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Are there any good tools to easily test how HTML email will look across different email clients? I prefer something with instant feed back rather than a submit and wait service like http://litmusapp.com Or at the very least a way to test the Outlook 2007/MS Word rendering?

I found this related question but it doesn't specifically address testing. What guidelines for HTML email design are there?

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ejunker
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    Sounds like some you might want to consider creating VMs for if nobody can provide you with any good tools. – RichardOD Jun 19 '09 at 14:05
  • No automated testing service for email is going to be 100% reliable. Setup real accounts with all the providers you want to test against, install VMs for any OS you don't run, and buy a couple old phones on eBay. Takes me about half an hour to test all clients and devices with real accounts and real devices. – davidcondrey Jun 27 '14 at 05:32
  • Can the question be migrated to https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ ? – Michael Freidgeim Jun 27 '18 at 03:19
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    ^ Regarding testi, it's only "FREE" if you want to test gmail and yahoo but you have to pay to test outlook which is the client you really need to test for. – Nunchucks Dec 06 '18 at 00:01
  • At the current time 2019, this kind of service got monopolized by single company, everything is paid like 50e for test :) . Not sure how this happen, but it happend. – Jiro Matchonson Jul 15 '19 at 12:33

9 Answers9

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You could also use PutsMail to test your emails before sending them.

PutsMail is a tool to test HTML emails that will be sent as campaigns, newsletters and others (please, don't use it to spam, help us to make a better world).

Main features:

  • Check HTML & CSS compatibility with email clients
  • Easily send HTML emails for approval or to check how it looks like in email clients
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Pablo Cantero
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    That's nice, but it doesn't answer the question posted here. By the way, I really enjoy a commercial OSX App named MockSMTP (by Sebastien Gruhier). Real time saver... no need to send real emails through internet! – fro_oo Jul 11 '12 at 10:42
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    Maybe this worked in 2012, but this tool does not show at all what it will look like across email clients.. – Gerben Jacobs Sep 02 '13 at 09:37
  • @GerbenJacobs what isn't working for you? This tool is for simple HTML rendering in the browser, sending the email to your email address and validating the email content, it doesn't test your email against all email clients automatically, it is only for a simple test. You have the HTML then you paste in PutsMail then check if it looks ok. You can also send it to your clients for approval, but nothing more. – Pablo Cantero Sep 03 '13 at 12:54
  • @QF_Developer it seems to be working now, could you try it again, please? PutsMail is getting lot of Application Errors in Heroku, but it returns to work automatically. – Pablo Cantero Sep 19 '13 at 12:43
  • What is the benefit of putsmail, as opposed to just opening a html email in a browser directly? – Genu Dec 13 '13 at 17:24
  • @Genu PutsMail checks HTML & CSS compatibility with email clients, allows users to easily send HTML emails for approval or to check how it looks like in email clients such as: gmail, hotmail etc. Opening a HTML in a browser doesn't guarantee that your email will look right in the email clients. – Pablo Cantero Dec 14 '13 at 23:50
  • hmm... I compared an email in Outlook, to the same email as it displays in putsmeail, and they look significantly different. For example, outlook doesn't render border colors, but putsmail rendered corectly. Also, some things that outlook doesn't support, putsmail would support. – Genu Dec 18 '13 at 22:55
  • @Genu Have you tried the "Check your HTML" button? It may show some HTML issues. The idea of PutsMail is to easily test your emails before send them through marketing tools (mailchimp, campaign monitor etc). So, paste your HTML, check the preview, check your HTML, send the HTML email to your email address, check how it works in email clients (gmail, hotmail, outlook etc), send for approval etc then send through marketing tools. If you want a tool to show how your HTML emails in email clients more automated, you could check http://litmus.com/. – Pablo Cantero Dec 19 '13 at 23:45
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    Yes, as some have mentioned, this is a useful tool for quickly sending your HTML as an email, but will NOT help you with client rendering issues unless connected with Litmus. – Simon East Jun 30 '15 at 01:58
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    Putsmail is also litmus – Dr Upvote Jul 01 '15 at 21:04
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    This is no longer free. – Protector one Oct 06 '17 at 09:04
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    @Pablo: I disagree! I wouldn't call a 7-day free trial "free". After trying to see a mail rendered, you're greeted with a credit card info form accompanied by the following words: "This is just to open your account. Your 7-day trial includes full access through October 16, 2017. You can cancel before your trial ends and you won't be charged. After 7 days, your credit card will be charged $99 and will renew monthly. You can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel any time." – Protector one Oct 09 '17 at 12:20
  • @Protectorone isn't the free trial for Litmus? I think that the message is just trying to upsell Litmus. – Pablo Cantero Oct 10 '17 at 13:17
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    It's still free, but I can understand the confusion! Putsmail (among other things) allows you to send HTML email to your own addresses for manual email testing. It's not changed and it's still very much free. Litmus is a paid-for product that does the testing for you, and has a 7 day free trial. – Matt Brindley Dec 18 '17 at 18:13
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    I just tried it and I don't get an email. – Apollo Jan 25 '18 at 16:12
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    The website linked to is merely a clever advertisement. – Justin May 30 '18 at 07:14
  • I also try but I don't get an email. – questionbank Apr 18 '19 at 11:23
  • Firstly accept getting drafts in the first email and the second would appear your testing email. – alanextar Nov 29 '20 at 10:12
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Yes, you can use any of these popular tools:

oblomchik
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Michiel
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    You might be interested to know that both Campaign Monitor and Mailchimp's internal testing services are powered by Litmus. – John May 16 '14 at 16:09
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    I don't know about Litmus' paid service, but the integrated Litmus testing in Mailchimp is not reliable. 7/10 times it's fine, but I've found on several occasions, the way certain clients are displayed in the Litmus results are not accurate with the same results I do on my own. – davidcondrey Jun 27 '14 at 05:27
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    Neither are reliable. – user734063 Dec 01 '14 at 17:51
  • Sorry, neither of the 3 mentioned above will show how email "actually" renders in Outlook. :( – Ed DeGagne Nov 07 '16 at 17:16
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    I very much disliked Litmus' email & basic details harvest, followed by a mandatory Credit Card input before getting to the free 7 day trial - beware! – danjah Mar 21 '17 at 02:36
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    testi.at seems to work very nice, free only to test on one email client, to do more you have to pay a few bucks. – Joel May 04 '17 at 23:29
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    Tested testi.at a while ago when it was free and just recently when I had to pay 5 pounds for 3 days of access. Not a fancy interface but it did the job. – Daniel Jun 09 '17 at 09:42
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    My 2 dimes on testi.at - really like it so far – dkellner Aug 02 '17 at 12:38
  • Currently testi.ai has the following restriction on free accounts. In FREE mode only Gmail and Yahoo are allowed. Please check our payments plan starting from 5£ or 7$ for 2 days – xyfantis Nov 26 '18 at 12:45
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    Every single of them are paid services, this should not be final answer :/ – Jiro Matchonson Jul 15 '19 at 11:52
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    Sadly all these services are paid.Would be better if there is any open source solution – princebillyGK Jun 20 '21 at 15:22
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    Hello from the future. Whats the 2021 way of testing HTML emails? – Sascha Jun 22 '21 at 15:04
  • https://email2go.io works for me Thanks. You can signup without Credit Card for trial accounts – Ankur Raiyani Nov 23 '21 at 11:55
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I found emailonacid.com today (beta, currently free†) - have only played with it a little but so far so good. It simulates the following clients:

  • AOL 9
  • Entourage 2004 & 2008
  • Gmail
  • Hotmail
  • Windows Live Mail
  • Windows Mail
  • Mac Mail
  • Outlook 2003 & 2007
  • Thunderbird 2, 3 & Beta
  • Yahoo Classic / Yahoo Mail

The very helpful thing about this service is it tells you what code is not supported in which client.

†Edit: Not free anymore, but provides a 7 day free trial.

