Pixla Mail Documentation

Getting Started

What is Pixla Mail?

Email campaigns and newsletters for Mac.

Pixla Mail is a native Mac app for designing, sending and measuring email campaigns. You design emails visually, keep your subscriber lists, and see who opened and clicked — without opening a browser.

Your first campaign

Connect your Pixla account in Settings (⌘,), and add your mailing address under Mailing Address.
Add a subscriber list under Subscribers — import a CSV, add people by hand, or pull them in from Pixla Hosting Forms.
Create a campaign with File ▸ New Campaign (⌘N) and pick a starting design.
Open the Email Designer, make it yours, and choose who it goes to under Audience.
Press Send Now, or Schedule… it for later.

What’s included

Visual designer — drag headings, text, images, buttons, columns, social links and a footer onto a 600px canvas.
Email-safe output — every design becomes the table-based, inline-styled HTML that real inboxes show, Outlook included.
Subscriber lists — CSV import and export, tags, segment filters, and automatic unsubscribe and bounce handling.
Automations — a series of emails sent on a schedule when someone subscribes or gets a tag.
A/B testing — try two subject lines and send the winner to everyone else.
Analytics — opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes, over time and by device and email app.

Connecting Your Pixla Account

Sending goes through Pixla, so sign in once.

Pixla Mail designs and stores your campaigns on your Mac; Pixla delivers them. To send, sync subscribers or see analytics, connect your Pixla account.

Open Settings (⌘,) ▸ General.
Click Connect with Pixla. Your browser opens pixla.app to sign in and approve this Mac.
Back in Pixla Mail, Settings shows who you’re signed in as and your plan.

Prefer a key? Choose Paste an API key instead and paste one you created at pixla.app under Account ▸ API Keys.

The key is kept in your Mac’s Keychain, never in a file. Sign Out removes it from this Mac, and if Connect with Pixla created it, retires it too.

Sender and Mailing Address

Who your email is from, and the address the law requires.

In Settings ▸ General, set the defaults every new campaign starts with:

Sender Name — what people see in their inbox, like your business or your own name.
Sender Email — where replies go, so use an address you read. A campaign needs one to send.
Mailing Address — a postal address for your business. A PO box or registered business address works.

Every marketing email has to show a real postal address (CAN-SPAM in the US, and similar laws elsewhere). Pixla Mail saves it to your Pixla account and puts it in the footer of each campaign. Sending is turned off until it’s set.

Campaigns are sent from Pixla’s sending address with your sender name, and replies go to your Sender Email.

Each campaign can override the sender name and email in its own details.

Campaigns

Creating a Campaign

Start from a template, your own design, or a Pixla Sites page.

Choose File ▸ New Campaign (⌘N) or the + button in Campaigns. You can start from:

A built-in template — Blank, Newsletter, Announcement or Welcome.
One of your saved templates — any campaign can be saved with Save as Template from its right-click menu.
A Pixla Sites page — choose Import a Site Page, pick a .pxs document and a page. Your brand colors carry over, fonts are swapped for the closest email-safe ones, and anything email can’t show is listed.

Fill in the Subject and Preheader — the short line many inboxes show after the subject — then open the designer.

Right-click a campaign to Duplicate it. Deleting a campaign can be undone with Edit ▸ Undo.

Choosing Who Gets It

Lists, plus an optional filter.

Under Audience, switch on the lists the campaign goes to. Someone on more than one list gets it once.

Turn on Refine with a segment filter to narrow it further — for example, only subscribers tagged vip, or everyone except one email domain. Rules match on tag, status, email, first name or last name, and you choose whether all or any must match.

The recipient count updates as you go. People who unsubscribed or bounced are never sent to, whatever list they’re on.

Sending and Scheduling

Send now, or pick a time.

Send Now asks you to confirm the recipient count, then sends.
Schedule… picks a date and time. The campaign shows as Scheduled until then; Cancel Schedule turns it back into a draft.
Retry appears if a send fails, for example when your Mac lost its connection.

If Pixla can’t send — no mailing address yet, no Pixla Mail plan, or a monthly allowance that’s used up — Pixla Mail says why, and the campaign stays as it was.

Want to check a design in a real inbox first? Make a list with just your own address and send to that.

A/B Testing Subject Lines

Let your subscribers pick the better subject.

In a campaign, turn on A/B test the subject line and write a second subject.
Set the Test group (10–50% of the audience), how long to wait (Decide after, in hours), and whether the winner is picked by opens or clicks.
Press Send A/B Test. Each subject goes to half the test group.
When the wait is over, Pixla sends the winning subject to everyone else — your Mac doesn’t need to be on.

A tie goes to the first subject.

See also: Sending and Scheduling · Opens and Clicks

Email Designer

The Designer

Each design opens in its own window.

