Hey, do you use a Email Builder for creating email campaigns ? Is it part of a routing solution or not? No, because I've just tested one, which isn't brand new, but which is going to make me... a lot of money deserves its own article: Beefree's Email Builder.
So no, I won't, or rather, I won't more to inflict on you a boring list of all the features of the Email Builder in question. No. Because it makes for long articles, and no one will bother reading them in their entirety. I'm going to concentrate here solely on the platform's initial advantagesand on its shortcomings in a second phase.
What sets Beefree apart from other Email Builders?
Rare design tools and options
- Dissociation of Desktop and Mobile values For example, you can specify a text size and internal or external margins for an element on Desktop, and choose to specify different values on Mobile. For example, an internal horizontal margin of
48pxfor a block on Desktop, but a horizontal internal margin of24pxfor the same block on Mobile. The same goes for text alignment. I like it, I like it, I like it, but really !!!!
- General content alignment options We're all used to having emails centered in the (pre)visualization window of our email solutions. But it doesn't have to be that way! And Beefree's Email Builder FINALLY gives us the choice! You can now opt for a left-hand alignment in the body of the page if you wish: I like this, because it's really the little trick that can make you stand out in the BAL.
- Integrated AI visual generator I'm not a big fan of AI-generated visuals: yep, so there's no need for a Dall-e, Midjourney or other account. Personally, I'm not a big fan of AI-generated visuals: it's detrimental to the work of designers and artists, and the result is rarely up to scratch (for the moment at least). I hesitated to include this feature in the shortcomings of the Beefree Email Builder. But I'm not sure you'll see it in the same light... I'm not judging, I'm observing! 😀
Please note: feature available only with the Business Plan! - Integrated image editor get ready to benefit from an image editor included DIRECTLY in the tool! It's life-changing, and you know it: no more need to go through an email template on FigmaPhotoshop, Sketch, or any other creative software to (basically) rework your visuals: resize, crop, rotate, draw, add shapes, text, drawings, rounded corners IN the Beefree Email Builder, without leaving it.
- Search for royalty-free images based on Pexels and Pixabayelement, Beefree's Email Builder proposes a Image or from the Media Library, a search field leading to a well-stocked library of royalty-free visuals. Well, let me tell you, I find this very relevant for customers who wouldn't have the possibility of acquiring paid-for visuals, which are often very expensive. So I salute the initiative!
- Hamburger menu on mobile It's a great tool: with some nice little graphic formatting options, I think it's pretty stylish! I know Beefree isn't the only one to make this element available, I'm just saying that the formatting options and its use in the tool stand out from the crowd!
Better accessibility for your e-mails
- Email language management From the general options of your email, you can set the value of the attribute
langtag, which will be integrated into the<html>of the final code: a perfect best practice for enabling screen readers to voice rendering of email content in the "right" language. - Anticipation of reading direction On each text element (such as the features Paragraph or Title), I find the "text direction which allows me to make sure that reading direction must be respectedno matter what the opening environment! One more good point!
- Dark Mode preview You'll find a switch in Preview Mode that lets you activate Dark Mode to preview the behavior of your email in Dark Mode. What a delight!
Simplified collaboration
- Defining roles and authorizations/restrictions : Six levels are possible by adding users to your account: Owner, Admin, Manager, Editor, Contributor, Viewer. And, as you can imagine, depending on the role defined, the permissions will clearly not be the same. For example, a Editor or Contributor will be able to modify the content of an email, but will not be able to "unblock" or "block" content, a permission reserved for Owner, Admin and Manager. Clever! But only possible from the "Professional and the superior formulas of the Email Builder...
- Inserting comments This is a feature I've rarely seen before! Hey, it rhymes! And to be honest, I think it could come in handy for a lot of users. It makes the tool really collaborative, and I'm all for that! (it rhymes less).
- PDF export of design Email Builder: it's silly, but I've been asked so many times for the PDF version of an email, that I thought it might be useful to be able to generate it from the Email Builder (and therefore skip the graphic design stage to create emails immediately on the Beefree Email Builder).
Optimized user experience
- Hide an element When I decide to hide an element on mobile, and switch to mobile display on the platform (not in Preview), the element is not absent, but blurred: I love it! That's the kind of detail that goes a long way. I can be reassured that I've already planned for this element, but that it won't be present on mobile.
