The developer-first Unlayer alternative that keeps your email stack yours
MailKaro is a drop-in Unlayer alternative: react-email-craft takes the same props and ref methods as react-email-editor, and white-label is included in Pro at $60/mo. Embed a drag-and-drop email editor in your SaaS, agency tool or dashboard, and render send-ready HTML on your own infrastructure, with your S3, your AI provider and your ESP.
By the MailKaro team · Published 15 September 2026 · Updated
- Own your stack: your S3, your AI key and your ESP. Your data stays with you.
- White-label from the Pro plan, with no Enterprise gate to remove the badge.
- A Node renderer for HTML and MJML, plus React, Vue, Angular and vanilla JS packages.
Unlayer (react-email-editor) popularized the embeddable email builder, and it's a mature, widely-adopted product. Teams usually start looking for an alternative over a few things: white-labeling that only starts at $250/mo on Unlayer's Launch plan, wanting a native backend renderer instead of a hosted export API, and wanting their assets, AI, and data to stay on their own infrastructure.
MailKaro is built for that last point especially. The shape is simple: your SaaS calls MailKaro, and MailKaro talks to your S3, your AI provider, and your ESP. It ships first-class packages for React, Vue, Angular, and vanilla JS, includes white-label from the Pro plan, and pairs the editor with a native server-side renderer (no headless browser) that runs in your own backend, so you plug in your own storage and AI keys on the cloud plans without hosting anything. Teams that want to run the whole backend themselves can self-host on Enterprise.
Credit where it's due: Unlayer is mature, widely adopted, and has a large template library and a polished hosted product. If you're all-in on React and its pricing fits, it's a perfectly good choice. This page lists the differences as facts so you can decide.
MailKaro vs Unlayer
| Feature | MailKaro | Unlayer |
|---|---|---|
| Editor & embedding | ||
| Drag-and-drop email editor | ✓ | ✓ |
| React component on npm | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vue and Angular packages on npm | ✓ | ✓ |
| White-label (no vendor badge) from | $60/mo (Pro plan) | $250/mo (Launch plan) |
| Rendering & backend | ||
| Render designs to email HTML | Node SDK, on your server, on every plan | Cloud API, from the Launch plan ($250/mo) |
| Your own file storage (S3) | Any plan | Custom Storage, from the Launch plan ($250/mo) |
| AI assistant | AI Pro plan, or your own AI key on any plan | From the Launch plan ($250/mo) |
| AMP for email | Free plan | Optimize plan ($2,000/mo) |
| Self-hostable backend | Enterprise | Not listed on the public pricing page |
| Plans & pricing | ||
| Published prices | Free, $60, AI Pro, Enterprise | Free, $250, $750, $2,000, Enterprise custom |
| Free plan | Full editor | Email, page, popup and document builders |
Unlayer is a trademark of its respective owner. Product and company names are used for identification and comparison only. Information is taken from publicly available data on unlayer.com as of October 2026. Spotted something out of date? Let us know.
Where MailKaro is different
Your stack, end to end
The integration shape is your SaaS, then MailKaro, then your infrastructure. Assets upload to your own S3 bucket (public or presigned-private), AI generation runs on your own provider key held in your backend and never the browser, designs render to HTML or MJML on your servers, and you send through your ESP. MailKaro sits in the flow. It never sits between you and your data.
White-label without the Enterprise upsell
Your customers shouldn't see another vendor's logo inside your product. White-label is included from the Pro plan, so you can customize the palette, load custom fonts, and align the editor with your design system, without jumping to an Enterprise contract to remove a badge.
Native server-side compilation
Pair the editor with email-craft-sdk on your backend: pass the design payload to Node, compile cross-client HTML or MJML in milliseconds, and dispatch through Postmark, Resend, SendGrid, or AWS SES.
Server-authoritative & multi-tenant
Publishable keys are origin-locked to your domains to prevent replay; plans and features are enforced server-side (no client tampering); and each workspace's templates stay isolated by default.
Drop-in React implementation
import EmailEditor from "react-email-editor";
import { useRef } from "react";
export function Editor() {
const ref = useRef(null);
const save = () =>
ref.current.editor.exportHtml(({ design, html }) => {
// client-side export, you wire your own
// backend / call the export API to render
});
return <EmailEditor ref={ref} minHeight="100vh" />;
}import EmailEditor, {
type MailkaroIframeEditorRef,
} from "react-email-craft";
import { useRef } from "react";
export function Editor() {
const ref = useRef<MailkaroIframeEditorRef>(null);
const save = () =>
ref.current?.editor.exportHtml(async ({ design }) => {
// render server-side with email-craft-sdk
await fetch("/api/emails/render", {
method: "POST", body: JSON.stringify({ design }), });
});
return (
<EmailEditor ref={ref}
token="pk_live_your_key" minHeight="100vh" />
);
}The frontend shape is intentionally near-identical. MailKaro is a drop-in, so migrating is mostly swapping the import and adding your key. The difference is what happens next: MailKaro gives you a native Node renderer (email-craft-sdk) to turn that design into email-safe HTML or MJML on your server.
Unlayer alternative: common questions
- Is MailKaro cheaper than Unlayer?
- On published prices, yes. MailKaro Pro is $60/mo ($54/mo billed yearly) and includes white-label and 5 embed tokens. Unlayer's public pricing page lists white-labeling from the Launch plan at $250/mo, Scale at $750/mo and Optimize at $2,000/mo (checked October 2026). Both have a free plan. Prices change, so check both pages before you decide.
- Is MailKaro as easy to use as Unlayer?
- Yes. The editor is the same drag-and-drop shape: text, images, buttons, columns, video, tables, forms and countdowns, a live desktop and mobile preview, undo and redo, and merge tags. The React component takes the same props as react-email-editor, so most teams swap the import and add their key.
- How does MailKaro handle Outlook and Gmail quirks?
- MailKaro compiles designs down to nested, table-based HTML with Outlook conditional comments ([if mso]), margin resets, and fully inlined styles, and it can export MJML, so rendering stays consistent across Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail.
- Can I migrate existing Unlayer designs to MailKaro?
- Yes. MailKaro uses a structured JSON design format (rows, columns, blocks) with importers, so existing designs can be mapped and converted, and output stays portable as standard email-safe HTML and MJML.
- Do my end-users need a MailKaro account?
- No. You embed the editor with your publishable token; end-users only ever interact with your product. There are no MailKaro logins or external sign-ups for them.
- Self-host or cloud?
- Cloud today; for self-hosting, write to support@mailkaro.com. On the cloud plans you can already bring your own S3 bucket and AI provider key, and render designs in your own Node backend with email-craft-sdk, so your design data and assets stay on your side without hosting anything. Teams that need to run the backend and render API entirely on their own infrastructure can self-host on Enterprise, where we provide the Docker image and deployment runbook.
Give your users an email editor today.
Start on the free plan. Embed the editor, invite your team, and ship on-brand emails.