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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-31T05:49:32+00:00

Is it alright to send HTML-only emails without the text/plain part when doing HTML

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Is it alright to send HTML-only emails without the text/plain part when doing HTML only actions like clicking a link to view replies or some other “alert” type notification? For example, clicking a link to activate your email or clicking to see new comments.

Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:30:54 -0800 (PST)
From: email@site.com
Subject: Test Mail
To: <email@site.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

VGhpcyBpcyBdfJDFKdjfkdsFpbCBmcm9tIGxvY2FsaG9zdCB3aXRoIGZzbdrb3BlbigpIGF0IDEz
eGVvbmNyb3NzLmNvbSI+eGVvbmNyb3NzLmNvbTwvYT4gPGk+bGluazwvaT4hPHA+VGhpcyBpcyBt
b3JlIHRleHQ8L3A+

Instead of using multipart to create two copies of the same email.

Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:30:54 -0800 (PST)
From: email@site.com
Subject: Test Mail
To: <email@site.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="4f57a7d259baf"

--4f57a7d259baf
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

VGhpcyBpcyBdfJDFKdjfkdsFpbCBmcm9tIGxvY2FsaG9zdCB3aXRoIGZzbdrb3BlbigpIGF0IDEz
eGVvbmNyb3NzLmNvbSI+eGVvbmNyb3NzLmNvbTwvYT4gPGk+bGluazwvaT4hPHA+VGhpcyBpcyBt
b3JlIHRleHQ8L3A+

--4f57a7d259baf
Content-Type: text/text; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

VGhpcyBpcyBdfJDFKdjfkdsFpbCBmcm9tIGxvY2FsaG9zdCB3aXRoIGZzbdrb3BlbigpIGF0IDEz
MzExNDQ2NTgKCkFsc28gd2l0aCBhIGdvb2dsZS5jb20gdXJsIGFuZCB4ZW9uY3Jvc3MuY29tIGxp
bmshVGhpcyBpcyBtb3JlIHRleHQ=

I would like to save the bandwidth if there isn’t a very good reason to include the text version.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    If you’re looking to save bandwidth, I don’t think you should be using base64 encoding as it makes your data 33% larger (on average). In my understanding, text/plain (not text/text) should always be provided in a human-readable format (like quoted-printable).

    I don’t think there are many e-mail clients that can’t read HTML nowadays, still I think your decision should reflect how important it is for the end-user to be able to read (and understand) your e-mail / alert and not (minor) bandwidth limitations. I’ve no experience with AOL, but I think it had some issues with e-mail links a few years ago, perhaps that counts as a bonus points for the plain text alternative.

    Also, don’t forget that the actual links need to be displayed in plain text versions.

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