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Comment by badloginagain | Hacker News Reader

Marketing emails are not the only ones that developers want to look not broken.

To pick an instance at random: Confirmation emails for purchases made, especially if they have tickets as an attachments. If this email looks broken, customer thinks it's phishing or something, and might end up trashing it, just because styling is not supported consistently.

And I take issue with your argument of "marketing emails are bad." You may not like them, and that's fine, but there is a large part of the internet ecosystem that do like marketing emails- such as my mother who likes learning about deals/sales/coupons at her favourite outlets.

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Why is that email using HTML?

Hello there! Thanks for purchasing X for $Y. Your tax invoice is attached. Here's where you can track your delivery:

http://example.com/tracking

Thanks!

Because users hate additional steps.

Because you can't expect the email server/client to index the invoice for it's search database.

Probably other reasons

HTML makes receipts more readable at-a-glance. You can emphasise more important information, format things into proper table columns, show an image of the item, etc.

Such a minimalist design may work for some products/brands. But just as many companies, especially companies that put a lot of focus on brand management, may want nice images and responsive design. It's not an unreasonable request.

Even if it's not as effective for click-through/customer re-engagement/etc. you should let the customer decide on what kind of emails they want. Data will prove if nice images and ads are less effective than simple HTML. Gmail shouldn't be forcing that decision, it should be empowering the greatest number of people to do the most amount of things.

I disagree. If you don't want your email to look the way Gmail displays it, use a different client. I don't want a million configurations for how I could possibly have my mail displayed. Show me a good option. If I don't like it, I'll use a different option. That being said, one thing I really miss in Gmail compared to other options is being able to do things like sort by the sender and that sort of thing. Instead I have to search for that sender which often gives me many false positives.

Sorry, I was not clear.

For consumers, gmail should provide the optimal email experience- if they don't like it, they have the choice to use a different product.

But for developers, gmail should provide as many tools and as much functionality to meet developers need. That way developers build, Google profits.

> may want nice images and responsive design

Responsive design? Have you ever tried implementing an HTML email that will work across different clients? I'd be thrilled if 2005-era floats worked. As it stands, <table>s inside <table>s is state of the art.

Because even a 'simple' email need to carry significant amounts of information, all with varying levels of importance.

A newsletter will multiple items will need headings (for people to scan through if they're short on time), a paragraph for people who need more details. Images, if the articles require them, also help.

Corporate email - not just advertisements, but also invoices, notifications, as such, almost always require some sort of branding. Customers expect them - a plain text email might be regarded as phishing or fake. And why force people to open up an attachment when HTML exists and can mark up those elements perfectly well?

Email also need to carry information of less importance - unsubscribe links, confidentiality notices, signatures, most of which are required by law or lawyers, but which can be made smaller or greyed out so they can be ignored when reading.

You can't do any of the above with plain text. What you need is markup, which guess what, HTML is.

I did not argue that marketing emails are bad. I'm stating that I don't want them, and guessing that many users are like me.

Regarding your example, I have no problem if such emails are not stylized.

I'm sure that you don't have a problem if confirmations are unstyled. But I'm also sure that a lot of users differ in that regard and would expect at least some styling on that non-marketing, but still system-generated emails. Examples include things like confirmations, notifications (that you've opted in to), or just richer and more complex conversations. I mean: to end users, the email experience is part of the brand, and if the brand emits terribad emails, or unstyled emails, it erodes confidence.

I'll grant that there's a lot of yucky and annoying html in some marketing emails. But there is still a use-case for html-styled emails, and just having plain text with "click here to see images of the food you're getting next week" is pretty darn 1994.

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