The must-have tool for anyone developing or sending HTML email

Simply put, I couldn't do email development without Litmus.

Pros

Over the past few years, Litmus has gone from a tool that is useful to have sometimes, to the place where I do most of my work each day. The screenshot testing is simple to use and super useful - you simply send an email to your special litmus email address, and within minutes get screenshots showing how that email renders in a range of email clients. Given the difficulties of HTML email development, it's an essential part of my workflow. The advent of Litmus Builder, however, really elevated my opinion of the service. Although I was initially reluctant to do all my coding in a web-based editor, the super streamlined code-test workflow that Builder makes possible has reduced my development time at the same time as the projects that I work on themselves have increased in complexity.

Cons

There are a number of ways that I think the interface could be improved, and there's always additions that could be made to the editor, but really Litmus has no serious competitors.

Litmus is one of the best out there for email previews

Overall I have had great success learning how to get the most out of Litmus and I would recommend for just about any marketing and design group. This helps to preview email templates and design, and check through potential email issues prior to launching an email in real time - the overall benefits have been very helpful in generating the greatest email experience for our digital audience.

Pros

What I really like most is the ability to generate email previews across a number of different email clients, so that it helps to optimize the look and design of email templates - this has been super helpful for our marketing team.

Cons

There are a few features that would be nice to have included the basic subscription, such as the ability to test an html email for potential spam delivery - while it is a feature that we really like, we often feel like it should be part of the basic package in case we decide to go a level down in our subscription.

BEWARE

TERRIBLE experience. Hard-selling staff, severe contractual terms

Pros

The software does what it says it can do: validate email design across all typical platforms

Cons

Bait and Switch tactics: if your usage exceeds your plan's amount, they will automatically force you into a higher service level contract, without warning. In our case, this included switching from a monthly contract to an annual.

Good toolset by expensive

We had awful metrics for our email campaigns and used litmus to increase those in only a few short weeks.

Pros

Litmus had a great set of tools to make sure you maximize your email marketing campaigns. The spam testing and email box checker are top notch and we have seen good improvements in our campaigns.

Cons

Cost, the cost is very high and it is vary hard to justify the cost to other people in the organization. Although they see the value the cost can be upwards to thousands a year depending on your needs.

The best platform available for inbox previews

Pros

- Simple, powerful campaign approvals - Easy to use builder - Integrations with ESPs like Emarsys, SFMC, and others - Continually developing new features and enhancing existing ones (send tests directly from Litmus, proofs, convert checklist to builder, access post-rendered HTML, etc.)

Cons

- Cannot unsubscribe test email address directly within Litmus. Since we work on hundreds of accounts, we naturally forget to unsubscribe some test addresses. Our test addresses are probably subscribed to 20-30 mailing lists, and it is very time consuming to attempt to unsubscribe from those lists. This results in cluttered checklists and higher than necessary render counts. There should really be a quick unsub option on each checklist. - Spam tests are not quick to set up - Litmus Scope is an essential tool, but it is inconsistent and seems to be a largely ignored feature - No notification system for when campaign approvals are finished

Easy to use Email Testing

We needed to make sure emails were being universally received the way we wanted them to be, across all different platforms. It suits our needs perfectly. There was definitely some adjusting on the level of tests we would need to run, but the sales/support staff was very generous in working with us to identify the right level. Even if you go above the test "limit" you're not cutoff, so if you need to scale up Litmus will keep supporting you.

Pros

I'm a huge fan of the multiple platforms for testing emails- desktop, mobile, etc. They keep their testing suite up to date with all the new build releases for iOS and Android and you can run through the different potential platforms all at once with a single test. There's also pretty good engagement insight and A/B testing functionality. The interface is very intuitive so the tool is handy for getting more folks involved in the actual testing process without a complicated onboarding.

Cons

The intended use applications are great, my only "complaint" is with the data retention aspects. While Litmus has very clean compliance documentation, if you receive a data deletion request, the effectuation insofar as Litmus is a little manual/pedantic. But it's not unworkable.

Must Have For Email Marketing

I have been using it for 5 years now and have loved watching the company grow and get better.

Pros

Litmus is the best email marketing tool you can have. It gives you all the email previews you could ask for and then some. It has an editor built out just for developing emails and is implemented in most CRMs. Seriously worth the money.

Cons

I don't have anything negative to say about Litmus.

The Way Email Should Be

I've been using Litmus for over 5 years now, and it's an extremely helpful tool that I would recommend to every company that deals with email marketing. Knowing that your campaign is visually appealing across the board to your audience make a huge difference.

Pros

I love that it shows all devices (mobile and desktop) view of your email campaign and how they will render depending on that provider. This helps immensely when it comes to design, development and knowing the limitations.

Cons

Sometimes indiviual previews are down, but this is due to updating.

Great customer support

Pros

I made a mistake by signing up for a 'free' trail on litmus and misread some of the terms that came with that. One of them being that i would be signed up for a annual account costing me a considerable amount of money. However i missed this vital information since i was assuming this was a free/trail account. I contacted the support team of Litmus explaining my situation and they were very understanding and considerate. They said to refund my money and were sorry for the anxiety this mistake has caused me. Very helpful and very understanding. So for customer support i would give them a 10 out of 10!

