9 go-to real-time collaborative email design tools: Features, prices, and ratings

Stripo

If you are looking for a versatile, easy-to-use email collaboration solution, Stripo is an option worth trying.  It has an intuitive drag-n-drop interface for fast email design, reusable content modules for lightning-fast email design, capabilities for creating interactive components (games, carousels, forms, etc.), and an email client testing tool for validating email rendering across different platforms and clients. All of these features are available to multiple employees (2 in the Basic, 3 in the Medium, 10 in the Pro, and the Prime pricing plan for enterprises that have hundreds of people) who can participate in designing and editing.

The list of integrations Stripo provides is very impressive (over 90 ESPs), and you can export email either directly or download it as PDF, HTML, or an image.

There are also numerous advanced capabilities, including email signature and calendar link generators, an email campaign holiday list calendar, the option to set up email notifications on desktop or mobile, and more. The vendor stays abreast of current IT trends, offering an AI Assistant and an AI subject line generator. 

Pricing and rating

There is a free plan with minimal functions. For more advanced capabilities, there are Basic ($20 per month), Medium ($45 per month), and Pro ($95 per month) pricing plans. 

The platform has high ratings (from 4.8 to 4.9 out of 5) on Capterra and G2, and a somewhat lower rating (4.6) on Trustpilot. Reviewers emphasize its ease of use, excellent value for money, and mobile-friendliness.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• real-time co-editing and version history;
• intuitive editing;
• high customization;
• mobile responsiveness;
• wide marketing tools integration options;
• reusable time-saving modules;
• custom roles and adjustable access levels;
• AI to help with drafting email sequences, generate ideas for subject lines and preheaders, and adjust the overall tone of copy.

Cons:

• limited functionalities of the Free plan.

Personal experience

Convenient logic of horizontal stripe as a customizable structural block of email.

Why reinvent the bicycle if somebody somewhere had already created something similar to your needs? Way easier to find a suitable template and repurpose it than to create it from scratch.

Well thought-out collaboration role management meant to minimize editing fuss.

As well as a version history.

Mailchimp

This behemoth in the realm of email marketing offers two dedicated email design tools for its users. Legacy Builder (now often referred to as Classic Builder) is preferred by experts who favor structured, traditional layouts with 600px templates. In contrast, New Builder is loved by employees who value speed, flexibility, and modern design, and relies on 660px templates created with the help of AI. Both offer drag-n-drop email creation, reusable templates, and collaborative email crafting.

The solutions differ in the roster of features, with Legacy Builder retaining such blocks as Image Groups, Image Cards, and RSS Header/Items, while New Builder contains Survey, Apps, and specialized code blocks. The choice of tool is influenced by personal and brand preferences, but you should note that the company has not released updates for its Legacy Builder since last year. 

Pricing and rating

Core features of both tools can be employed free of charge. To get access to a more advanced gamut of functionalities, you can subscribe to Essentials ($6.5 a month), Standard ($10 a month), or Premium ($175 a month) plans.

Capterra gives Mailchimp email builder 4.5 out of 5. The most highly praised features of the tool are its user-friendliness, a wide variety of pre-built templates, and numerous integrations. 

Pros and cons

Pros:

• all-in-one platform;
• robust integrations;
• AI tools.

Cons:

• limited free plan;
• sluggish phone support for low-tier plans.

Personal experience

Pretty standard email builder, though it lacks free templates.

340+ integrations, which is quite enough for any needs.

When having trouble, you can just ask support to fix it for you by granting temporary access to your account, without all this back-and-forth chatting or emailing “try this or that”.

Beefree

By opting for Beefree, you get not only an email design tool but also solutions for building landing pages and one-page websites. And you can enjoy all of them with no technical skills in CSS or HTML. That is why the platform is a good choice for marketers and designers aiming to craft transactional, promotional, and marketing messages.

As for email creation, the suite relies on a drag-n-drop interface and allows for role-based collaboration within dedicated workspaces. Beefree’s unquestionable strengths are its huge library of templates (1,700+) and its ability to store fonts, color palettes, and logos, so maintaining brand consistency with the tool is a cakewalk. Plus, you can create custom designs and easily transform layouts.

Beefree is honed for exporting directly to both ESP and marketing tools (for instance, HubSpot, Salesforce, Klaviyo, and others). You can also enlist the help of an integrated AI assistant for copy creation, translation, and SEO optimization.

Pricing and rating

You can use the Starter free plan for creating occasional projects. For more consistent efforts, there are Professional ($25/month), Business ($134/month), and Enterprise (custom price) tiers. The Professional and Business come with a 15-day free trial.

