* would be some kind of standardised footer that gives a standard format but inputs each user's details - Yes in V2 will introduce module or block components (predesigned) components.
* some kind of tracking so we can see when emails are read - will think about this (usually this should be on campaign side i guess)
* Unsubscribe functionality (already exist in espocrm as a placeholder) so will need just to be inserted.

If you thought about any other feature please share it - would appreciate it.

[jamie]

if your enjoying it more power to you. Just remember to test on Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, Hotmail,..... that's why i gave up, though there are some online tools that can help but i haven't used em in 15 years

Could you use Google Fonts? i know our font is central to our branding, Open Sans or nothing....
Also including something like Font Awesome would be cool

if you have linked images, then you can use that for tracking

Block components are cool, but it's mostly the footer i'd use yesterday, just like our branding/logo/socials and the person's name/phone number/ postion and maybe a legal sub footer

and don't forget non-Roman alphabets and arabic/hebrew ltr

on that thought for v3 would be multi languge options, ie one email in 3 or 5 languages that gets sent depending on the contacts language settings, but thats maybe a bit advanced for your project

lots of power to you for this !

[rabii]

Just remember to test on Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, Hotmail (Yes this is the most important part is how email is rendered in outlook as it has own rendering engine which doesn't support modern css).

Could you use Google Fonts? i know our font is central to our branding, Open Sans or nothing.... Yes most modern fonts are google fonts

Also including something like Font Awesome would be cool - they are not supported in old client like outlook - after research dropped it as i found that most email client won't render the svg icons properly. maybe in the future V2 another way around it


Block components are cool, but it's mostly the footer i'd use yesterday, just like our branding/logo/socials and the person's name/phone number/ postion and maybe a legal sub footer - Got you

non-Roman alphabets and arabic/hebrew ltr (Will add to the list)

on that thought for v3 would be multi language options, ie one email in 3 or 5 languages that gets sent depending on the contacts language settings, but thats maybe a bit advanced for your project - there is a big bridge between the builder engine and espocrm - will be hard to add such feature - maybe one workaround would be duplicated templates in different languages.


Thanks

[jamie]

Just remember to test on Outlook, Thunderbird, Gmail, Hotmail (Yes this is the most important part is how email is rendered in outlook as it has own rendering engine which doesn't support modern css).

Could you use Google Fonts? i know our font is central to our branding, Open Sans or nothing.... Yes most modern fonts are google fonts

Also including something like Font Awesome would be cool - they are not supported in old client like outlook - after research dropped it as i found that most email client won't render the svg icons properly. maybe in the future V2 another way around it


Block components are cool, but it's mostly the footer i'd use yesterday, just like our branding/logo/socials and the person's name/phone number/ postion and maybe a legal sub footer - Got you

non-Roman alphabets and arabic/hebrew ltr (Will add to the list)

on that thought for v3 would be multi language options, ie one email in 3 or 5 languages that gets sent depending on the contacts language settings, but thats maybe a bit advanced for your project - there is a big bridge between the builder engine and espocrm - will be hard to add such feature - maybe one workaround would be duplicated templates in different languages.


Thanks

to test on Outlook... yeah, that's why I no longer do HTML email development and why your plugin will be so cool

Yeah, the icons/emoji's one is a bit of a pain. You could use emojis, but they look different to all and the complete list isn't supported, perhaps just embedded PNG is the best way to go...

Yeah, mutable templates might be the way forward for languages, though we need to have some way to automatically pick which one to send out based on the contact's language. Perhaps they are grouped together with a language tag that is automatically selected... something to think about in the future, but not needed in version one, and only applicable to people who work with many countries. An example that we would use it for would be to send our customer an invoice in their language, or send an email to customs and import explaining what a shipment is about. We currently do this in english tough doing it in the native language would be so much more professional and might actually get the darn customs agent to let the shipment through without inspecting it for a month! i'm talking about places like china, india and italy that just love bureaucracy

You're amazing, mate. I'm very much looking forward to plugging in

[Kharg]

Would love to see some screenshots