As someone who built a similar open source project (grapesjs), this looks really good
Even with LLMs, generating raw HTML emails that render correctly across major email clients is still surprisingly hard, so great choice going with MJML.
Holy shit, it's you! Thank you, that genuinely means a lot coming from you!
GrapesJS is the forever OG that proved this whole space could be an embeddable SDK rather than a paywalled SaaS. It also standardized the palette/canvas/inspector layout that every serious visual builder now ships by default — including Templatical. I took direct inspiration from a few other patterns too: the block-as-first-class-citizen model, and the trait system, which maps almost 1:1 to how Templatical's custom blocks expose typed fields into the inspector.
And yeah — agreed on MJML. Building email layouts that work for most clients is notoriously hard. I think the people who built MJML absorbed an enormous amount of pain so the rest of us don't have to.
Yeah totally, we see the same thing. Most people don't phrase things the way an engineer would but funny enough, LLMs are often better than us at interpreting non technical instructions. What makes a big difference is giving the model context about what the user is actually looking at (current page, selected section, etc.), so it doesn’t have to guess. That way has a decent chance of doing the right thing.
Tools like Lovable are great for spinning up apps, but our focus is different: we’re mainly aiming at websites. Instead of generating a full React app, the editor outputs HTML/CSS and gives you both visual editing and AI assistance, so you’re not stuck relying only on prompts for small changes.
Thank you very much, really appreciate your kind words.
BTW I'd rather prefer to keep the "forever free" tier, there you have to use the subdomain and there also "Made with Grapedrop" label, so more people will use the free tier more visibility I gain, at least this is what I think.
Forever is a very long time. You should really consider changing that from 'free forever' to just 'free'. It's great that your plan is for it to be free forever, but as the saying goes life is what happens while you're busy making plans. (i.e. things could change and you don't want the backlash of having burned the 'forever' part in people's minds) Under promise, over deliver.
Even with LLMs, generating raw HTML emails that render correctly across major email clients is still surprisingly hard, so great choice going with MJML.
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