Testing and exporting your emails with Beefree
This article applies to the Email builder in all plans. However, some features may be limited or unavailable on the Starter plan.
Overview
Once you save an email and exit the builder, you see the Email details page. You can also return to this page by clicking on View details in your design list.
Note that if you are working with a template, fewer options are available (e.g. you cannot export an email template, but rather use it to create an email from it, and then export the resulting email).
Send a Test Email
The Send test option allows you to send the email to yourself, colleagues, clients, etc., and view it in the inbox. It also allows you to send it to another application. For example, you can...
- Send it to a Litmus or Email On Acid account to preview the email in dozens of inboxes and conduct other tests.
- Send it to Mailchimp using Email Beamer.
- Send it to a Zapier and then from there to many other applications.
Please note that each email address can be up to 100 characters long.
Download or Export your Email
If you click on Export - both from the Designs page and the Email details page - you will see the following options:
Get HTML & Images
With this option, you can download a ZIP file (which contains both the HTML of the email and all of the images used in the design) on your computer. You can import this file into any email marketing application that allows the ZIP import, like MailUp and Mailchimp, for instance.
If you unzip the ZIP file that has been downloaded to your computer, you will notice that the images have been placed in an "images" folder and that the HTML is written so that the image links in it point to those local images. This means that if you copy and paste the HTML "as is" into another application, the images will not be shown because the HTML is looking for them in that local "images" folder.
How can I solve this? You have many options:
- Import both HTML & images. Many email service providers have a ZIP import feature that allows you to do that.
- Use images that are hosted elsewhere. See: Using remotely hosted images in your email.
- Just download the HTML (see below), leaving the images hosted in Beefree.
- Use a connector to push the email to Mailchimp, MailUp, SendGrid, HubSpot, and other applications.
Current limitations
Please note that images over 5 MB (or 5000 KB) will not populate in your ZIP folder, and will remain hosted on Beefree. To prevent this, resize your image to a smaller file size before you upload the image to the Beefree file manager.
Copy the HTML
With this option, you can keep your images online and download only the HTML of the email. You can either Copy the HTML code and paste it into another application, or Download as an HTML file.
This is a good option if you need the email to be more portable. That is, you don't want to have to worry about uploading images to another application.
In that case, you will be leaving the images hosted in Beefree and they will be delivered to recipients of your emails using the fast CloudFront content delivery network. Please note that charges may apply if you exceed your data transfer allowance in a billing period.
Are you having problems downloading?
Your browser should prompt you to save the HTML file to your computer, as shown below.
If you are not seeing this kind of window, but rather the browser automatically opens the HTML document, you may need to change your browser settings so that it always asks you where to save a file. For example, in Chrome, the setting looks like this:
Push to your sending system
With this option, you can connect your Beefree with your sending app or ESP to easily send your emails from Beefree to the ESP. Select the application that you want to export the email to, and follow the instructions on the screen.
Download a PDF
This feature is not available in the Starter plan.
The PDF export gives you the following options:
- One long document (Desktop version)
- One long document (Mobile version)
- US Letter
- A4
- A3
Keep in mind that PDFs are not mobile-responsive. Use One long document (Mobile version) to generate a PDF that matches the mobile preview for your design. All other options will match the desktop preview of your design.
If you select any of the last three settings, you can pick either a portrait or a landscape layout.
Now you can include additional information on PDF exports. You'll find the included details at the top of your PDF document. For emails, you can add a subject and preheader. For pages, you can add a title and meta description. To do this, enable the Add details to PDF toggle. You can manage these fields from the details page or directly from within the modal.
Click on Download your file to get the PDF.
Current limitations
Please note that custom fonts, as well as emoji characters, are not fully supported in the PDF export feature at the moment.
Other ways to export to another application
With regard to exporting your emails to other applications, also see:
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.
Comments
26 comments
I thought images were going to be saved in my Pro account so that they can be referenced there. Is that not the case?
Hi Steven, it's an email deliverability matter, as we have no control on what will be sent, to whom, and how.
In the HTML, I would expect the and <meta name="description"> tags to be filled with the title and description. However, <title> desperately remain defaulted to "BF-template" and description is simply ignored.
Isn't the HTML I download supposed to contains this?
For now I edit the HTML but I of course would prefer to do nothing after the HTML download.
(once sent, our emails have mirror pages that can be shared on social media, hence the necessity to have clean html containing the right tags and content)
Hi Aurelie, thanks for the note. Let us dig into this a bit with the rest of the team and we'll get back to you.
Hi Aurelie, I checked with the rest of the team. The main reason why that is the case is that the editor - as it is today - does not ask you to provide a name / description for the message. So it does not have anything meaningful to add to the tag.
