Web Fonts - Email Client Support

Written By Danny Schaffer

The email client is the software, website, or tool you use to access your emails (Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, Google Gmail). Each one is different and can display the same email slightly differently. The desktop and webmail versions of the same client can even have differences (such as classic Outlook versus the new Outlook or Outlook on the web). As a digital marketer, it's important to know about this and take steps to ensure your content is as robust as possible, anticipating when some email clients will display your content differently.

The addition of Google Fonts to rezora makes this even more important! More and more email environments display Google Fonts as intended, but some still don't support them. If the recipient's email client doesn't support web fonts, the text will fall back to a default sans serif font instead of your chosen Google Font.

Clients that currently support web fonts:

  • Apple Mail (macOS)

  • iOS Mail

  • Native Android mail app (not the Gmail app)

  • New Outlook for Windows (the Chromium-based version Microsoft has been rolling out)

  • Outlook for Mac (current versions)

  • Outlook.com (web)

  • Outlook mobile apps (iOS/Android)

  • Mozilla Thunderbird

  • Many other mobile and webmail clients

Clients that don't support web fonts:

  • Gmail (webmail, iOS app, and Android app)

  • Yahoo Mail

  • AOL

  • Classic Outlook for Windows desktop (still widely used in enterprise/Office 365 environments running the older Word-based rendering engine)

A key change worth flagging: Outlook is no longer "one client" for font purposes. Microsoft has been splitting Windows users between the legacy desktop app (Word rendering engine, still no real web font support) and the newer Chromium-based Outlook, which does support web fonts. Since many organizations are still on the legacy version, it's safest to assume a meaningful chunk of your Outlook-using recipients will see the fallback font, not your Google Font.

Looking for more info on how this works? Check out this awesome article:

The Ultimate Guide to Web Fonts