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Dan
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    that emailonacid.com is a great tool. thanks for pointing it out – smnbss Jul 21 '11 at 12:51
  • I used this for all the newsletters and e-blasts that [gatewaypeople.com](http://gatewaypeople.com) sends to it's subscribers. Excellent tool with insightful viewing of all popular email clients! – scarver2 Jun 27 '13 at 12:50
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    Not entering CC info to "try" out something for "free". No thanks. – Ed DeGagne Nov 07 '16 at 17:21
  • I've just spent the last few hours sorting through SO posts to find a good email testing app. Email on Acid had the right feature set, and at a much more reasonable cost than Litmus. Thanks! – Memetican Aug 15 '17 at 00:05
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    Not free, requesting CC info. – Jiro Matchonson Jul 15 '19 at 12:34
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Another thing you could try is to upload the html to a webpage and then open the webpage in word to test Outlook.

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    I know that sounds crazy but MS Outlook 2007 and 2010 use the MS Word rendering engine. So if you have an old version of MS Word 2007 or 2010 you can open your HTML document in it and it will display how it will in MS Outlook 2007 and 2010. – Terri Swiatek Aug 27 '14 at 19:58
  • Even opening the HTML with last version of Word makes the trick. Thanks! – Eduardo Yáñez Parareda Mar 29 '21 at 08:17
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Direct Mail is an OS X desktop app that can show you previews of what your email will look like in a variety of email clients:

http://directmailmac.com/mac-email-design/

Full Disclosure: I work for the developers of Direct Mail

sanmai
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    Thanks for posting your answer! Please be sure to read the [FAQ on Self-Promotion](http://stackoverflow.com/faq#promotion) carefully. Also note that it is *required* that you post a disclaimer every time you link to your own site/product. – Andrew Barber Nov 20 '12 at 00:28
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    Thanks for the link, Direct Mail allowed me to test Outlook 2003 (which happened to render an issue I had on Outlook 2010). It is free and doesn't require subscription. – Jerome Mouneyrac Sep 12 '16 at 07:15
  • Thank you for commenting! I would typically use Mailchimp to send a custom email to myself to test it on my phone, but I guess they recently disabled that option for free users. This is a time-saver. Thanks!!! – Bjorn.B Jun 26 '19 at 13:56
  • The tool does seem to offer outlook previewing on both MacOS and Windows, but a payed version is needed – Sofía May 04 '22 at 09:35
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If you are converting your HTML pages to Email. You should check Premailer,

It converts CSS to inline CSS and also tests the compatibility with major email clients.

Ruchit Patel
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If you don't want to use a submission service like Litmus (Litmus is the best, BTW) then you're just going to have to run Outlook 2007 to test your email.

It sounds like you want something a little more automatic (though I'm not sure why), but fortunately Outlook is easy to automate using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

You can write a VBA tool that runs from the command line to generate an email, load the email up in Outlook, and even capture a screenshot if you wish. (Presumably this is what the Litmus team does on the backend.)

(BTW, do not attempt to use MS Word to test mail; the renderer is similar but subtle differences in page layout can affect the rendering of your email.)

Dan Fabulich
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    By "instant feedback" I mean something where I don't have to actually send the email to see my changes. Something similar to web browsers where I can make a change, hit refresh and see the results. Anything similar for Outlook? – ejunker Jun 19 '09 at 20:25
  • You'd be crazy to use anything but Outlook to test Outlook rendering. If you write a VBA script, you can make it as easy as hitting refresh, but probably not quite as fast. If turnaround speed is ridiculously important, you could try using VBA to automatically modify an existing email instead of sending it out via SMTP. Cutting the network traffic out of the loop will help performance considerably. You big whiner. ;-) – Dan Fabulich Jun 19 '09 at 20:36
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Campaign Monitor is quite popular and offers previews for many popular email clients.

Robert Munteanu
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I've used most of them and can tell you that the best method is to test directly to each client. Once you are comfortable with sending you can send tests of your emails to gmail and if the design doesn't break then it's pretty safe on modern email clients.

You can check what is supported on which client here:

http://www.email-standards.org

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  • Yes, gmail can be a bit strict on what tags/styles it allows, but it's a completely different beast to Outlook... So you'll need to test that too. – Simon East Apr 15 '13 at 00:35