The suite has a checkered assessment. On G2 and Capterra, it is 4.7–4.8, while Trustpilot reviews give BeeFree a much lower rating (3.4). The most valued features are excellent usability, great UX, and outstanding customer service. 

Pros and cons

Pros:

• high-quality templates;
• design flexibility;
• platform agnostic.

Cons:

• limited free plan;
• high cost of paid tiers.

Personal experience

Simple interface that you quickly get used to.

Another collab-oriented builder designed to ease the review process without losing details.

Smart Check is a nice feature to offload your pre-send checklist to the software.

Unlayer

This tool, often utilized as a white-label editor, is perfect for businesses and SaaS platforms looking to create, customize, and deploy dynamic marketing content and emails without coding. Its drag-n-drop nature, an immense library of 1,800+ pre-designed templates, and responsive design capabilities allow even non-tech staff to craft emails, promotional sales, and newsletters that display well on desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Multiple users can work on content creation in real time, leaving comments, making suggestions, and managing approvals.

Products built with Unlayer are compatible with over 90 ESPs, and designs can be exported as images, PDFs, HTML, or JSON files. Moreover, subject lines, images, and texts can be generated by in-built AI tools that create content aligned with the brand voice.

Pricing and rating

There is a free starter plan, as well as the paid Launch ($250 a month), Scale ($750 a month), and Optimize ($2,000 a month) levels, each with a 14-day free trial. 

G2’s rating of Unlayer is 4.4. What reviewers appreciate most is the tool’s ease of use, real-time previews, and reusable content section.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• SaaS integration;
• strong customization;
• great productivity.

Cons:

• limited free version;
• high pricing.

Personal experience

An interface with a dark mode!

Easy switching between editing modes.

A wise (and unique) solution for tracking usage statistics.

Figma

By itself, Figma isn’t a dedicated email design solution, prioritizing UI/UX design and prototyping for websites and mobile apps. However, its core capabilities perform well when used to create responsive email layouts (using Auto Layout) that are 600px wide. Besides, the vendor provides a range of plugins to ensure its designs play well with tools such as Mailchimp, Klaviyo, and HubSpot. In addition, the vibrant Figma community offers a slew of free templates and components (footer, headers, CTA buttons, and more).

Figma also shines as an email collaboration tool, with shared assets, styles, and advanced vector graphics that developers, designers, and other stakeholders can use in real-time during whiteboarding and brainstorming. As a result, experts can work together in multiplayer mode, presenting ideas and making design choices on the fly through FigJam and Figma Slides. 

Pricing and rating

Figma’s Starter plan is free. The monthly price for each paid tier (Professional, Organization, and Enterprise) depends on whether you use the tool in the Collab Seat, Dev Seat, or Full Seat, with each option becoming more expensive.

Similar to BeeFree, Figma users have different opinions about the tool's evaluation. Reviewers on G2 and Capterra rate it as 4.6–4.7, whereas on TrustPilot, the solution earned only 2.5. Users commend its UI/UX design capabilities, prototyping flexibility, and collaborative capabilities.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• cloud-based;
• cross-platform;
• extensive plugins.

Cons:

• steep learning curve;

Personal experience

It is great to have a bird's-eye view of all your design versions and to preview individual ones without zooming in and then zooming back out.

Just an enormous amount of community-made stuff to dig into in search of a fitting template.

Universal components are a nice, functional alternative to brand-design settings.

Tabular

If your personnel consists of non-tech employees, Tabular is your natural choice. What can be easier than leveraging a simple drag-n-drop visual editor (much like Canva) tool to craft transactional and marketing emails for your campaigns? Using it, they can design, preview, and export emails to popular ESPs (Mailchimp, Mailsend, HubSpot, Postmark, and more) for recipients who open them either on desktop or smartphone. And they can build mobile-first layouts ideal for optimal UX and readability. All custom blocks can be saved for reuse in other campaigns. Besides, email data is organized in tables, which streamlines and facilitates search and retrieval.

Tabular collaboration capabilities are also up to the mark. Teams can store files in shared projects, invite members to work on them, and manage access by assigning roles.

Pricing and rating

Tabular’s pricing system is based on four levels: the lowest is free, and the rest are paid. A monthly subscription to the Plus costs $29, to the Pro costs $42, and to the Organization costs $99 plus local taxes.

