Build vs. integrate: Choosing the right email editor for your product

Creating email functionality inside a product, whether it’s a SaaS platform, marketing tool, or internal communication system, comes with a big technical decision. At some point, you’ll need to figure out how your users will design and manage email content. And that’s where the question arises: do you build your own editor, or integrate an existing one?

Both paths are valid. Building gives you complete control, while integrating speeds things up and reduces overhead. But each choice comes with trade-offs around cost, flexibility, time, and long-term scalability.

Let’s talk about the pros and cons of both approaches. We’ll break down where each option makes the most sense based on your goals, resources, and product roadmap. Whether you’re launching something new or scaling an existing platform.

Pros and cons: Building your own email editor

Building your own email editor gives you full ownership. You control the codebase, the features, the UI, and the entire development lifecycle. That can be a big advantage, especially if your product has unique requirements that no off-the-shelf solution can fully support.

But custom development is also complex. It requires long-term investment and a team ready to maintain the product over time. Let’s start with the positives.

Pros

Full customization

When you build your editor in-house, you’re not limited by someone else’s roadmap. You can shape every part of the editor, interface elements, drag-and-drop logic, code view, user permissions, branding enforcement, to fit your exact vision. That means complete control over how the tool looks, works, and behaves inside your product.

Tailored functionality

Every product has its own user flows and business logic. By developing your own editor, you can tightly integrate features that align with your ecosystem. Want to enforce strict content rules? Need to support unique block types or dynamic logic? Building allows you to implement features that reflect your specific user needs, without compromises.

Competitive differentiation

If email creation is a central part of your product, a custom-built editor can help you stand out. You’re not offering the same set of tools as everyone else, you’re delivering a feature that reflects your platform’s identity. That differentiation can be a real advantage in a crowded market.

Сons

Resource intensive

Custom development takes time, money, and people. Building an email editor from scratch isn’t a side project; it’s a long-term investment. You’ll need experienced developers, designers, QA engineers, and likely product managers to plan, build, and test the full editor experience. And while that team is focused on this, they’re not working on other critical parts of your product.

Maintenance burden

Once your editor is live, the real work begins. Email client rendering issues, accessibility standards, security updates, and UI enhancements become your responsibility. Without a dedicated team to maintain it, performance and compatibility can quickly degrade. Keeping your editor up to date with changing email requirements becomes an ongoing challenge.

Risk of obsolescence

The email ecosystem evolves constantly. New clients, new features, changes to rendering engines, accessibility guidelines, all can make a once-modern editor feel outdated fast. If your team can’t keep up with these shifts, you risk falling behind. That could lead to broken templates, frustrated users, or even churn if email creation becomes too painful.

Pros and cons: Integrating an email editor plugin

If building your own editor feels like too much work, integrating a pre-built plugin is the faster alternative. Email editor plugins are designed to be embedded into existing products, giving your users the functionality they need without requiring you to reinvent the wheel.

These tools are already built, tested, and maintained by dedicated teams. You get a production-ready editor that can be customized and deployed quickly. Still, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Here’s a breakdown of the key advantages.

Pros

Quick deployment

Most plugins can be integrated into your product in days or weeks, not months. They’re designed with embeddability in mind, with clear APIs, UI configuration options, and technical documentation. This gives your team a head start and shortens the time to market.

Cost-effective

Compared to building an editor in-house, using a plugin comes at a much lower cost, both upfront and long-term. You don’t need to fund an entire development team, and you avoid the hidden costs of maintenance, bug fixing, and ongoing R&D (research and development).

Regular updates

When you use a plugin, you benefit from continuous improvements. The provider typically handles updates, bug fixes, performance enhancements, and compatibility adjustments, especially with tricky rendering across different email clients. Your users get a better experience, without the engineering overhead on your side.

Scalability

Most plugins are designed to support products at scale. Whether you're serving 100 or 10,000 users, the editor is built to handle growing demand. And as your product grows, you can often unlock additional features or customization layers through licensing, extensions, or higher-tier plans.

