Web safe fonts vs. web fonts

There are two types of fonts that can be used in email; Web safe fonts and web fonts.

Web safe fonts

Web safe fonts make up the below list and are found across the majority of computers, devices and operating systems.

When you use a web safe font as live text in email, it's almost guaranteed to work when your customers are viewing your email. For this reason, we recommend you stick to a web safe font.

• Arial
• Helvetia
• Times New Roman
• Verdana
• Courier/Courier New
• Tahoma
• Georgia
• Trebuchet MS
• Geneva

For brands, a web safe font will not always be inline with branding and in these cases a custom web font can be used.

Web fonts

Web fonts embedded via CSS import can be used within your emails, but with limited compatibility. We recommend using web safe fonts as a fallback, although this fallback may not be used as some email clients use their own default font as a fallback.

For example Gmail uses Arial as a default fallback, and older versions of Outlook (such as Outlook 2003) use Times New Roman as a default fallback font. So keep these in mind.

Compatibility can differ based across different email clients, here's a list of email clients that may or may not support web fonts:

Email Client	Supported?
Apple Mail	Yes
iOS Mail	Yes
Android Mail	Yes
Gmail App	No
Gmail (Web)	Yes*
Yahoo! Mail App	No
Yahoo! Mail (Web)	Yes*
Outlook.com App	No
Outlook.com (Web)	Yes*
Outlook 2003	No, Times New Roman displayed
Outlook 2007	No, Arial displayed
Outlook 2010	No, Arial displayed
Outlook 2011	Yes
Outlook 2013	No, Arial displayed
Outlook 2016 (mac)	Yes
Outlook 2019 (win)	No, Arial displayed

*Web fonts will only display in the email if the recipient has those fonts installed on their computer/devices.

---