
Responsive HTML Email Templates - twakefield
http://htmlemail.io/
======
matt_wulfeck
$50 for 8 templates. There's nothing free or open-source on this site. Nothing
wrong with that but just setting expectations. I supposed it's not a bad price
if you're making money off the marketing campaign.

Can someone point to a "free", basic template that I can use instead of
sending plaintext emails? HTML in emails is simply a PITA. If I can make my
daily crons looks pretty then I'm all for that.

Even a nice css table similar to bootstrap would solve 99% of all my needs.

~~~
fonziguy
Hey Matt, Lee here the creator of the templates. I've open sourced a simple
basic email here ([https://github.com/leemunroe/responsive-html-email-
template](https://github.com/leemunroe/responsive-html-email-template)) and
also my Grunt workflow for building emails
([https://github.com/leemunroe/grunt-email-
workflow](https://github.com/leemunroe/grunt-email-workflow)) if you'd like to
take it for a spin.

~~~
ommunist
Thank you for sharing your workflow. I am sure you will definitely find your
customers, since website is enticing and well-designed.

------
taeric
I recently put back on my old geezer hat and switched to GNUS for email at
work. I yearn for the days that all email was simple text and people actually
trimmed long reply chains. Inline responses were also easier in text.

That said, I do realize this is mainly for marketing emails. Or things that
need to show charts and the like. I don't instantly despise the idea. But it
does amuse me that much of what makes the space difficult, is a combination of
a ton of things that were designed to make the space easy. (Though, I question
who the target was for most of the ease. Seems many features are made
specifically to make it easier to market to me. Not for me to use email.)

~~~
CaptSpify
One of the best decisions I made was to use a cli email client. Parsing email
is much faster and eaiser. And I don't have to look at spam^H^H^H^Hmarketing
emails any more.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Any particular one you recommend?

I've been meaning to use Emacs for my e-mail for quite some time now, but I
can't get myself to jump through all the hurdles required to get reliable
access to GMail.

~~~
parfe
In Emacs I use mu4e pointed at a local Maildir and sync against an imap server
using mbsync (switched away from offlineimap because of UID validity issues,
which is apparently offlineimap's only method of tracking messages, may be a
flaw with microsoft's imap implementation, but offlineimap can't handle it).

mbsync needs (setq mu4e-change-filenames-when-moving t) so it can properly
handle file moves.

Haven't used it against gmail, but because microsoft wants you using outlook
only, imap is a bit buggy so you need to set PipelineDepth 1 in your .mbsyncrc
IMAPAccount block because it seems that the microsoft imap server has account
global variables so multiple threads/connections will step on each other.

And perversely, (setq mu4e-view-prefer-html t) has to be set because many rich
html composing clients will send a text version that's completely blank,
leaving you staring at a blank body if the client defaulted to text only.

You'll have to find a html rendering command that works for you. Something
like (setq mu4e-html2text-command "html2text -utf8 -nobs -width 72")

Or google around for custom commands other people have published.

~~~
taeric
There is a special hell for people that send blank text parts for email.

------
buckbova
Not sure how "responsive" this is. The litmus test uses the simplest of all
the email templates and just looks like centered, possibly tabular content.

[https://litmus.com/checklist/emails/public/2e539c3](https://litmus.com/checklist/emails/public/2e539c3)

This different than zurb?

[http://foundation.zurb.com/emails/email-
templates.html](http://foundation.zurb.com/emails/email-templates.html)

~~~
blowski
That's about as responsive as you can get, unfortunately. Outlook and Gmail
don't support the CSS box model, so you have to use tables and that really
limits what you can do on mobiles.

~~~
ommunist
There are interesting workarounds for Gmail based on use of viewport width.
[http://emailcodegeek.com/responsive-email-in-
gmail/](http://emailcodegeek.com/responsive-email-in-gmail/)

~~~
blowski
Yeah, coding HTML emails is basically a whole series of 'interesting
workarounds'. I actually quite enjoy it - it's kind of like code golf in that
there's no best practice, it's just all hacks on hacks on hacks.

~~~
ommunist
I am not alone!

------
matt4077
For an actually free framework for responsive email layout check out
[https://mjml.io](https://mjml.io).

~~~
Rustydave
Wow! Thanks. Never knew about this before.

------
jbob2000
MailChimp has all of their email templates licensed under Creative Commons on
their github: [https://github.com/mailchimp/email-
blueprints](https://github.com/mailchimp/email-blueprints)

(if you're looking for a free, open source alternative)

~~~
dalanmiller
I worry that since they haven't been updated in awhile, they may have fallen
out of date.

------
KevanM
I find it amazing that the primary method of communication across many
businesses is still mired in a world of compromise and hacks.

Surely the use tables to create presentable emails, rather than simple HTML
and CSS bumps up the size of these emails that it would be in their interest
to base their rendering on modern standards.

------
tgarma1234
Are those from Lee Munroes github account? Yup.

[https://github.com/leemunroe/responsive-html-email-
template](https://github.com/leemunroe/responsive-html-email-template)

Note the copy that says: "Sometimes you need..."

So why on earth are they $50 now?

~~~
fonziguy
Hey, this is Lee. Correct. The simple responsive email template is free and
open source. If you have the time, or don't have the budget, you could
definitely use this as a starting point and create the rest of the templates
on top of this. It took me more than a few hours though :-)

~~~
tgarma1234
OK! So funny I have used that freebie one for a few years. That's why I knew
it the second I saw it. That's been a very useful template and I really
appreciated finding it on github a long time ago. Use it for transactional
emails literally all the time. Thanks for putting it up. By the way for the
inlining I use premailer. That's a good service.

~~~
fonziguy
Awesome, glad to hear that!

------
rektide
Same thing as when Mailgun introduced their (open source) templates- a company
claiming expertise in transactional mailing that seems entirely unaware of
Schema.org markup.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8173520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8173520)
[https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/](https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/)

~~~
JoBrad
But that only works in GMail, right?

~~~
eli
And even then only if your domain is whitelisted by Google:
[https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/registering-
with-...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/registering-with-google)

~~~
crucialfelix
Ah, but that answers my question about how to get rsvp, events and now cards
etc. to work.

------
blattus
Cerberus is a pretty good open source alternative (in addition to some of the
others listed in the comments) -
[http://tedgoas.github.io/Cerberus/](http://tedgoas.github.io/Cerberus/)

------
leesalminen
Don't these look very similar?

[http://htmlemail.io/img/preview-plain.jpg](http://htmlemail.io/img/preview-
plain.jpg)

[http://mailgun.github.io/transactional-email-
templates/actio...](http://mailgun.github.io/transactional-email-
templates/action.html)

~~~
fideloper
Exactly what I was thinking, most of the templates look straight up taken. Not
that it,s illegal (so far as I know, there are licensed to allow that).

~~~
fonziguy
Hi, Lee here, I created BOTH of email templates you're referring to. In fact
you can use my Grunt workflow to create more
[https://github.com/leemunroe/grunt-email-
workflow/](https://github.com/leemunroe/grunt-email-workflow/)

There are several differences with the templates for sale on HTMLemail.io:
More layouts, a 6 column grid, better responsive support for mobile (including
Gmail apps), includes high resolution image assets for social media and app
store buttons, better support across all clients including Gmail and Outlook.

~~~
leesalminen
Another Lee! Thanks for being transparent about the differences and for that
awesome Grunt workflow. I'll take a closer look at the for sale templates.

------
ommunist
github search for HTML email templates filtered by year will give you way more
niceties for free.

