Why Developers Should Take Email Builders Seriously: My Experience with Stripo

When we talk about developer tools, we often think in terms of code editors, CI/CD pipelines, or frameworks. But email? That usually gets an eye-roll.

Yet, if you've ever tried building a responsive HTML email manually — with tables, inline styles, and hacks for Outlook 2007 — you know it's anything but trivial. The tools you use for email design can either streamline your workflow or eat up hours with layout bugs and rendering inconsistencies.

Recently, I overhauled the way I build emails, and I think it's worth sharing.

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The Email Design Pain You Don’t See Coming

Email clients are weird. They behave more like browsers from 2005 than anything modern. CSS support is partial at best, JavaScript is off-limits, and layout is still mostly handled using tables.

When building templates for onboarding, newsletters, or transactional emails, I kept running into the same problems:

• Layouts breaking on mobile

• ESPs modifying my code after upload

• Lack of component reuse

• No way to collaborate with non-devs on the team

That led me to rethink the entire pipeline — and ultimately brought me to Stripo, a visual email builder that actually supports developer-friendly workflows.

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What Makes Stripo Stand Out (From a Dev Perspective)

Here’s why I found Stripo surprisingly useful — even as someone who prefers full control over my code.

1. Visual + Code Hybrid

You can switch between drag-and-drop and raw HTML editing. Perfect if you need to hand something off to marketing, but later fine-tune the code yourself.

2. Component Reuse

Stripo allows you to save and reuse custom blocks. This is huge when working on multi-language or multi-brand campaigns. No more "copy/paste and pray."

3. Exports That Work

Whether you’re sending with Mailchimp, Postmark, or via your own system — Stripo supports clean export to raw HTML, MJML, or direct ESP integration. No formatting loss. No broken layouts.

4. Smart Elements & AMP

Stripo lets you generate dynamic content blocks (e.g., product listings, blog digests) with structured input. It also supports AMP components like accordions and carousels — rare in most email tools.

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A Bit More Context

I’m not the only one who’s made this switch. I originally discovered Stripo through this Dev.to post that detailed someone else’s migration away from BeeFree. Their reasoning aligned with mine, and it pushed me to try it out.

Later, I summarized my full experience in this Medium write-up:
👉 Why I Chose Stripo Over BeeFree

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Where This Fits in a Developer Workflow

If you're working on:

• Transactional email templates for a SaaS product

• Automated onboarding journeys

• Custom email logic with templating engines (like MJML or React Email)

• Collaborating with marketing or design teams

...then using a visual builder doesn’t have to mean giving up control. Stripo gives just enough abstraction to speed things up — while still letting you write and test real code.

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Final Thought

We put a lot of thought into our code stack — maybe it's time to give the same attention to our email stack.

If you're struggling with the repetitive parts of email design or want to test dynamic features without fighting Outlook, Stripo is worth a closer look.

Happy to hear what tools you’re using for email. If you’ve gone a different route — with MJML, custom frameworks, or even Figma exports — I’d love to learn more.