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Plain-Text email VS HTML email

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 11:27 am
by gugubanana
elloo,

i've read some where that plain-text email is better than html email however i cannot find the article, can some one here tell me what are the advantages of plain-text email?

Far, as i understand that some MUA (mail user agents) do not support html email for security reasons however i have not a clue what are these security reasons are.

many thanks in advance.

ps: sorry if i have posted this in the wrong category.

Re: Plain-Text email VS HTML email

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 2:22 pm
by pickle
- HTML email generally takes longer to download.
- If you have images in your email, those images need to be hosted somewhere. If you're hosting the images, that could increase your bandwidth usage (and subsequent cost).
- Some clients don't display HTML email - though that shouldn't be a big consideration as whenever you send out an HTML email there should always be a plaintext alternative in the email
- HTML rendering engines in mail clients are not always the best, as a result, it could be (could[/] being the operative word - I've never tried) quite difficult to get your email to look the same in a bunch of different clients.

Re: Plain-Text email VS HTML email

Posted: Thu Jun 25, 2009 2:34 pm
by gugubanana
@pickle thanks for that.

i understand what your saying, do you also know of any security issues related to html email? (...that is if there is any in the first place)

Re: Plain-Text email VS HTML email

Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 9:59 am
by pickle
The only security concerns with HTML email are concerns on the part of the receiver, not the sender. Remember how I said you would have to host any images yourself? What if, instead of using "productX.jpg" in the email, you used "productX.jpg?requesting_email=email@client.com". You could then set up your server to keep track of which accounts where requesting the image, and then know which accounts were active, or which accounts were interested in the subject line enough to read the email, etc.

Not so much a security concern as a privacy issue.