Email builder font compatibility

While the fonts you choose should display as expected in the email builder and the web version of your email, they will display differently depending on the device and email client your recipients use.

This is because not all devices have the same fonts, and not all email clients support web fonts.

There are two types of fonts to consider when you build an email: system fonts and web fonts.

System fonts

System fonts are stored on your recipient's hard drive, and come with operating systems like macOS, Windows, iOS and Android.

As a general rule, older versions of operating systems don't have as many fonts, and not every device has the same fonts available. To compensate for this, we include a series of fallbacks — backup fonts that will display if a device can't load the preferred font. While we try to choose an alternative font as close as possible to the one you see while building your email, you should expect differences depending on what device an email is opened on.

Ultimately if the system viewing the email doesn't have the originally specified font or any of the fallbacks, the system's default serif, sans serif or monospaced font is loaded.

The system fonts available for selection in the email builder and their fallbacks are listed below.

Web fonts

Web fonts are loaded from the internet instead of a recipient's device, so should display similarly everywhere — so long as the recipient's email client supports them. Where a recipient's email client doesn't support web fonts, it will fall back to available system fonts.

Additionally, if a recipient's device has a font with the same name as name as a web font, the device font will be displayed instead of the web font, and may look different.

The major email clients that support web fonts are:

• Apple Mail
• iOS Mail
• Android's native email app (not Gmail)
• Outlook on Android and iOS
• Thunderbird
• Outlook for Mac

The major email clients that don't support web fonts are:

• Gmail
• Yahoo Mail
• Outlook.com
• Gmail mobile apps
• Most Outlook versions on Windows

The web fonts available for selection in the email builder, and the fallbacks provided if they don't load, are listed below.