How to simulate preview of HTML on different email clients

Question

I have a website for newsletters, and I'd like to give my customers the possibility to preview how the message will be displayed on Outlook (various versions), Thunderbird, LotusNotes, GMail, etc...

I know there are many websites and applications out there that do this trick, but I want to implement this feature inside my website.

The newsletter website is written in PHP on a Linux standalone server which I have total control on.

Answer 1

There are 2 main services that provide email testing. Litmus and Email on Acid.

Email is very hard to accurately simulate across email clients, and I wouldn't suggest trying to do it outside of a service that has virtual machines running the tests for you.

Take a look at the API's (Litmus and EOA) of each of these 2 services. Email on Acid seems most cost effective option. Using the API of one of these two services is the only (accurate) option I would suggest.