Email designer (drag & drop)

60 ready-made German templates are in the Template gallery; A/B tests, segments and deliverability are described in E-mail marketing.

Design e-mails the way you do in GoHighLevel: drag blocks onto the canvas on the left, adjust them on the right, done. The designer is available in

Campaigns → open a campaign → Content → Design with the email designer,
Campaigns → Templates → template (e-mail) → Design with the email designer,
Automations → step Send email → Design with the email designer.

In simple mode, alignment, spacing, colors and font size of a block (for a button also colors, corners and full width, for an image the width), the background and spacing of a section, and the look of the whole e-mail are under Appearance – open as soon as something differs from the default.

Plain text or HTML e-mails keep working as before; Write as text switches a design off again. No credentials are needed – e-mails go out through the sending method set up under Settings → Email & SMS (without SMTP, e-mails are only saved).

Using the designer

Area	What you get
Left: blocks	Layout (a section with 1, 2 or 3 columns), Content: heading, text, image, button, divider, spacer, social media, video, HTML, footer. Drag them (or tap = insert after the selection). My sections: saved, reusable sections. Templates: 6 starter templates (Newsletter, Offer, Event invitation, Review request, Welcome, Plain letter).
Middle: canvas	Move blocks (also between columns and sections), drag sections by their handle; toolbar on a block/section: up, down, duplicate, delete.
Right: settings	For each block its content and appearance (spacing, alignment, colors, font size), for each section the column split (50/50, 33/67, 67/33, 33/33/33), background and inner padding. With nothing selected: width (default 600 px), background, content color, font, text and link color, preview text (preheader) and the check (errors/hints). Insert placeholder puts `{{contact.first_name}}` & co. at the cursor.
Top	Subject, undo/redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y), desktop/phone, Preview (with sample data “Max Mustermann”), Text (the text version), Test (test e-mail to one address, subject with `[TEST]`), Save, ✕ or Esc closes. Del deletes the selected block.

Text blocks support bold (**bold**), italic (*italic*), links ([text](https://…)) and lists (lines starting with - or 1. ) – the toolbar inserts them. Images come from the uploads (or by address); video blocks show a thumbnail (automatic for YouTube) that links to the video.

Footer: company name, address (default {{location.address}} from Settings → Company), notice text, unsubscribe link and an optional preferences link (the text is up to you; without your own entry, sending adds “Einstellungen” (settings) next to “Abmelden” (unsubscribe) as long as the preference center is linked). In campaigns the footer is mandatory – without a footer or without an address, sending does not start. If it is missing in templates or workflow e-mails, a small footer with company, address and unsubscribe link is appended automatically.

What happens when you save

The design is saved as JSON (design) next to the text. The server turns it into

the finished HTML (body, is_html = 1): table layout with inline styles, Outlook buttons (VML), columns stacked on phones, dark-mode hints, alt texts, escaped text, only http(s), mailto: and tel: links, HTML blocks without scripts/forms/iframes,
the text version (body_text), built from the design (links as “text (address)”, buttons as “label: address”).

Placeholders stay in the HTML and are only replaced per recipient when sending (values are HTML-safe). The personal unsubscribe link is stored in the saved HTML as %%unsubscribe_url%% and filled in when sending; in the text you can link it yourself with {{unsubscribe_url}}. Open/click tracking and trigger links work as with all other e-mails.

Because the server renders, the API, MCP and workflows always send the finished HTML – they don’t need to know anything about designs.

API

Fields on POST /api/templates, PATCH /api/templates/:id, POST /api/campaigns, PATCH /api/campaigns/:id and on workflow steps send_email (in steps):

{
  "name": "Herbst-News",
  "subject": "Neuigkeiten von {{location.name}}",
  "design": {
    "settings": { "width": 600, "background": "#f3f4f6", "contentBackground": "#ffffff", "fontFamily": "Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif",
                  "textColor": "#1f2937", "linkColor": "#2563eb", "fontSize": 16, "preheader": "Kurz vorab …" },
    "sections": [
      { "widths": [50, 50], "style": { "background": "", "paddingY": 0, "paddingX": 0 },
        "columns": [
          { "blocks": [ { "type": "heading", "props": { "text": "Hallo {{contact.first_name|du}}", "level": 1 } } ] },
          { "blocks": [ { "type": "button", "props": { "label": "Ansehen", "href": "https://example.com" }, "style": { "align": "center" } } ] }
        ] },
      { "columns": [ { "blocks": [ { "type": "footer" } ] } ] }
    ]
  }
}

Block types: heading (text, level 1–3), text (text), image (src, alt, href, width), button (label, href, background, textColor, radius, fullWidth), divider (color, thickness, width %), spacer (height), social (variant: icons|text, items: [{network, url}], networks: facebook, instagram, linkedin, x, youtube, tiktok, whatsapp, website, email), video (url, thumbnail, caption, alt), html (html), footer (company, address, text, unsubscribeLabel). style per block: paddingY, paddingX, align, color, background, fontSize.
Missing values get defaults, colors must be #rgb/#rrggbb, numbers are clamped; unknown block types → 400.
The response contains design (cleaned up), body (HTML) and body_text. design: null switches back to a plain e-mail; a new body without design also discards the design.
GET /api/templates/:id returns a template including its design.

Around the designer:

Endpoint	Purpose
`GET /api/email-builder/starters`	Starter templates `[{key, name, description, subject, design}]`
`POST /api/email-builder/render` `{design, campaign?}`	HTML, text and the check `issues: [{level: error\|warning, text}]`, without saving
`POST /api/email-builder/test` `{design, subject, to, contact_id?}`	Test e-mail (placeholders filled with sample or contact data, at most 20 per 10 minutes)
`GET/POST /api/email-builder/sections`, `DELETE /api/email-builder/sections/:id`	Saved sections `{name, section}`

MCP: ghl_list_email_templates (templates + starter templates) and ghl_save_email_template (name, subject, body or design or starter).

Permissions: everything under Campaigns & templates; starter templates and sections can be read by all logins of the sub-account (including the workflow editor).