Users on G2 give Tabular a 4.8 rating, while the only review on Trustpilot (where assessments are traditionally lower) rates the tool at 3.7. People like modern template design, a wide range of integrations, and superb UI/UX.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• no-code;
• tabular email data arrangement;
• multiple integrations.

Cons:

• small choice of templates.

Personal experience

Comfy tree-like structure navigation to avoid endless scrolling up and down to check each block.

A checklist for the ones overwhelmed by work is always nice to have.

Rarely seen smart export manager.

Postcards (Designmodo)

The Postcards tool produced by Designmodo has everything for quick and issue-free email creation: a drag-n-drop functionality, intuitive interface, a collection of 100+ pre-made blocks (menus, headers, footers, etc.) with brand pre-sets, rich customization options (such as built-in image editor, color-saving feature, and over 900 fonts), and templates optimized for desktop, tablet, and mobile. Plus, there is an AI assistant for copy generation and text summarization.

Marketing and design teams can work on campaigns together, thanks to Postcards’ real-time preview and editing capabilities. Crafted emails can be easily exported as PDF or HTML files or directly integrated into major ESPs, including Gmail, Mailchimp, HubSpot, and more. 

Pricing and rating

Postcards pursues a very affordable pricing. The starting tier is free, and the paid ones come at a modest $16 a month (Plus) and $24 a month (Pro).

The tool's ratings are more than decent on G2 (4.7) but somewhat weaker on Trustpilot (4.1). What users like most about Postcards is its ease of use, flexibility in customization, and impressive graphics.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• no-code;
• fast workflow;
• editing flexibility.

Cons:

• absence of marketing automation feature;
• limited capabilities of the free plan.

Personal experience

User-friendly drag-n-drop without a steep learning curve.

Instead of using checklists, ask AI to point out necessary fixes

Dozens of “How to” explainer videos, which are great for inexperienced users.

Topol

The platform offers a standard roster of email design options, including a drag-n-drop editor, 400+ professionally designed ready-to-use templates, reusable custom blocks, and a collaborative suite. The latter is available as part of the paid plan (Topol Pro) and comprises several tools that enable joint work among marketers, which can proceed quickly thanks to team sharing and folder organization. The emails they build can be exported to HubSpot, GetResponse, Mailchimp, and other ESPs.

What sets Topol apart from other similar platforms is its set of SaaS-based plugins, in addition to the web-based editor. By choosing the plugin that suits their needs, developers can embed the tool into their apps to craft emails from the software they are used to.

Pricing and rating

The basic level is free, but you can expand its capabilities by subscribing to the Pro plan ($10 a month if billed annually) or the Team plan ($15 a month under the same terms). Plugins, however, are much pricier, ranging from $70 a month for the one for startups up to $300 for business.

On G2 and Capterra, Topol has a solid 4.5–4.7 rating. The only reviewer on Trustpilot gave it 3.7 out of 5. Users enjoy its intuitive interface, pre-fabricated templates, and customization flexibility.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• no-code;
• affordable pricing even on paid tiers;
• plugins for SaaS apps.

Cons:

• limited capabilities of the free plan;
• hard to manage link tracking.

Personal experience

Nothing is missing in the interface.

Good for international eCommerce: language versions with an adequate auto-translation.

Handy download and export.

ActiveCampaign

Armed with this tool, you can build and administer personalized campaigns rich with dynamic content and integrated multimedia elements. The solution offers an extensive toolset for it: no-code email creation, over 250 pre-made templates, branding asset import, interactive elements, AI-fueled customization to generate highly personalized texts, images, product recommendations, and CTAs, automated triggers with workflow automation, and more. You can also tailor specific sections of your email to different recipients, making it appealing to diverse audiences.

The vendor offers a money-back guarantee if the results you get after 30 days of using its solution aren’t satisfactory.

Pricing and rating

The Starter level is the most cost-effective ($15 a month), the Plus costs $37 a month, the Pro costs $79 a month, and the Enterprise costs $145 a month.

Users of different rating platforms often have polar opinions about ActiveCampaign. On Trustpilot, the index is only 2.8, whereas on G2 it is 4.4 and on Capterra, 4.6. The most valued characteristics of the tool are its good UI/UX, excellent automation capabilities, and multiple integrations.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• intuitive drag-n-drop email builder;
• deep content personalization;
• rich template library.

Cons:

• steep learning curve;
• high price.

Personal experience

An AI-first email builder that scrapes brand details and makes a draft for you.

AI creates a template based on your request, so you just need to replace the text and images.

And it also helps with pre-send check and quick polishing fixes.