Show HN: I built an open-source email builder, alternative to Beefree/Unlayer

eptityri 9 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

This is really nice, thanks for building. I will use that heavily :)

roh26it an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What do you use for the onboarding guide?

	▲	oahmadov an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Hand-rolled in Vue 3 using Claude Code :) I was considering IntroJS, but Claude Code generated a simpler version in ~120 lines — just @vueuse/core helpers (useLocalStorage, useIntervalFn) and focus-trap, no tour library.

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aeagentic an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Looks like a grapes fork?

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oahmadov an hour ago | parent [-]

No — built from scratch on Vue 3 + TipTap. Different data model entirely: Templatical stores templates as a typed JSON tree of blocks and renders them as MJML; GrapesJS is a generic HTML/CSS page-builder retrofitted for email via an MJML plugin.

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aeagentic 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

Thanks for the response, I will have a closer look! Maybe it's just the current UI Trends that look similar to me. Do you like grapes in general?

	▲	oahmadov 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, I get what you mean about UI. But honestly that similarity is also a selling point — people are used to how visual editors look and work. Shipping a drastically different UI is a hard sell. GrapesJS — the OG embeddable visual builder. Yes, I like it. I haven't used it recently, but I built production landing-page builders on top of it a while back. I saw they also have an email builder now and checked it just now. Looks and works fine, but you can tell it's a retrofitted approach from a landing-page builder. With Templatical I wanted to build something from the ground up, email-only.

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pratyaksh10 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

does it store our data persistently on your server/system

	▲	oahmadov an hour ago \| parent [-]
		No — and this is actually one of the real architectural differences from the closed-source competitors like Beefree and Unlayer. The SDK is fully client-side — it runs in your app, the JSON templates go wherever you decide to store them (your DB, S3, anything). Nothing touches my infrastructure. SDK also has zero telemetry. The Cloud tier on the roadmap (AI rewrite, real-time collab, MCP, saved modules, media library, comments) is opt-in — you only hit it if you actively sign up.

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mannanj an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Hi looks nice. I am in the process of building a email management system for a client with a small coaching base, and decided to go with Maily to integrate with the React and resend stack.

I hadn't heard of beefree or unlayer before this post. What would you say are the reasons we would want to use Templatical over our current integration or Beefree/unlayer?

Thanks.

	▲	oahmadov an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Thanks. Honestly, I hadn't heard of Maily until your comment :) Just spent a few minutes with it. Looks like a clean React-first editor. I can't directly compare it with Maily, but what I see from first glance is that it is a minimalist email template editor that gets the job done. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Beefree and Unlayer are paid services that offer powerful features like custom blocks, merge tags, display conditions, theming. The catch is most of those features sit behind enterprise tiers, and you're tied to their cloud render API to get HTML out. Templatical aims for that same feature set, open-sourced and self-hostable. No vendor render API — output is MJML, which is battle-tested across the major email clients. Check out the playground — it has templates showcasing different features. See if it suits your use case.