What is a plain text email?
When we mentioned "Plain Text Email," we were referring to an SMTP plain text email (in our blog post on Is Email Green), meaning an email composed in text/plain format with no HTML, images, or attachments. This is the simplest form of an email, usually sent via email clients like Outlook, Gmail, or a command-line interface using SMTP.
However, there are a few different interpretations of "plain text" in email:
SMTP Plain Text Email – A text/plain email without HTML or rich formatting, using only ASCII characters. This is the most lightweight and energy-efficient email format.
HTML Email with Only Text – An HTML email that contains only text but is still wrapped in text/html, allowing for styling. This consumes more data than true plain text but much less than media-heavy emails.
Emails Sent from Outlook or Gmail – These can be either plain text or HTML, depending on settings. Even simple emails from Outlook/Gmail typically use HTML formatting, which increases size due to additional metadata and inline styles.
Worthy of note: Most Email Service Providers are set up to send an SMTP plain text version of your HTML email. As these are typically generated automatically, it is worth seeing if you can edit them as often they can look awful.