Click Open Email Designer in a campaign (or Edit Design on an automation email). The window has three parts:

Elements and Outline (left) — drag an element onto the canvas, or click it to add it next to the selection. The outline shows the design’s structure; drag anything in it to move it.
Canvas (middle) — your email at its real 600px width. Click an element to select it, or drag it somewhere else.
Inspector (right) — the selected element’s content, layout and style.

Changes save automatically, and every one can be undone with ⌘Z — the Edit menu names each step, like Undo Change Font Size.

Switch to Preview at the top to see the real email HTML, at desktop width or on a phone (Mobile).

See also: Elements · Selecting, Copying and Locking · Previewing

Elements

The building blocks of an email.

Heading and Text — text with your font, size, weight, color and alignment.
Button — a link that looks like a button, and works in Outlook too.
Image — a picture, hosted for you, with alt text and an optional link.
Divider and Spacer — a line, or empty space.
Columns — a row of two or more columns, each holding its own elements.
Social — links to your profiles, as icons or text.
Footer — small print with your mailing address and an unsubscribe link.

Formatting text

In text, wrap words in **double asterisks** for bold, *single asterisks* for italic, and write links as [label](https://example.com).

A row holds only columns; columns and the email body hold everything else. Drop an element on a row and Pixla Mail wraps it in a column for you.

See also: Columns on Phones · Images · Social Links

Selecting, Copying and Locking

Work on several elements at once.

Select several — ⌘-click or ⇧-click on the canvas or in the outline. The inspector edits what they share.
Copy and paste — ⌘C and ⌘V, within a design or between designs.
Duplicate — ⌘D.
Move — ⌥⌘↑ and ⌥⌘↓, or drag on the canvas or in the outline. The arrow keys step the selection between elements.
Hide in Email — ⇧⌘H keeps an element in the design but leaves it out of the email.
Lock — ⌥⌘L stops an element from being edited or moved by accident.
Delete — ⌫. Undo brings it back.

All of these are in the Element menu, which appears while a designer window is open.

See also: The Designer · Keyboard Shortcuts

Columns on Phones

Side by side on a computer, stacked on a phone.

On a narrow screen, a row’s columns stack one under the next, each full width — so nothing gets squeezed. This works in every major email app, including ones that ignore modern styling.

For small things that should stay side by side, like a row of icons, select the row and turn off Stack on phones.

Column widths can be equal, a share of the row, or a fixed number of pixels.

Check the result in Preview ▸ Mobile.

See also: Previewing · Elements

Images

Choose a picture; Pixla hosts it.

Email can’t carry pictures inside the message reliably, so each image is shown from a web address. Pixla Mail handles that for you:

Select an Image element and click Choose Image… in the inspector, or drop a picture onto the image on the canvas.
Pixla Mail converts it to PNG or JPEG, which every email app shows, and scales anything wider than 1200 pixels down — sharp on Retina screens, without a heavy download.
It’s uploaded to Pixla’s image hosting, and the image’s address fills in.

You can also paste the address of an image that’s already online.

Uploaded images are public web addresses, so anyone with the link can see them — don’t use images you need to keep private.

See also: Elements · Previewing

Footer, Address and Unsubscribe

What every campaign has to include.

The Footer element shows your own text, then your mailing address and an Unsubscribe link. Each can be switched on or off in the inspector.

The law requires both in every marketing email, so if a design leaves either out, Pixla adds it below the email when sending. Each recipient gets their own unsubscribe link.

Pixla also adds one-click unsubscribe to every email, so Gmail, Yahoo and Apple Mail can show their own Unsubscribe button next to your name.

Previewing

See exactly what recipients get.

Design shows the editable canvas. Preview shows the actual email HTML that’s sent, at Desktop width or on Mobile.

Links in the preview open in your browser, so you can check them.

See also: Columns on Phones · Sending and Scheduling

Subscribers

Subscriber Lists

Group people however you like.

Create a list with File ▸ New Subscriber List (⇧⌘N) or the + in Subscribers, and give it a name and an optional description. Right-click a list to Edit List… or delete it.

A person can be on several lists. The table shows each subscriber’s email, name, status and tags; click a column to sort.

Adding and Importing

By hand, or from a CSV file.

Add Subscriber — an email address and, optionally, a name.
Import CSV… — a file with a header row. Pixla Mail reads the email, first name, last name and tags columns.
Export CSV… — the whole list, or just the people your filter shows.

email,first name,last name,tags
ada@example.com,Ada,Lovelace,vip;beta

Only add people who asked to hear from you. Sending to purchased or scraped lists breaks Pixla’s Terms of Service, and the bounces and complaints it causes can pause your sending.

Filters and Segments

Find exactly the people you mean.

Click Filter in a list to show only matching subscribers. A rule picks a field — tag, status, email, first name or last name — a test (contains, is, is not) and a value. Choose whether all rules must match or any.

