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Comparison

Templatical and GrapesJS both publish their source

Both are free, both run in your own bundle, and both can output MJML; their licences differ, as the table shows. The real question is whether you want an email editor or a framework to build one on. Everything below is checkable against public sources.

Open playgroundRead the docs

Templatical vs GrapesJS

  • Cost

    Templatical

    Free

    GrapesJS

    Free — the same

  • Licence

    Templatical

    FSL-1.1-MIT, converting to MIT two years after each release

    GrapesJS

    BSD-3-Clause — more permissive than ours today, with no restriction and no waiting period

  • Who runs the editor

    Templatical

    You, in your own bundle

    GrapesJS

    You, in your own bundle — the same

  • Source access

    Templatical

    Full source in a public repository

    GrapesJS

    Full source in a public repository — the same

  • Built for

    Templatical

    Email, and nothing else

    GrapesJS

    General web building — pages, apps, any HTML document; newsletters are one of its advertised uses

  • Email support

    Templatical

    Native. The block model is the email model.

    GrapesJS

    Through grapesjs-mjml — an official plugin from the GrapesJS org, covering 20 MJML components

  • MJML output

    Templatical

    Built in, via the MIT renderer

    GrapesJS

    Available through the grapesjs-mjml plugin

  • Merge tags

    Templatical

    Built in — picker, live labels, pluggable syntax

    GrapesJS

    Yours to build

  • Display conditions

    Templatical

    Built in, with live preview

    GrapesJS

    Yours to build

  • Reusable saved blocks

    Templatical

    Built in, over a storage provider you supply

    GrapesJS

    The Block Manager is a developer-defined palette; end users saving their own groups is yours to build

  • Test sending

    Templatical

    Built in, over a provider you supply

    GrapesJS

    Yours to build

  • Template quality linting

    Templatical

    MIT quality linter: accessibility, structure, links, deliverability patterns (not inbox placement), and email-client compatibility

    GrapesJS

    Yours to build

  • Email-client compatibility

    Templatical

    MJML for generated markup; caniemail checks for authored HTML/CSS; compiled HTML size check for Gmail clipping

    GrapesJS

    The same, through grapesjs-mjml — it compiles with MJML too

  • Language versions and translation

    Templatical

    Included: language versions in one template, filled by Translate through your own provider (an LLM, DeepL or a translation management system)

    GrapesJS

    Yours to build. The I18n module translates the editor’s own interface, not the email content

Best fit

Which one you should pick

Neither of these is the cheap option — they are both free. This is a question of what you want to spend engineering time on. If a reason in the right column is a requirement for you, use GrapesJS; it is the better fit and we would rather you knew.

Choose Templatical if

  • You are building an email editor specifically, and want the email-shaped features to already exist.
  • You want merge tags, display conditions, saved blocks, test sending and accessibility linting without building each one.
  • You want email-shaped previews — mobile and desktop, dark mode, merge tags resolved to sample values — rather than a generic canvas preview.
  • You want a drop-in init() call rather than a canvas to assemble an editor around.
  • You want email-sensible defaults out of the box rather than a blank framework to configure.

Choose GrapesJS if

  • You need more than email — landing pages, app screens, any HTML document. Templatical does email and nothing else.
  • You want layout freedom beyond MJML and can validate client support for the custom output you build.
  • You need a more permissive licence. BSD-3-Clause has no non-compete restriction and no two-year wait; ours does.
  • You want to control the editor framework itself, not consume a finished product.
  • You already run GrapesJS elsewhere and would rather have one editor across every surface.

On grapesjs-mjml? Bring your templates

If your GrapesJS setup already outputs MJML, that is the format Templatical works in natively — so an evaluation can start from your real designs.

Open playgroundRead the docs
Read the MJML migration guide

Verified on 8 August 2026 against grapesjs 0.23.4 and grapesjs-mjml 1.0.8 as published on npm. This page compares the open-source framework; GrapesJS also sells Studio SDK, a commercial embedded editor whose pricing is quote-only and therefore not compared here. The language versions row was checked on 3 November 2026 against grapesjs 0.23.8 as published on npm and the I18n documentation at grapesjs.com.

“Yours to build” means the capability is not provided out of the box, not that it is hard or unsupported — GrapesJS is a framework, and building on it is the point.

Sources:grapesjs.comnpm: grapesjsnpm: grapesjs-mjmlgrapesjs.com: I18n

GrapesJS is a trademark of its respective owner. This page is maintained by Templatical and is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by them.

This page is a snapshot, not a standing claim — including what we say GrapesJS does better. If anything here is out of date or wrong, open an issue.