I recommend that people not use such email templates: instead, just produce simple, unvarnished content that roughly matches what you’d produce if you just wrote a normal email manually in your normal email client.

Note that I’m not saying “use text/plain and no text/html part” as some will; you’re welcome to use HTML (though I do say, please provide a good text/plain part), but see what life’s like if you roughly limit yourself to paragraphs, lists, inline formatting, images (where useful, not just gratuitous) and maybe headings and tables (strictly for data, not for layout; receipts often benefit from tables). And maybe a company or product logo to go with it, but not formatted fancily. Maybe go a teeny bit fancy for a big call-to-action button—or perhaps just try having it as a bold link in a paragraph of its own.

Quite a few entities that have tried this have reported higher conversion rates and customer satisfaction.

I agree with that. However even using little HTML or lots of HTML should make any difference. The email clients are going to treat it the same.

Emails can be clean and simple but still in HTML. :)

Great to see this using mjml [0] which I think is a great way to quickly create good looking and responsive emails. Many of the benefits mentioned are a direct of using mjml, I think ;-)

There is also a visual code plugin to preview mjml formatted emails plus they offer an api to convert mjml to html on the fly.

[0] https://mjml.io/

All of these would probably look like garbage in mutt. ;)

I wish companies would focus more on content, rather than form. Recently I got a garbage html email from paypal telling me my donation account will be blocked by a certain date, but the sentence ended abruptly without a date they were referencing. They spend huge amount of time on large amount of weird html markup, but screw up on an actual useful content.

Anyway, does anyone know if text only (rather than html) messages more likely to get past spam/newsletter filters?

Wouldn't that be a token problem, which could happen in a text version as well?

I used mutt for over 10 years, and gave up a few years ago. Having clear emails also includes having a good design.

Regardless of form, most companies go through cycles of cramming more and more clutter in emails, before restarting from scratch, and eventually back to clutter again.

> does anyone know if text only (rather than html) messages more likely to get past spam/newsletter filters?

At least SpamAssassin checks for that, and IIRC HTML increases the spam score by default.

In general they would probably look like garbage in any email client that provides a secure place to look at HTML emails. It isn't just text mode clients that have that issue.

I wouldn't have anything against sane use of html in emails.

Like using p, a, b, ul/ol/li, h1-3, etc. All that is fairly readable even when looking at markup.

How about not sending html emails?

Non-technical people will engage with “flashy” emails more much like advertisements aren’t just text. Visually pleasing things are just more engaging regardless of content.

The joy of using Mutt. Plain text and no flashy markup or images.

Except when they send you an html email with the plain text attachment saying only "your mail reader is incompatible" or whatever.

Seems not bad, but the free part is the rendered template with tons of inline `style='...'` bits all over. Not really a usable template.

As someone who just wants to write internal html email reports that don't look half bad in gmail, I wonder where I should be looking.

HTML emails have to be coded like this. For best possible results we have to use table layouts and inline css because email clients are tricky and doesn't use latest css properties. So to keep them compatible with all kinds of email clients, the elements have to have inline css. Otherwise it is not even possible to have a decent HTML email which will render correctly on all email clients.

Its just how it is currently due to limitation from email renderers and clients.

Bookmarked for later, thanks.

Btw, the page title for all of the categories has a misspelling - 'Tempaltes'

Already fixed that typo. Seems like I need a better spelling plugin ;)

Thanks for sharing these! As someone who had been working on a newsletter for over 2 years with no time to look into styling at all these seems very useful :). I'll definitely give them a shot at one point!

I am glad you found these useful :)

PSA: mildly risky click if you follow the link to the CodedMails Unsplash Collection. Not sure which template needs the pantsless girl losing her Star Wars t-shirt. Maybe one of the Notifications templates?

Yes, it is for a new template tutorial. Also i am a big Starwars fan :)

https://dev.to/hunzaboy/how-to-create-a-clean-bulletproof-em...

The title should be amended to "free for non-commercial use."

License here says MIT: https://github.com/hunzaboy/codedmails

License here says otherwise: https://codedmails.com/premium

OK, so the compiled files are free/MIT, but the source files (MJML) are indeed proprietary. Interesting compromise.

Yes. HTML version are free/MIT but MJML source codes are not for free.

Why do I need to register to download html/css templates?

No Registration is required. Just copy and paste directly from the email preview page.