What Are Email-Safe Fonts and Why They Matter

When designing marketing emails, your choice of font can have a larger impact than many realise. Using the wrong type of font can lead to broken formatting and inconsistent design across different devices and email platforms.

In this article, we’ll show you why using email-safe fonts is important, how “email-safe” and “web-safe” fonts are not the same thing, and how to ensure your email comes through correctly in every inbox.

What Are Email-Safe Fonts?

If you’ve used a CRM platform like HubSpot or ActiveCampaign to design emails, you may have noticed a surprisingly limited selection of fonts to choose from.

Typically, these platforms offer only the eight most common email-safe fonts;

• Arial
• Courier New
• Georgia
• Lucida Sans Unicode
• Tahoma
• Times New Roman
• Trebuchet MS
• Verdana

These fonts are supported across the widest range of devices and email clients. That means, regardless of how your audience views your email, you know for certain these fonts will be displayed correctly.

What Happens If I Don’t Use Email-Safe Fonts?

Eight fonts aren’t a lot to choose from to make your brand stand out, and you might already have a brand font you’d prefer to use for consistency. So, why would you use an email-safe font?

While there are ways to include custom fonts in your email code, email as a technology is not universally built to support them. 

Most email clients simply won’t display a custom font unless the user already has that font installed on their device.

How Will Each Email Client Display Your Email?

If the user doesn’t have your specific font installed (and most won’t), their email client will automatically fall back to a default font instead. 

Gmail uses Arial, Apple Mail uses Helvetica, Outlook uses Times New Roman and Hotmail, now known as Outlook.com uses Calibri. Each client uses a different fallback font which may not reflect your brand’s tone. 

How Can Fallback Fonts Break Your Email Layout?

The real problem goes beyond aesthetics. When a fallback font is used, your email layout can break entirely. Fonts vary in size, spacing, and line height, which can result in unexpected line breaks, misaligned content, and broken formatting.

In short, your email may end up looking nothing like what you originally designed.

What About Web-Safe Fonts?

Web-safe fonts solve a similar problem, but for websites instead of emails.

• Email-safe fonts are the small collection of fonts installed on most devices, ensuring consistent display in email clients.
• Web-safe fonts are a much larger collection of fonts that are supported by most web browsers, ensuring websites can display them correctly.

While some email clients are web browser based most are not, and they don’t support web-safe fonts. In fact, many web-based email clients choose to block custom fonts to maintain the email-safe standard.

Can You Still Match Your Brand Look With Email-Safe Fonts?

Email-safe fonts may not match your brand’s typeface exactly, but you can still maintain brand consistency. Choose a similar font for your email body, and consider using header images styled in your brand font to reinforce visual identity.

The key benefit of using an email-safe font is preserving a professional and consistent appearance across inboxes. It ensures your message is readable, visually coherent, and less likely to trigger spam filters.

Bottom Line

Choosing the right font for your emails isn’t just about appearance, it’s about clarity, reliability, and user experience. By sticking to email-safe fonts, you reduce the risk of display issues and improve engagement across devices and platforms.

Start with an email-safe font from the beginning, even if it doesn’t perfectly match your brand, to ensure your emails look great everywhere.

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