Postcards vs Stripo: which builder fits the way you export?

What the export allowance really buys

Exports are the unit both vendors meter, so it is worth turning them into months of work. Assume one person sends a weekly newsletter, four issues a month, and exports each issue twice: once for a stakeholder to read in the ESP and once when it is final. That is 8 exports.

• Free tiers fall short. Postcards Start allows 5 exports a month and Stripo Free allows 4, so both stop you in week three.
• First paid step. Postcards Plus at $16 covers it with 20 exports a month, subject to the 5-a-day limit. Stripo Basic at $20 covers it with 50. The gap is $4 a month, or $48 a year, and it may shrink once you know which billing period Postcards' $16 reflects. Stripo's own yearly price for Basic is $200, which is $16.67 a month.
• A three-person marketing team. Postcards Pro at $24 includes three teammates and unlimited exports. Stripo Medium at $45 gives three members and 300 exports. The difference is $21 a month, $252 over a year.
• A localization-heavy agency. Take 40 templates, each exported in 10 language versions: 400 exports. Stripo Medium stops at 300, so the next step is Pro at $125 for 4,000 exports and 10 members. Postcards Pro at $24 has no export limit. That is a $101 monthly gap, though Postcards Pro seats three people where Stripo Pro seats ten.

The daily export cap on Postcards Plus (5 a day) matters in iteration-heavy weeks. If you export after every review comment, you can hit it long before the monthly 20.

Drafting the email: a prompt or a module library

Postcards puts its AI suite at the front of the product. Its homepage says a plain-language prompt produces a complete template that you refine in the drag-and-drop editor, that logos, colors and fonts can be imported from your website URL, and that whole templates can be translated or restyled in one instruction. It also advertises a Figma plugin for converting a design to responsive HTML, and an MCP connection so Claude, Cursor or ChatGPT can open your projects and export the HTML.

Credits are the catch, because Start includes none. Postcards' pricing FAQ says a full email from scratch costs roughly 150 to 300 credits on its Basic model and 1,000 to 1,500 on the Ultra model. On Plus, 5,000 credits is therefore about 16 to 33 Basic drafts or 3 to 5 Ultra ones, and Pro's 10,000 gives about 33 to 66 Basic drafts or 6 to 10 Ultra. A top-up of 5,000 credits is listed at $7.

Stripo's homepage sells depth in the editor itself: 300+ pre-built modules, modules that can be synchronized so one footer edit updates every email, bulk editing, a code editor that works alongside drag-and-drop without switching modes, in-editor translation with Google, 1,650+ free templates, real-time co-editing and an MCP integration for Claude, Cursor, VS Code and Codex. If your emails are assembled from a house set of blocks rather than generated, that module system is the more mature half of this comparison.

Where the HTML goes next

Neither tool sends to your list. Postcards names Mailchimp, HubSpot, Klaviyo, SendGrid, SendPulse, Brevo, Constant Contact and Zoho Campaigns for direct export, with a Chrome extension for Gmail and an Outlook add-in for people who send from their own inbox. Stripo's integrations page promises pushes to 90+ ESPs, export to Gmail or Outlook, Zapier or webhook for CRMs, and downloads as PDF, image or HTML. Stripo also notes that editing a trigger email and pushing it again replaces the version in an existing ESP workflow, which saves a copy-paste step for automated sequences.

Two cautions apply to both. First, Stripo says its Free plan is not meant for exporting to ESPs, so a free trial of that route is not available there. Second, Postcards' own FAQ admits that email platforms can alter exported markup: it says some ESPs, Mailchimp among them, strip drop-shadow code from newsletters sent through them, and that Outlook needs VML for background images and rounded corners. Plan a test send through your real ESP, as covered in our client compatibility guide, before you commit to any design that leans on those effects.

What happens when you stop paying

Postcards says a lapsed license drops you to the free plan, keeps your most recently created templates open for editing and keeps hosted images online, while higher export limits, AI credits and client previews go away. A refund, by its FAQ, cancels the license and with it any emails created under it, so export HTML first. Stripo's Free plan stores 10 emails, Basic 50, Medium 300 and Pro 5,000, so a team that has built a library on Medium has a real housekeeping job if it ever drops to Free.

Choose Postcards if…

• You want a draft generated from a prompt and your brand assets, and you are willing to watch a credit balance.
• One or two people make the emails and you want the lowest monthly bill that clears the free-plan export cap.
• You need a busy production month without an export ceiling, and Pro at $24 fits the team of three.
• Your starting material is existing HTML that you want turned into something editable.

Choose Stripo if…

• Your team reuses a library of modules and wants one edit to ripple across many emails.
• Developers need to touch the HTML and CSS while marketers keep the visual canvas.
• Your ESP is not on a short list, and a longer connector catalogue, Zapier and webhooks matter.
• You need Email on Acid previews built into the editor, or ten seats on one plan.

Moving between the two

Moving from Stripo to Postcards is the easier direction: export the HTML from Stripo and upload it, or email it to your dedicated Postcards address, and Postcards says its AI Suite converts it into an editable template. Moving the other way means rebuilding in modules, so budget design time rather than export credits. In both cases keep the old tool's subscription for one full sending cycle so trigger emails in your ESP can still be edited from the source. If you are weighing a third option, Topol vs Stripo and Stripo vs BEE Free cover the neighbouring decisions, and Postcards alternatives lists what else to try.