The cost of manual email testing

Since starting Preflight, I’ve had quite a few conversations where someone will ask “So what is it you actually do”? I’m not a sales person by trade or nature, so I tend to downplay my responses, and my elevator pitch could probably be better.. but the more I think about, it should probably be something like:

Email is one of highest performing digital marketing channels, with a return of £36 or more for every £1 spent.

Preflight saves you a shit ton of time and hassle QA’ing your emails, so you can focus on sending campaigns that actually perform.

One of the biggest ways Preflight saves you time, effort, and money is by eliminating the need to maintain your own testing setup.

Hardware / Software Outlay

Let’s say you want to test emails across: Apple Mail (iPhone, iPad, Mac); and Outlook (Windows 11, Outlook 2021, Mac). Here’s your shopping list:

Item	Cost ($USD)	Cost (£GBP)
iPad (A16)	$349 + Sales Tax	£329
iPhone 17	$799 + Sales Tax	£799
Mac Neo	$599 + Sales Tax	£599
Windows 11 Home	$139 + Sales Tax	£119
Office 2021	$29 + Sales Tax	£29
	$1,915 + Sales Tax	£1,895

That’s nearly £2,000 just to start testing emails. ~40× the cost of a Preflight subscription, before you’ve even opened an email..

Setup time

What else do we need to do now we’ve bought all this stuff?

• Install Outlook for Mac.
• Setup email accounts on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
• Install UTM, or another vritualisation app to run Windows on the Mac.
• Install Windows 11.
• Install Office 2021.
• Setup an email account on Outlook for Windows.
• Setup an email account on Outlook 2021.
• Run software updates on each device / operating system.

I’m tired just going through the list of things to do. You’ll probably spend at least a morning, if not a day, just to set all of this up. And this is ignoring the maintenance burden of keeping these up to date with software updates and security patches!

Testing time

Let’s assume we’ve at least been savvy enough to use the same email account across all of the email clients we’ve just spent a day setting up. I can send my email once, and then go and look at it on each of the devices.

Alright.. I’ve taken maybe a minute or two per device to access it, open the email app, and take a look at things.

Mind we’re testing in 3 versions of Apple Mail, and 3 versions of Outlook.. So give or take 10 minutes per email?

But what about.. Dark mode?

I’m pretty happy with how my email is looking, then someone happens to mention an issue when viewing it in dark mode. Dark mode? ah.. crap.

Now I have to go back to each device, toggle on dark mode, re-open the email, and try to remember how things looked in light mode (because getting screenshots from these devices into one place is a pain).

The time to view, and switch between device modes has just increased the time and tediousness of this task. What was previously taking 10 minutes is now taking 20-30 minutes (or more)!

And the more times you switch back and forth, the more you’re relying on memory to spot differences.. which is exactly where things start slipping through.

What are you actually paying for?

Manual testing feels free once you’ve bought the hardware, but you’re paying for it in other ways:

• Developer / marketer time.
• Constant context switching.
• Missed issues (especially in dark mode).
• Slower campaign turnaround.
• Ongoing setup and maintenance.

The £2k outlay is obvious bit, but it’s the time cost that really adds up.

What Preflight changes?

Preflight gets rid of all of this:

• No devices to buy.
• No environments to maintain.
• No jumping between devices.
• No guessing what changed between light and dark mode.

Instead, you get:

• Screenshots in both Light and Dark mode across all email apps as standard.
• Built-in auditing for link, image, content, and delivery issues.
• Faster iteration cycles.

You can either: Spend ~£2,000 + dozens of hours per year maintaining your own setup, or; pay a small monthly fee and not have to think about any of this again.

This is why I’m building Preflight.