Item: Litmus
Rating: 8
Author: Lansing Moore Jr.

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I have used Litmus at previous employers and as a freelance email marketer primarily for template building. Generally, I am the sole email marketer at work so I have not had an occasion to use their collaboration features. Generally, I rely on Litmus for having the most comprehensive email client previews of any product and having an easy-to-use code editor with a live preview panel and the ability to upload image assets. Litmus supports QA so that I may migrate completed email templates to the ESP with confidence.

Pros and Cons

Up-to-date email client previews
Code editor (includes version tracking and an image library)
Content: their articles and white papers are at the forefront of email marketing best practices.

Navigating between projects could be easier.
Copying an existing template to create a new one is more difficult than in ESPs I use.
You can't send true test messages, you can only share a link to the browser preview and client previews.

Return on Investment

Litmus provides a way for me to build templates for freelance projects where I do not have full access to the client's ESP.
Litmus reliably has articles published for the latest technical questions I have such as designing for dark mode and how to respond to new privacy features and legislation.
Litmus includes accessibility criteria in its QA features that help me produce more accessible emails.

Marketing Strategy

We use other platforms, such as Looker, for data, or the built-in reporting capabilities of our ESP. I have not used Litmus' reporting features and I have very little familiarity with them.

Collaboration with Litmus

No, I work as the sole email marketer most of the time, whether as a full-time employee or as a freelancer, so I have had no need for collaboration features beyond sharing previews with approvers and clients.

Key Insights

Do you think Litmus delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Litmus's feature set?

Yes

Did Litmus live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Litmus go as expected?

I wasn't involved with the implementation phase

Would you buy Litmus again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Sailthru, Sublime Text, Looker

Likelihood to Recommend

If you need to hand-code an email template, Litmus is the best product I can suggest. Between the client previews and the community forums of other email marketers troubleshooting their HTML, it's one of few products truly designed with email builders in mind. Litmus has a variety of other offerings, including free template libraries and project management tools, but you can find those elsewhere. Most commercial ESPs also have serviceable template libraries so some of their features are likely redundant to the professional email marketer.

A product by email marketers for email marketers

Overall Satisfaction with Litmus