The same filters refine a campaign’s audience.

See also: Choosing Who Gets It · Subscriber Lists

Pixla Hosting Forms

Signups from your website, straight into a list.

If your site is on Pixla Hosting, people who fill in its forms with an email address can come straight into Pixla Mail.

Pull from Hosting Forms (in a list’s add menu) brings in new signups since the last pull.
Sync to Hosting (the sync button in Subscribers) sends your lists to Pixla, which automations and unsubscribes rely on.

See also: Automated Sequences · Subscriber Lists

Unsubscribes and Bounces

Handled for you.

When someone unsubscribes, marks your email as spam, or their address no longer exists, Pixla stops sending to them — on every list, for every future campaign. Pixla Mail picks up those changes the next time it syncs.

The unsubscribe link asks people to confirm, so email security scanners that open every link can’t unsubscribe anyone by mistake.

If someone asks to be added back, click the Resubscribe button on their row. Only do this when they’ve really asked.

A full mailbox or a briefly unreachable server is a temporary bounce — Pixla tries again and doesn’t remove the address.

Automations

Automated Sequences

A series of emails that sends itself.

An automation sends a sequence of emails, each a set number of days after the last — a welcome series, an onboarding course, a check-in.

In Automations, click + and name the sequence.
Choose the Trigger: When a subscriber is added (optionally only to certain lists) or When a tag is applied.
Add Email for each step, with its delay, subject and design (Edit Design).
Turn on Active and click Sync to Server.

From then on Pixla sends each email on schedule, even while your Mac is off. Sync again after you change it.

Automations need the Pixla Mail plan, and their emails count toward your monthly allowance.

Analytics

Opens and Clicks

See how each campaign did.

Analytics shows totals across all your campaigns, and each sent campaign’s detail: emails sent, opens, clicks, bounces and unsubscribes, open and click rates, a chart over time, and which devices and email apps people used.

Click the refresh button to fetch the latest numbers.

How it’s measured

Opens — each email carries a tiny invisible image; an open is counted when it loads. Some email apps load images automatically and some block them, so treat opens as a guide, not an exact count.
Clicks — links go through Pixla briefly, then straight on to their destination.

Your recipients’ privacy matters too: your own privacy policy should mention that you measure opens and clicks.

Account & More

Plans and Sending Limits

What the Pixla Mail plan includes.

Pixla Mail is free to download, and every Pixla account can design emails and send a test to its own address. Sending campaigns and automations needs the Pixla Mail plan, which is separate from Pixla’s hosting plans:

Up to 2,500 different people a month, with unlimited campaigns. Sending another campaign to the same people doesn’t use any more of it.
Up to 25,000 emails a month in all, so a list can’t be mailed every day.

Settings ▸ Mailing Address shows how many people and emails you’ve sent to this month. Both reset on the 1st (UTC). A send that doesn’t fit is stopped before anything goes out, and Pixla Mail says why.

New senders

For your first 30 days of sending, up to 1,000 emails go out per day. Mailbox providers trust senders whose volume grows gradually.

If sending is paused

If too many of your emails bounce or are marked as spam, Pixla pauses your sending and emails you. Nothing already sent is affected, and your lists and campaigns are untouched. Write to support@pixla.app and we’ll review it with you.

Reaching the Inbox

What helps your email get delivered.

Campaigns are sent from Pixla’s own email domain, kept separate from Pixla’s account emails and authenticated (SPF, DKIM and DMARC), so mailbox providers can tell they’re genuine.

Send only to people who asked. It’s the law in most places, and the biggest factor in landing in the inbox.
Keep lists fresh. Old lists bounce; Pixla removes dead addresses automatically.
Use a recognizable sender name and a subject that matches the email.
Make leaving easy. Every email has an unsubscribe link and one-click unsubscribe — someone who can’t leave marks you as spam instead.

Keyboard Shortcuts

The ones worth learning.

⌘N — New Campaign
⇧⌘N — New Subscriber List
⌘, — Settings
⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z — Undo / Redo
⌘C / ⌘V — Copy / Paste elements in the designer
⌘D — Duplicate element
⌥⌘↑ / ⌥⌘↓ — Move element up / down
⇧⌘H — Hide or show element in the email
⌥⌘L — Lock or unlock element
⌫ — Delete the selection
⌘? — This guide

See also: Selecting, Copying and Locking

The Pixla Family

Better together, great alone.

Pixla Mail works on its own, and connects to the rest of the family:

Pixla Sites — a no-code website builder. Import any of its pages as a campaign design.
Pixla Hosting — managed hosting with analytics, forms and a store. Signups from its forms flow into your lists.
Pixla Editor — a native code editor for the web.
Vaporware — a local development environment for Vapor apps.

Questions? Choose Help ▸ Contact Us, or write to support@pixla.app.

See also: Creating a Campaign · Pixla Hosting Forms