- Easy protocol management If you want to add a link to an image element, for example, you'll have ONLY four choices: "Open web page, "Send email, "Make call, "Send SMS. And I say it's very strong, because not only does it force you to respect the only protocols supported in email marketingBut what's more, depending on the choice you make, the option fields adapt automatically, making it easier for you to get started:
- fields "Mail to, "Subjectand "Body in the case of "Send email
- a field "Tel in the case of "Make call
- fields "Tel and "Message in the case of "Send SMS
- Sending proofs With just two clicks, you can send your email to one or more (max. 5) test addresses. For a Standalone Email Builder, I have the impression that this is quite rare, so I'll take the liberty of pointing it out! And the reception is immediate, frankly... Hats off!
- Real-time co-editing possible It's only available on the "Business" and "Enterprise" plans, but imagine being able to work on the same email with four hands (or more!). It's pretty crazy.
- History and versioning I don't know what criteria the Beefree Email Builder uses to define a new version (manual save? Builder exit?), but it's very, very nice to be able to navigate easily through past versions of the email: if only because you've been asked to delete the block on product details, and then, well, it would be nice to put it back!
- Multilingual management : Yes, you read that right. From the Plan "ProfessionalYou can prepare several language versions of your texts, urls, alternative texts for your images, image paths... within a single email. And when it's time to export, you choose the version you want. Combined with the co-edition mentioned above, it's a real winner!
- Insertion of non-breaking spaces In the rich text bar (available when using a text element), the "Nonbreaking space" feature is particularly useful: no need to use an impossible-to-remember keyboard shortcut, or any other method to prevent a string of words from breaking!
- Image hosting You're going to tell me "Like Stripo?"And you're right. But all the same, it's a nice gesture, go figure: even the Starter plan benefits from this feature (with a limit of 20GB per month, admittedly, but that's not bad). I think it's worth mentioning!
Valuable code options and features
- Adding UTMs In the "Details of the email (tab
), you will find under UTMs five fields : Campaign Source, Campaign Medium, Campaign Name, Campaign Termand Campaign Content. All you have to do is fill them in and save to apply the UTM parameters to the links in your e-mail, and then retrieve your tracking data. It's a no-brainer, but a good one! - Inserting variables and links specific to ESPs Not only do you have the option of inserting variables and links specific to ESPs in the text (such as email variables, first name, last name, etc... or unsubscribe links, mirror page, preference center, etc... from Mailchimp, Sendgrid, Campaign Monitor, Hubspot...)In addition, you can declare your own variables and special links in your account settings, so that you can easily find them when editing your emails. Superb!
- Packaging set-up Sometimes, email platforms give you the option of using conditions to display a section (or block) in your email. Well, with Beefree's Email Builder, you can add these conditions to your sections, so that you'll immediately find the conditioning in the exported code. It's royal!
- Copy and paste code This means that when you click on "Export", you can choose to copy the HTML code, without having to download a zip with the HTML file and images. Of course, this includes having the images hosted on Beefree's servers, but it's a nice touch nonetheless!
A beautiful sketch of Design System Email
- Automatic style generation When you first create your account to use the Beefree Email Builder, you're asked a few questions: name, first name, what you're going to use the tool for, etc. And among these questions, the url of your website. A few graphic "elements" (major hues and colors, typography) are automatically retrieved and added to your account styles. How convenient!
- Registering a charter In the account settings, there's a "Styles" tab: and here, clearly, we're in another Game. You can save a palette of colors (infinite, I have a feeling), the size of your different title levels, the typography of your titles, texts and buttons, the background and text colors of your buttons... In short, so many general styles that you can pre-save to find them automatically as soon as you drag and drop content from the Beefree Email Builder.
- Element restriction In the same way as you can save styles, you can also "deactivate" typefaces and keep only those that your graphic charter allows.
- Recorded AND synchronized sections Imagine being able to save sections. Now, you're going to tell me: "Yes, but there are plenty of Email Builder programs that offer this! Yes, I agree. You can often save sections as "favorites", and reuse them in other emails where you modify them. But imagine "synchronized" sections: a single modification on the section in question, and this has repercussions on all your campaigns including an instance of this section. Very practical!
What are the shortcomings of the Beefree Email Builder?
A few code limitations for the more technical among us
- Mobile version management with Media queries : well, it's almost a question of philosophy.
