Dragon Responsive Email Designer

An email marketing tool for hobbyists and pros alike

$24.99 Manufacturer Aidaluu, responsiveemaildesigner.aidaluu.com Requirements OS X 10.9 or later

Last month we reviewed Equinux’s Mail Designer Pro ($89.99), an email marketing tool designed for people who’d rather leave the design to others. This month we have Dragon Responsive Email Designer, which is a more affordable option, and as happy working for HTML experts as it is for beginners.

The app is template based, with a good selection of different designs and a blank template for when you know exactly what you want to achieve. They look a little sparse in the preview, but they’re designed as skeletons rather than finished designs. It would be nice to have a few more to choose from, though. Once you’ve chosen your design, you’ll then see what looks very much like a desktop publishing system, with all the different elements in their own little frames. The inspector panel on the right-hand side gives you access to a library of elements you can add by dragging and dropping, object size and properties, and the layers that your design consists of – so, for example, you might have text on top of a button on top of an image inside a shape.

You can also copy and paste formatting from one element to another, which saves a great deal of time, and you aren’t stuck with the templates’ default fonts. Image handling is particularly good, with built-in cropping and special effects to brighten up your photos.

It’s very easy to pick up and supports HTML code inside the text boxes, and there are both desktop and mobile preview windows to check that your design works on big screens and little. You don’t get the extensive list of simulated screens that some rivals offer, but desktop and mobile is more than adequate unless you’re doing some really tricky design.

Once you’ve completed your design, you can export it to HTML, to MailChimp, or as a collection of source files. You can also send from within the app: all you need to do is provide your SMTP server settings and you can then send the message with the names in Cc or better still, Bcc fields. The app already knows some of the key providers such as iCloud and Hotmail, but you can add your own server details too.

We suspect HTML purists might balk at the extensive use of HTML tables, but there’s no doubting that Dragon makes it easy to produce surprisingly complex designs and to ensure they work on mobile as well as desktop.

the bottom line. If you need the convenience of templates but want to put your own stamp on things, Dragon is very good. Gary Marshall