A Guide to CSS Support in Email

Update: This study has since been superceded by the new and improved 2008 Edition

Since the rise of Internet Explorer, web designers have had to test their designs across multiple web browsers. No one likes it, but we've all copped it on the chin, written a few hacks and moved on with our lives. After all, 3 to 4 browsers aint that bad - and they finally seem to be getting their act together.

If Internet Explorer is the schoolyard bully making our web design lives a little harder, then Hotmail, Lotus Notes and Eudora are serial killers making our email design lives hell. Yes, it's really that bad.

Inspired by the fantastic work of Xavier Frenette, we decided to put each of the popular email environments to the test and finalize once and for all what CSS is and isn't supported out there.

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199 Comments

  1. It’s very good article. Great site with very good look and perfect information… Thanks

  2. Good stuff. I want to install it on my phone!

    I love this phone i might buy me one in fort lauderdale

  3. It’s very good article. Great site with very good look and perfect information. I like it too

  4. Very nice and well written guide. It’s very helpful to me, Thanks

  5. Nice job! A lot of thanks

  6. CSS is also heplfull in protecting your e-mail address from spam. You can for example make him written from right to left and change his verwing in CSS. Not 100% but always it is some wall to spiders.

  7. Hi! the article was very useful for our project. Great! Guys you have done a wonderful study.

  8. Hey buddy’s

    I am facing one problem.My html formatted e-mail is displaying properly in outlook express.But if i fwd that html formatted mail to some others the html format is collapsed and go to ordinary mail not a formatted mail.past 10 days i am facing this problem.So anybody could you help me.Urgent

  9. Thank you for the excellent, hard and detailed work - and particularly for sharing it!

  10. Excellent. This is confirmation that we are not insane. Great resource!

  11. Excellent piece. Explains a lot of things about email I have received that didn’t look correct! And may also explain some porr results on certain mails I have sent.

  12. I don’t use css in emails because then they are more larger.

  13. Excellent resource! Thanks for putting the time into simplifying this for us.

  14. E_X_C_E_L_L_E_N_T_-_A_R_T_I_C_L_E, thanks (*_*)

  15. Allright…, now I only hope that somebody can tell me the HTML tags that PC E-mail clients can support in HTML e-mails.

  16. Thanks for this useful post !

  17. Very nice and well written guide. It’s very helpful to me, Thanks

  18. Great site with very good look and perfect information.It’s very good article.  Thanks

  19. Thanks for the info, i’m glad I finally found something usefull thx again!

  20. Thank, this article is useful for me.

  21. Great resource! Excellent. This is confirmation that we are not insane.

  22. Thanks a lot, CSS is quite a pain in the a….

  23. Very nice and well written guide. It’s very helpful to me, Thanks

  24. Michael - “Very nice and well written guide. It’s very helpful to me, Thanks”

    Good job.

  25. I think these blog is really useful for new comers and Excellent resource list.
    It´s a very interesting Blog and simple answer of many questions.
    Keep up the good work!
    Thanks it helps me a lot…

  26. Very nice and well written guide

  27. interesting that google remains the least friendly web based email when it comes to using css.

  28. This is very helpful, and I find it an excellent resource.  Thanks.

  29. Thanks for taking the time to demystify the email minefield. Maybe someday we can stop pretending its 1990 when writing HTML emails.

  30. Thats really great, david. Thanks for your fantastic work.

  31. Thanks for this very good article. Can i translate this and insert on my site in Poland?  Thanks and Greetings from Gdynia

  32. Thanks for stuff.I was looking at the material over a large amount of time

  33. Good lord, what a fantastic time saver. Thank you for the excellent, hard and detailed work - and particularly for sharing it!

  34. This is very help ful , very nice and well written guide! Thanks! Good job. Thanks! Thanks!

  35. Can u post some sample program about CSS

  36. You’ll probably need to generalize a little here, because most of us have no idea what email environment each recipient is using.

  37. Very helpful!

    However, have you ever tried testing iCalendar emails (ex. meeting request) with html body in Outlook. CSS support is minimal at best. The following are not supported for sure: background-color, border.

    There are numerous others that I am not mentioning since I’m not done testing. :(

  38. Hello,

    Great report, very handy. One thing it does not mention however is what email clients support the embedding of multipart/related images in CSS url() containers. AFAIK none of the clients support this, but finding this information out is quite hard so adding this into this report would make it definitive!

    Col

  39. Thank you for the excellent, hard and detailed work - and particularly for sharing it! Good lord, what a fantastic time saver.

  40. Good review. I tried to design to another web email..and someones has no treatment of css…i design with older html without css

  41. Great work, i was go crazy to make a template compatible with all clients and webmails.

    Thanks a lot.

  42. This is very helpful.

  43. Good review. Thanks

  44. Nice post! Sending elegantly formatted emails is always a problem especially with people using all the email clients in the world.

  45. I don´t think that using css in e-mails is a good idea. many people i know (including me) have activated text-only for e-mail and for that is css pretty useless but anyway a good article.

  46. Thanks for this side, now I know more. I’ll try to translate this article to my language and add it on my webside.Og≈Çoszenia

  47. Thank you for the excellent, hard and detailed work - and particularly for sharing it! Good lord, what a fantastic time saver.

  48. Thanks. I tried to design to another web email..and someones has no treatment of css.

  49. If you are sending HTML emails in your marketing campaigns (and there’s lots to support that you should) you have probably come across some serious design issues when it comes to using CSS styling. I ran across a very comprehensive article over at Campaign Monitor that outlines what CSS elements, selectors and properties are and are not supported by the various email client environments such as Outlook and Yahoo.

  50. I have an HTML mail merge email going out with an invoice section i’d like printed on its own page.

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