HTML vs Plain-Text Email: Which Should Ecommerce Brands Use?

Plain-text emails are not automatically better than designed HTML emails. They are a different format with different strengths.

Designed HTML email wins when the product is visual, when comparison helps conversion or when hierarchy improves comprehension. Plain-text style wins when the message benefits from feeling personal, direct and conversational. Most ecommerce brands should use both, chosen per message.

The format is a decision inside the message, not a strategy in itself.

By Emiel Dingemans, Founder of Magicianly

What Is an HTML or Designed Email?

A designed email is built with HTML and CSS: a layout, a header, imagery, product blocks, buttons and a styled footer. Almost every promotional ecommerce email you receive is one.

Its strength is visual communication. It can show a product, compare variants, merchandise a collection and guide the eye through a hierarchy in a way pure copy cannot.

What Is a Plain-Text Style Email?

In ecommerce, what people call plain text is usually not a true text-only message. It is a lightly formatted HTML email that looks like something a person typed: left-aligned copy, a normal font, minimal or no imagery, one link and a human sign-off.

That distinction matters, because you still keep tracking, personalization and an unsubscribe link. You are choosing a visual register, not abandoning the platform.

Why Designed Emails Work

Designed email is the default for good reasons:

• the product can be seen rather than described;
• multiple items can be presented without a wall of copy;
• hierarchy makes the offer and the action obvious;
• brand recognition is reinforced in a crowded inbox;
• social proof, reviews and user-generated content have somewhere to live;
• seasonal merchandising becomes possible at all.

Why Plain-Text Emails Work

The advantages are mostly about attention and message clarity:

• pattern interruption in an inbox full of promotional templates;
• a visible sender personality rather than a brand broadcast;
• simplicity, which suits messages with a single point;
• a focused message with one action;
• a tone closer to natural conversation;
• fewer competing links and distractions.

It is worth being precise about placement claims. Plain-text and lightly formatted emails can sometimes behave differently from heavily promotional designs, but inbox placement depends on many sender, content and engagement signals. Some teams test plain-text formatting as part of inbox-placement experimentation, and format alone does not determine placement.

Where Plain Text Works Best

• a founder note or point of view;
• a personal check-in after purchase;
• cart or checkout follow-up, particularly later in the sequence;
• re-engagement and reactivation messages;
• the final email in a flow;
• a story or opinion piece;
• a simple announcement that needs no imagery;
• a question campaign designed to earn replies.

Replies are a valuable sign of genuine audience interaction and can be useful engagement signals, which is one reason question campaigns are worth running occasionally.

Where Designed Emails Work Better

• product discovery across a broad catalog;
• fashion and apparel, where the product is the message;
• food and drink, where appetite appeal matters;
• product launches;
• comparison between products or variants;
• campaigns featuring multiple SKUs;
• user-generated content;
• before and after demonstration;
• visual social proof;
• gifting and seasonal merchandising.

Designed Does Not Mean Image-Only

The real problem with many designed emails is not that they are designed. It is that the entire message is baked into one image.

Strong designed emails still use:

• live text for headlines, body copy and calls to action;
• product blocks rather than flattened graphics;
• images that support the message instead of carrying all of it;
• meaningful alt text;
• a clear HTML hierarchy that survives images being blocked.

Accessibility is a good enough reason on its own. Screen readers, image blocking and low-bandwidth conditions all reward live text and useful alt text.

How to Write a Good Plain-Text Email

• send from a real person with a recognizable name;
• write in a conversational voice rather than marketing copy;
• commit to one main idea;
• keep paragraphs short and scannable;
• include one clear call to action;
• close with a natural sign-off.

Avoid making it look artificially personal. A template dressed as a personal note, complete with fake typos, reads worse than an honest designed email.

How Often Should You Use Plain Text?

There is no correct ratio. For many ecommerce brands, occasionally introducing plain-text or lightly formatted messages provides useful variation in a calendar dominated by designed campaigns.

The right mix depends on:

• the product and how visual it is;
• brand positioning and voice;
• audience expectations;
• the goal of the specific campaign.

Treat it as a variable to test, not a quota to hit.

As a starting point for brands we work with, something in the region of 10 to 20 percent of campaigns in a plain-text register is often a sensible place to begin. That is a Magicianly working approach, not an industry benchmark, and we move it up or down based on what the results show.

Use Both Formats Inside Flows

Format variety matters more inside automations than most brands realize, because the same subscriber receives every message in the sequence.

A common structure we use:

• the first message designed, because it carries product and brand;
• the middle messages designed or lightly formatted depending on the job;
• the last message plain text, often a short direct note.

It works particularly well at the end of an abandoned cart sequence and inside a post-purchase sequence, where the message is closer to a check-in than a promotion.

Use Both Formats Across the Campaign Calendar

Across a month of sends, a run of visually similar designed campaigns starts to blur together. Introducing a plain-text message breaks that rhythm without needing a new offer.

Plan format alongside angle and audience rather than afterwards. That planning sits inside email campaign strategy and the ecommerce email marketing calendar.

A plain-text email has nowhere to hide, so the writing carries everything. Our notes on email copywriting apply doubly here.

Test Format Against Business Outcomes

When comparing formats, compare the numbers that reflect commercial result:

• click rate;
• placed-order rate;
• revenue per recipient;
• unsubscribe rate;
• reply rate where the campaign is designed to earn replies.

Open rate alone does not determine the winner. Open rates are affected by audience selection, category, privacy features, tracking limitations and sender reputation, so treat them as diagnostic rather than as the goal.

How to A/B Test HTML Against Plain Text Properly

Most format tests are unreadable because too much changes at once.

1. 1Write one hypothesis, for example that a direct personal note will outperform the designed version for a reactivation audience.
2. 2Keep the offer, the audience, the send time and the core message identical.
3. 3Change format only, including the subject line only if the hypothesis is explicitly about it.
4. 4Use a segment large enough that a small difference is not just noise.
5. 5Judge the winner on placed-order rate and revenue per recipient, then on unsubscribe rate.
6. 6Record the learning and design the next test from it, rather than declaring a permanent house style.

The wider testing discipline, including what to test first and how to read a result, is in our guide to email A/B testing.

The Deliverability Nuance

Two claims get repeated constantly, and both are wrong.

Plain text is an inbox-placement hack

It is not. Placement is driven by sender reputation, authentication, engagement history, list quality and complaint rates. Changing the visual register of one campaign does not rewrite those signals.

HTML causes poor deliverability

It does not. Plenty of heavily designed programs land in the inbox reliably. What hurts is a broken or bloated template, a single image carrying the whole message, poor link hygiene and sending to people who never engage.

If placement is genuinely a problem, fix it where it lives. Our email deliverability checklist is the right starting point.

Gmail Primary vs Promotions

Gmail sorts mail into tabs using a mix of content, sending patterns and how the individual recipient has behaved. A lighter, text-led email can look less like a promotion, and some senders do see tab differences when they test it.

Treat that as a possible effect, not a mechanism you control. The Promotions tab is also not a punishment: many buyers go there deliberately when they want offers, so a message that lands there can still perform well.

What is reliable is the underlying principle. Send messages people want, to people who engage, from a sender with a clean reputation.

Gmail's new AI features add one more reason to keep important copy in live text. Here's what Gmail's AI Inbox changes for ecommerce email.

The Format Is Not the Strategy

Switching a program to plain text will not fix weak segmentation, a thin lifecycle or an offer nobody wants. Neither will a better template.

Choose the format that serves the message, then judge it on whether the customer did something valuable. For one applied example, see how we use plain text as one of three practical email marketing tactics inside established programs.