Do Iframes Work in Email?

Disclaimer: This post was originally published in 2015. The email clients listed and information regarding them may be out of date.

Questions regarding the use of iframes in email come up from time to time. Whether it be to do with adding content from a site, or a Facebook or Twitter widget, we thought it’d be helpful to do some thorough tests of our own.

So, what was the verdict? After testing an email with iframes across 24 major web, desktop, and mobile clients, we found that the results weren’t particularly promising. As iframes can potentially link to shady or plain malicious content (like scripts), a lot of email clients just disable them.

Here’s a breakdown of which email clients display iframes, and which ones do away with them altogether:

Wrap up

Our advice: given the notably poor adoption of iframes, we seriously discourage you from using them. Even though this means you may not be able to add a “like” button or a live video to your email, there are always other ways to accomplish your goals.

Questions on what exactly you can do in an ESP? Check out some of these guides and resources:

• CSS and Developer guides
• Campaign Monitor Help Docs
• Other blogs about email coding