This app seems to use similar paradigm to Campaign Monitor's superb template builder, going slightly further even and providing a completely blank canvas from which the user can create and design an email. I think this can work really well in some scenarios.
For us we've found that the workflow for creating a professional HTML email is more often that a marketing/design department create a design and then the web department receive a PSD or TIFF that they have to HTML-ify. I think web apps like yours are really targetted at a different kind of user and workflow where the assumption is that the web department will be designing and buidling the email from scratch within one tool.
The one thing we wanted to avoid with Mailrox was trying to reinvent Photoshop or Illustrator as part of a web app. This means that providing a blank canvas to create an email was never really part of the grand vision - most professional designers are not going to give up their Adobe products without a fight. What we wanted to do was focus on creating a tool that does a really good job of letting you take an exisitng design and turn it in to bulletproof code. All this without actually having to code and faff about with tables, layout and multiple painful trips to tools like Litmus to ensure client compatibility. With Mailrox all you have to do is slice up an image and export it ready for your favourite mailing list app. It's dead easy.
Its funny when you mention getting professional email designers on board, as after showing some early prototypes to some people whose job it is to make these 24/7 they scoffed at the idea - perhaps it was more a case of seeing their jobs at risk than anything else:)
For us we've found that the workflow for creating a professional HTML email is more often that a marketing/design department create a design and then the web department receive a PSD or TIFF that they have to HTML-ify. I think web apps like yours are really targetted at a different kind of user and workflow where the assumption is that the web department will be designing and buidling the email from scratch within one tool.
The one thing we wanted to avoid with Mailrox was trying to reinvent Photoshop or Illustrator as part of a web app. This means that providing a blank canvas to create an email was never really part of the grand vision - most professional designers are not going to give up their Adobe products without a fight. What we wanted to do was focus on creating a tool that does a really good job of letting you take an exisitng design and turn it in to bulletproof code. All this without actually having to code and faff about with tables, layout and multiple painful trips to tools like Litmus to ensure client compatibility. With Mailrox all you have to do is slice up an image and export it ready for your favourite mailing list app. It's dead easy.