Cons

Perhaps a little less use of the word ' free' during the sign up process. To prevent any mixups. You could also but a '*' after the word 'free' and clarify what 'free' in this context means.

Evaluate your coding efforts across multiple devices

We've used it for checking rendering issues for the emails that we design and code. My coder is heavily dependent on this tool.

Pros

Litmus has a great combination of all the devices and the multiple versions of devices that are most commonly used. We were able to fix all the rendering issues pretty quick.

Cons

It only shows what is wrong but doesn't suggest a coding fix for it. That would have been nice.

Great product, multiple uses

My teams use Litmus daily for creative routing, spam testing, and rendering tests. I am very pleased and would certainly recommend it.

Pros

The expanding functionality. We have made great use of the features Litmus has added such as the deliverability/spam testing and content review.

Cons

The mobile app is not great and you really need the desktop to get full experience.

Made my job easier

After being thrust into my email coding career I would send test emails only to the email accounts I had (Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Outlook). I was not confident in coding emails in the beginning so I started my search for a better way to test emails. Once I began using Litmus my coding life became less stressful and I became more confident when sending emails. I recommend Litmus for every email marketer. Litmus' resources have been a large contributor in helping me learn responsive design and coding. The Litmus community is a great place to have your coding issues answered or for you to help other coders with issues.

Pros

Email builder. Engagement, email clients, and geolocation analytics. Large selection of email provider previews. Spam Testing Community to have coding questions answered. Users Conference. Checklists to help make sure your email is sent without problems. Landing Page previews. Learning resources.

Everything you need for email development and testing

Pros

Litmus' Builder is worth a subscription in and of itself, after building with this tool it'll be difficult to use any other solution.

Cons

I find the ability to organize emails and campaigns somewhat lacking. There is no option to create folders or depth for this.

Solid email building and testing tool

Pros

User friendly builder Continuously improving based on customer feedback Great preview feature Analytics Checklist

Cons

Limited CAN-SPAM testing A few more metrics in analytics would be nice

The best email tester on the market

The best testing experience for emails, quite simple to get used to and mostly an accurate representation of emails.

Pros

It's test were VERY accurate and helped with my learning of developing with QA in mind.

Cons

Got the tests wrong from time to time, but is definitely the best of any email tester I have used

Great Tool

Great tool for learning to code email without worrying about messing things up.

Pros

As an email marketer, this is one of my favorite tools. We have a small marketing team with no real developer on staff. So it is great to have this tool as we learn and try new things without fear of breaking our emails in some inboxes.

Cons

We did have Litmus integrated with Marketing Cloud, but they upped their pricing out of our range.

Litmus makes emailer easier

Pros

I could not imagine getting through an emailer project without Litmus. To test your emailers, you can copy and paste directly into the tool, or it gives you an email to send them your emailer. Being able to email directly into Litmus is great! You can update the version of the emailer you're working on and send back to Litmus again and again. They let you pick from a wide variety of platofrms, which has been great when we've had clients with specific email programs.

Cons

Honestly, I have nothing bad to say about Litmus.

The best way to test emails across clients

Email testing across all email clients and mobile devices.

Pros

Emails not consistently great across every email client? Litmus solves that. You can easily send a test email to them or copy/paste email code to see it render across all major clients.

Cons

It's a bit more expensive than their competitor, email on acid. It would be nice if it was native to an email tool rather than a separate tool.

Ok Software, But I Think There Are Better

For a marketing agency, is can be a useful tool; just do your research before using and be aware of the contract details regarding pricing and service.

Pros

This software is easy to use at the onset; I also particularly like the spam check feature, which helps with advising clients on how to best design emails.

Cons

In the past I've seen that if usage exceeds the plan limits, your contract is moved to the next service level/package without notification.

A valuable Asset for Compatibility Testing

We now use it for testing any new email templates due to the having more options than anyone else we've looked at.

Pros

Litmus makes it VERY Easy to render your emails across a wide breadth of clients They also have a very nice Chrome Plugin for quick rendering

Cons

Lacks integration with our present ESP (Cheetah Digital)

Nothing like Litmus for Email Testing

Helps in designing and testing email campaigns. The rich features and wide capabilities make it a perfect product for this domain.

Pros

Litmus makes it easy to test emails before sending it to subscribers. You can generate a detailed report and work on improving your draft for better deliverability.

Cons

Litmus is a bit expensive for small teams. However, if you see great value in your email marketing efforts, you can surely give it a try.

Making sure the Email is Perfect

When sending out an email to over 4 million subscribers, it is important to make sure that the email has no broken links and that everything is aligned perfectly. Litmus helped us do just that!

Pros

Litmus makes it so easy to make sure that the emails that are being sent out are ready to be viewed by whoever opens them. No more mistakes by the random inbox.

Cons

The only con to litmus is how thorough it actually is.

Great tool for testing emails

Pros

I primarily use Litmus for testing HTML email templates. They actually have a free tool you can use to test this.

Cons

No real cons for the platform but I've yet to explore all of the features.

Creating emails is much easier now

Pros

- Great tools for creating email templates - Online code editor with keyboard shortcuts on board. - A very large base of previews in different email clients. - Great blog with many tips, tricks, reviews and bits of precious knowledge.

Cons

It is not for small companies, as it is expensive in my opinion. But if you can scale your sales with emails this is definitely a tool for you. Online code editor has few annoying bugs, but nothing serious.