Сons

Limited customization

Even the best plugins have boundaries. While many offer flexible UI options and plugin extensions, there will always be core behaviors, design limitations, or logic rules you can’t fully control. If your product has highly specific needs or if you’re trying to offer something no one else does, you may find yourself constrained by what the plugin allows.

Dependency on third-party

Relying on an external plugin means your product is partially tied to another team’s roadmap and reliability. If the provider changes their pricing, sunsets a feature, or experiences downtime, it can directly impact your users. For businesses that need complete autonomy, this dependency can feel risky.

Integration challenges

While most plugins are built for smooth integration, real-world implementation can be more complex, especially when syncing user data, permissions, templates, or branding settings. Depending on your architecture, you might need custom backend work or dev time to align everything with your platform’s logic.

When to build vs. when to integrate

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to choosing between building an email editor and integrating a plugin. The right decision depends on your product’s vision, technical capacity, and the kind of experience you want to deliver to users. Below, we’ve outlined when it makes sense to build your own editor, and when it's smarter to integrate.

Building your own editor

Unique requirements

If your email workflow includes features or user experiences that are not available in standard editors, such as unusual logic blocks, niche integrations, or highly specific content flows, building your own solution may be the only way to support them without compromising.

Long-term investment

If your editor is central to your platform and you're prepared to invest in a dedicated team to maintain and improve it over time, owning the entire codebase makes sense. You’ll have full control over updates, performance, and direction as your product evolves.

Desire for differentiation

When you want your email editor to set your platform apart in the market, custom development gives you the freedom to build something unique. This can be a key advantage if you're competing on user experience or specialized capabilities.

Integrating a plugin

Time constraints

If speed is a priority, whether you're launching a new feature, MVP, or client-facing tool, a plugin gets you there faster. You won’t need to go through months of design, development, and QA cycles just to deliver core email functionality.

Budget limitations

Building a custom editor requires a serious budget, not just for development, but for long-term support. If you're working with limited resources, a plugin provides robust capabilities without the overhead of a full engineering team.

Standard requirements

If your email needs are common, such as drag-and-drop layout, modular content blocks, or mobile responsiveness, a plugin likely covers everything out of the box. You’ll get a solid, user-friendly solution that does the job without unnecessary complexity.

Build vs. integrate: Quick comparison

Sometimes it helps to see everything side by side. Here's a practical breakdown of how building your own editor stacks up against integrating a ready-made plugin:

Checklist: Questions to guide your decision

Still not sure which path is right for your product? Use this checklist to evaluate your current situation and priorities:

1. How soon do you need to go live?
   
   If speed matters, integration wins. Building takes time — often more than expected.
2. What’s your available budget for development and support?
   
   Custom builds require significant upfront investment and ongoing costs. Plugins usually offer more predictable pricing.
3. Do you have a team with experience in email HTML, UX, and cross-client rendering?
   
   If not, integrating an existing editor saves you from building that expertise from scratch.
4. Will your users need highly specific or unique features?
   
   If yes, a custom solution may be worth the effort. Otherwise, plugins often cover most common needs.
5. How important is full control over backend infrastructure and data handling?
   
   Some plugins offer self-hosting, but if total control is a must, building may be better.
6. Do you want to maintain and evolve the editor internally?
   
   If your team has the capacity and long-term vision, go for it. If not, let a plugin provider handle the roadmap.
7. Will email creation be a central part of your product or just one feature among many?
   
   For core products, owning the editor may make sense. For supporting features, plugins are often enough.
8. Do you need to ensure compliance with accessibility or enterprise-grade standards?
   
   Check whether your team is ready to build compliant code or if the plugin can handle this for you.

Answering these questions honestly will help you define what really matters and make a decision that aligns with your product goals, not just your technical preferences.

Wrapping up

Choosing between building your own email editor and integrating a plugin isn’t about which option is objectively better, it’s about what’s right for your product, your users, and your resources.

If you need speed, reliability, and a lean approach, a plugin is the clear choice. If your product demands complete control and you’re ready to invest heavily in development and maintenance, building your own could pay off in the long run.

Make the decision based on goals, not assumptions, and revisit it as your product evolves.