Fonts play a key role in how your email campaigns look and feel. EasyEditor supports both web-safe fonts and web fonts, but each comes with its own benefits and limitations.

You can choose a web-safe font from the Font face drop-down menu in any campaign. To use a font that isn't in that list, you must add it to an individual campaign or template as a web font, by editing the source code. There's no account-level font setting, and you can't upload a font file to Dotdigital Marketing.

This article covers fonts in email campaigns and email templates.

Change the font on your text

To change the font on a single piece of text:

Select the text block you want to change.
In the text editing toolbar, expand the Font drop-down menu.
Choose a font.

To change the font everywhere it's used in a campaign, edit the style instead:

Select a text block, then expand the Utilities drop-down menu.
Select Manage all styles.
Choose the style you want to edit, then change the font.
Select Apply.

All text using that style updates across the campaign. Learn more in Add, edit, and style the Text block.

Web-safe fonts

Web-safe fonts are pre-installed on most devices and operating systems. They display consistently across browsers and email clients, making them a reliable choice for email design.

The fonts in the Font face drop-down menu in EasyEditor are web-safe fonts:

Arial
Arial Black
Century Gothic
Courier New
Georgia
MS Sans Serif
Palatino Linotype
Tahoma
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Verdana

Web-safe fonts are also used as fallback fonts. If a recipient's device can't load your chosen font, it displays a fallback font instead. A list of fonts written in order of preference is called a font stack.

In the following font stack, Tahoma, Helvetica, and sans-serif are fallback fonts for Calibri:

<font style="font-family: Calibri, Tahoma, Helvetica, sans-serif;">

You only need to write a font stack yourself if you're editing the source code of a campaign. If you do, the stack must always end with the generic serif or sans-serif.

Web-safe fonts across devices and systems

This table shows how widely each font is installed across devices. It isn't a list of the fonts you can choose in EasyEditor: some of these fonts are used only as fallbacks in font stacks.

✔ - installed on 95%+ of devices

✱ - installed on 85% or fewer devices

✘ - not installed

	Windows	Mac	iOS
Arial	✔	✔	✔
Verdana	✔	✔	✔
Trebuchet MS	✔	✔	✔
Georgia	✔	✔	✔
Tahoma	✔	✔	✘
Helvetica	✱	✔	✔
Courier	✔	✔	✔
Times New Roman	✔	✔	✔
Lucida	✔	✔	✘
Palatino Linotype	✔	✱	✔
Arial Black	✔	✔	✘
Arial Narrow	✔	✔	✘
Century Gothic	✱	✱	✘
Garamond	✱	✱	✘
Impact	✔	✔	✘

Web fonts

Web fonts aren't installed on devices by default. Email clients download them from an external server when the email is opened.

Web fonts are added per campaign

You add a web font to a single campaign or template by editing its source code. Campaigns you create from that template include the font. Every other campaign needs the font added again. There's no way to add a font to your whole account.

Because a web font might not load, you must always define fallback fonts.

Web fonts limitations

Email client support

Web fonts don't display in:

Outlook for Windows
Most webmail clients, including Gmail

In these clients, your fallback font displays instead. Outlook for Windows can also behave unpredictably and default to Times New Roman, even when you've defined a fallback font. To prevent this, add Outlook-specific styles to the head of your campaign's HTML code.

Apple Mail supports web fonts.

Buttons

You can't use web fonts in EasyEditor buttons. If you apply a web font to a button, it's replaced with an email-safe font. This is because web fonts can cause button text to break in Outlook for Windows.

Support policy

Web fonts aren't part of EasyEditor's standard code, and we can't guarantee they display in all email clients. This applies to every web font you add, whatever its source, including Google Fonts. Our support team is unable to assist with display issues caused by web fonts.

Use third-party font hosting

Dotdigital doesn't host web fonts, and you can't upload a font file such as a WOFF, TTF, or OTF. A web font is loaded from a URL, which you add to your campaign's source code.

To use a web font, you need either:

A font from a supplier that provides an embed link, such as Google Fonts or Adobe Fonts
A font hosted on your own server

Fonts hosted on your own server aren't blocked by Dotdigital, but the CORS policy of the server they're requested from usually prevents them loading. This is outside our control.

Learn more in Add web fonts to email.

Check how your font displays

A campaign can look correct in EasyEditor and different in an inbox, because email clients render fonts differently. Before you send:

Send a test campaign to a client that supports web fonts, such as Apple Mail, and check that your font displays.
Send a test campaign to Outlook for Windows, and check that your fallback font displays.

If the fallback font isn't the one you expect, check the Outlook-specific styles in the head of your campaign's HTML code. Outlook for Windows applies those styles instead of your font stack.

Learn more in Limitations of Microsoft Outlook for Windows.

Use different fonts in EasyEditor