- Either we leave much more choice on the design of the email and in particular on mobile design thanks to the insertion of media queries (but to the detriment of rendering on certain environments that don't support media queries or suppress the
<head>). - Either we impose a lot of graphic constraints right from the design phase, but we can then offer a mobile version on ALL opening environments thanks to a Spongy coding method (even if it means adding a few media queries to improve rendering a little more on opening environments that support them).
I understand that the Beefree Email Builder relies on the first solution, allowing a little more room for design possibilities... But beware of "mobile rendering" 🙂
- Either we leave much more choice on the design of the email and in particular on mobile design thanks to the insertion of media queries (but to the detriment of rendering on certain environments that don't support media queries or suppress the
- No HTML code editor Unfortunately, there's no way of modifying the HTML code of an element or module directly within the tool. Once you've discovered this kind of capability in other Email Builder programs, you'll quickly get the hang of it, especially if you're a bit of a #EmailGeek like mizot'...
(Slightly) fewer connector choices
- Send to your routing solution 23 possible connections to date (much, much less than Stripo, I grant you). ActiveCampaign, Braze, Brevo, Constant Contact, Hubspot, Iterable, Mailchimp, Klaviyo... Well, there's plenty to choose from, isn't there? We're not going to be picky either! Well, yes, actually, that's kind of why we're here... 😀
A few more UX limitations
- No integrated email rendering If you were expecting full rendering on Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Outlook.com, Thunderbird, AOL... and all possible variations according to browsers or viewing media, you're in for a disappointment. If you want to be sure of rendering your creatives on all opening environments, you'll need to take out a license with a dedicated email preview platform (such as Litmus or EmailOnAcid).
- Minimalist InteIligent Verification or "Smart Check This little feature (in Beta version at the time of writing), which is supposed to scan email content for performance, accessibility and UX issues, is nice, but its recommendations are a little weak. To give you an idea, I've put a text in the same color as the background color, and I don't get any alerts... But otherwise it's got potential!
- Generation promise from
altpar AI non tenue I've heard about a feature for writing alternative texts using Artificial Intelligence, but to be honest, I can't find it in the tool. That's bad luck, because I'm a sucker for things that improve accessibility!
Some design constraints to note
- Impossible to enter the width of visuals in pixels : Hey yes, the width of your images can only be manipulated as a percentage, unless you plan your visual at the right size from the start... And finally, this limitation also has a good side:
- In the end, there's no such thing as pixel-perfect rendering, and that's not the most important thing. What counts is that the message is conveyed, and that the rendering is consistent with the initial design.
- Planning images in the right dimensions right from the start means you don't have to call up images that are too big for what they'll end up displaying. And therefore, (most of the time) less heavy images. Ahhhhh, I like that!
- Too much AI Artificial intelligence in text editing, in visual generation... Fortunately, I can't find it here in object and preheader creation! I'm getting a bit fed up with seeing this type of option used for everything: what if we tried to give preference to the homemade, the artisanal, the hand-rolled under the armpits? Have we become so incapable of writing a few lines of paragraphs or well-formulated headlines?
- A slightly outdated editing panel? Yes, I put that question mark, because it's actually a very subjective opinion. It reminds me of the people who come to visit when you put your apartment up for sale and tell you "Ahhh yeahiiiiiis, I don't really like the living room in yellow like that làààààà...". We don't really care, because in the end, it's (perhaps) not the most important thing for users...
Price: a premium Email Builder
With a Plan Professional at 30$/month, and a Plan Business At 160$/month, Beefree is clearly in the upper echelons of standalone email builders, but you have to pay for quality! What's more, there's an abundance of ready-to-use email templates (over 1700 to date), so in a way, it's justified too! I haven't mentioned it so far because I'm concentrating on email marketing, but you can also build pages with Beefree. Inevitably, then, this kind of Periglioni's "little plus"..
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Our final review of Beefree Email Builder
Beefree's Email Builder has nothing to be ashamed of in terms of capabilities and features - far from it! If you'd like to try them out, not only can you sign up for a free account "Starterbut you can also take advantage of a 15-day trial of the "Business it's a great gift! Discover the different Plans to take advantage of all functionalities of the Beefree Email Builder, and come back to see me so that I can take care of everything, that'll be easier!
And in case it's still not clear to you: we don't work for Beefree. Nor for Stripo. Nor for any Email Builder. We're not being paid for this article, because we're independent and want to remain objective. I hope you'll find this clear throughout this article.
