That means you need to understand whether the font you want to use is supported and how to set up a fallback. Web fonts only work in some email clients. While web safe fonts and email safe fonts are the most reliable option, you can use web fonts in email (as long as you’re willing to take a few extra steps). Subscribers may have email images turned offĮmail with and without images when using text in images.Email screen readers can’t read text on images.If you lock important copy in images because it’s a way to stay on brand, portions of your audience won’t know what your email says because: Web fonts let you show off your brand without relying on images for your text. Why would you use web fonts?Īs a marketer and designer, you know the pressure to stay on-brand in email with colors, design, and-yes-typography. The best way to determine whether your subscribers’ preferred devices and ISPs support certain fonts is to use a tool like Litmus to preview your campaigns across environments. In fact, there’s overlap between email safe fonts vs. So while web fonts give you much more variety and creative freedom, they come at a cost: limited email client support (which I dive into further down).īut wait, there’s more! Email safe fonts are the default fonts available in inbox service providers, so they’re like web safe fonts in their reliability. Sometimes, your subscriber may already have a web font downloaded and installed on their machine, so these fonts will work even in email clients that don’t support web fonts! Because of this, the variety of fonts you can use is much larger and will work on any computer… as long as the browser or email client can pull the font in. Web fonts are pulled from a server-either one you host yourself or an external one (such as Google or Adobe). The site tells you what percentage of PC and Mac users have each font so you can balance style and confidence that most subscribers will see your font of choice. Pro-tip: use CSS Fonts to find lesser-used web safe fonts that work for your brand. Plus, web safe fonts are less likely to stand out (if that’s what you’re aiming for) because they’re so common. The downside of web safe fonts is that your options are limited compared to web fonts. Web safe fonts are safe to use because there’s a strong chance your subscribers will already have them. Web safe fonts prompt the web browser to pull the font from your local font directory, AKA the pre-installed fonts on everyone’s computers. Now let’s get into the differences between web fonts and web safe fonts.

When your subscribers open your email, the browser reads the font-family property and pulls in the font to use. Without listing multiple font names, the email client gets to decide your backup font. Including multiple font names ensures that if one doesn’t work, there is a fallback or backup font of your choosing. This font-family property can have just one font name or multiple font names-often referred to as a font stack. Your email code declares font using a CSS property called font-family.

web safe fonts, let’s first explore how fonts work in your emails. You can do live text in two ways-web safe fonts and web fonts.Īlthough the terms are nearly identical, there are definite differences. To deliver both a beautiful and accessible email design, stop trapping your message in images, and start using live text with web safe fonts and web fonts. Typography can support brand identity and create visually unique emails-but you shouldn’t sacrifice accessibility for the sake of design.

Best place to find free web fonts