MJML - Email Framework Course

In my hand-coded email course I make you write every table cell yourself, on purpose. This course is the payoff for that suffering. MJML is a markup language built specifically for email: you write short, readable tags, and it compiles them into the deeply nested, inline-styled table HTML that inboxes demand. Same bulletproof output, a fraction of the typing.

What you learn before the project

The course opens with setup, getting MJML installed and compiling so you can see your changes render as you work. Then comes a tour of the components worth knowing. MJML has a lot of tags; you will use a handful of them constantly, and the course focuses there instead of reading you the documentation. Knowing which ten percent of a tool carries ninety percent of the work is most of what experience is, and I would rather hand you that up front.

The third lesson might be the most valuable one: how to break down any design. Frameworks do not remove the thinking part of email development. You still have to look at a design and see the sections, the columns, and the pieces that repeat before a single tag gets written. That skill transfers to every email you build afterward, in MJML or not.

The Shopify store email you build

The second half is one continuous project: a real email for a Shopify store. You start the project and build the header, then the top section, then a two column layout pairing an image with text, and you finish with the footer.

Two lessons in the middle earn their keep. One shows you how to make your own components with include, so a header or footer you built once becomes a single line in your next email. That is the difference between using MJML and using it well; teams that live in email maintain component libraries exactly this way. The other tackles mobile stacking. MJML columns collapse into a single column on small screens by default, which is usually what you want, until it is not. You learn to group columns so a layout that should stay side by side actually does.

What this course is not

An honest caveat: this is a compact, focused course. It gets you from zero MJML to a finished production-style email, but it is not an encyclopedia of every component and attribute the framework offers. I would rather you build one real email and then explore the docs with confidence than sit through hours of reference material. If you want to compare MJML against a different approach to email tooling, HTML Email Frameworks builds a full project in Foundation for Emails, and the two courses together give you a fair basis for picking your daily driver.

MJML slots into a bigger picture too. Email development is a real specialty with real pay, and the Email Developer career path lays out how the courses stack toward a job.

One more practical note: since the project here is a Shopify store email, this pairs naturally with Liquid for Shopify and Email Developers, which teaches the template language that puts real order data inside emails like the one you build here. MJML handles how the email looks. Liquid handles what it says. Knowing both is a genuinely employable combination.