[FAQ]

Hi,

I’m an email developer based in London, and I’m running into a constant, frustrating problem. I’ll code an HTML email that looks absolutely perfect when I test it in my own Gmail and on my iPhone. But then, after the campaign is sent, we’ll get a complaint from a user that the layout is completely broken in their version of Outlook, or the font looks wrong on their Android phone.

It’s impossible for me to own every single device and have an account for every email client. What is the standard, professional way to test an email to make sure it’s going to render properly for everyone before we hit send? I’m looking for the best-practice workflow here.

Any advice would be a massive help. Cheers.

[Jeff Bullas]

A very common and very real frustration for every email developer.

Short Answer: The best and only reliable way to test an HTML email is to use a paid, third-party email testing platform. These services show you screenshots of how your email will render across 100+ different email clients and devices in a matter of minutes.

This is a non-negotiable step because you are not coding for the web; you are coding for a broken, inconsistent ecosystem of email clients.

The core problem is that email clients, especially the various versions of Microsoft Outlook, do not follow modern web standards for rendering HTML and CSS. Outlook famously uses the Microsoft Word rendering engine, which will ignore your code and break your layout in ways you can’t predict. Apple Mail, Gmail, and Android apps all have their own different and incompatible rules. It is physically impossible for you to manually test all these combinations.

This is where a service like Litmus or Email on Acid becomes essential. You send your draft email to a special test address, and their platform automatically renders your email on real devices and clients. It then presents you with a comprehensive report of screenshots, showing you exactly how your text, images, and layout will look in everything from Outlook 2013 on Windows to Gmail on an Android phone. This allows you to spot and fix any rendering bugs before you send the email to your entire list, saving you from a professional disaster.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Author]

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