This could change in the future. For now, what most applications that have integrated BEE do is the following:
* Upon saving the message, ask for Name (or Subject line) etc.
* Save those values in your DB, together with the HTML, JSON, etc.
* Use those values to automatically change the HTML of the message
We hope this helps!
Oops! ... I just realized that this thread is under BEE Pro, and not BEE Plugin. In BEE Pro, we do have the name/subject line, and therefore can fix this ourselves. We will do so in a future release for sure. I don't have an ETA for it yet, but we will let you know!
Hello. I created an email using your product and the test email shows up very bad when viewing test email via iPhone 6. Can someone help?
Hi Robert, are you using BeeFree or BEE Pro? It seems strange that your test email isn't rendering on iPhone. Please keep in mind that we can only provide very limited customer support for BeeFree.
Hi developers, a big hand for your easy to manage user surface. One problem though:
Personally, I use Outlook as an email provider and a special address program (cobra) for address management. So, in your trial version, I downloaded the created email as a zip document. Inside the document, there is an html-document and a folder with the picture material I used. Afterwards, I added the html document as a text to the email – but the images were lost when the email was received. Of course, I did obviously not send the pictures. Please advise me how to avoid that mistake the next time and explain the necessary steps for sending an email with picture material.
Hi Moritz, the ZIP folder is ready to be imported in a send platform that host the message images. To use other send methods check this article about using externally hosted images: https://support.beefree.io/hc/en-us/articles/360004496232-How-to-use-external-images-in-your-message
hey, with the plugin premium, can a user deploy a email via mailchimp or constant contact (both have API sending options)
thanks
Hi Hien, the plugin is just an embeddable editor. It's entirely up to you which features you decide to build around the editor. This article is about BEE Pro, which is an application that uses BEE Plugin. For a clarification on all BEE products, please see: https://beefree.io/find-your-product/
I foolishly emailed my test flyer to an inaccurate email address. Is it gone forever or saved somewhere?
Hi Michelle, thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, from our side, there's nothing we can do when the message is sent.
Hello, I have problems when exporting to GMAIL and also when sending test emails. They look bad on iPhone. I am using iPhone 11. What to do to make them look good on iPhones also? I am using Bee Pro.
Hi All,
if i am sending mail without gmail using .com at email and my email is setup in outlook but images not display in emailer please help me out..
Hi Bojan and Aquib! Thanks for reaching out.
When sending emails designed in BEE Pro through Gmail, please remember that Gmail removes mobile responsiveness. If your design has multiple columns, this may be causing the issue. You can read more about this in our help center articles about the Gmail connector and the Gmail Add-on, but if you need further assistance, feel free to open a ticket!
Regarding issues with images in Outlook, this could be an inbox setting. Many Outlook inboxes disable external images by default. For information on how to change this, check out this Outlook documentation.
Why don't my links work when I (copy HTML code) export to Constant Contact. Visually, it looks the same, but none of the links work.
Please help!
Hey Cristina, I'm sorry to hear you are having this issue! In order to troubleshoot this we would need to issue a rendering test, which unfortunately we do not provide to free users. Please note, for the best compatibility, we recommend using the Constant Contact connector.
I'm ready to export my email, I hit the "get HTML & images", then I get a message that says "your design was zipped and is ready to be saved to your computer". But there is nothing that allows me to "save it"?! I've also looked in my downloads folder (I'm on a Mac) and there is nothing there? Help?!
Hi Scott!
So sorry to hear you're having trouble here - I've gone ahead and created a support ticket on your behalf to see if we can troubleshoot this further! Looking forward to hearing back from you soon!
Hi there
For my emails I am currently creating them in BeFree, exporting as a PDF, cropping each section to be its own image, and then inputting the images with hyperlinks to Klaviyo.
Doing this to avoid Dark mode inverting colours.
My issue is that I can’t export the mobile optimized version as a PDF, is there anyway I’m able to do that that I’m missing?
Any help is greatly appreciated
Hello, Send Test email button has disappeared from the page. Upon reviewing the created email, now I can`t email it.
Please advise. mz@marvelzap.com
Thanks
John
Hello John! I see you posted a ticket where my colleague helped with the issue.
Happy designing!
Hello, I've designed the Template and sent Test EMail to my business E-Mail address: wladimir.korolew@wefra.life. Till now I did not receive the test Email (sent twice). What have I to do to get the the Test-EMail in my E-Mail Box to check how it looks like?
Specs: Desktop, Windows 11, Outlook Office 365. Your Assistannce would be appreciated.
Thanks Wlad
Hello Wlad, thanks for your comment. We replied about this topic in your ticket, we hope you get our reply. Cheers.
I'm having the same issues with sending test emails. We're currently evaluating BeFree for our organization, we've developed emails, but when I try to send a test email, nothing is delivered to my inbox?
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