Use Inbox Preview to see how your email displays in different inboxes

Preview your email and click the Inbox tab to see how your email renders on desktop and mobile in the most popular email clients

Inbox Preview is an add-on you can purchase for a monthly charge of $10 USD, which lets you preview your emails in a variety of different email clients, including apps for both desktop and mobile, and even dark mode for mobile devices. You get 25 previews per month and each email client you select counts as one preview.

• How Inbox Preview works
• Add the Inbox Preview add-on
• Use Inbox Preview
• Look for issues in your email design

Be a better marketer: Want to learn more about email design? See more best practices and check out How to design the perfect email newsletter!

How Inbox Preview works

When you've finished designing your email and you're almost ready to send, giving your email a preview can help you find content errors, typos, and design issues that can be corrected before you send to your contacts. Inbox Preview takes it a step further and lets you see how your email displays in the email clients that matter most to you. Every month you get a total of 25 previews:

• Just clicking the Inbox tab doesn't automatically count as a preview, you have to click the Generate Preview button before any of your previews are used.
• You can see the the total number of previews you have remaining for the month in the upper right-hand corner of the Inbox tab.
• Each email client you select counts as one preview, and you can select as many, or as few, as you need.
• The preview count at the bottom of the Inbox tab tells you how many previews you are about to use and how many previews you'll have left for the rest of the month afterwards.
• Once you’ve used your 25 previews in the calendar month, you aren't able to use Inbox Preview until the first of the next month.
• You aren't able to purchase additional previews and unused previews don't roll over to the next month.
  
  
  
  

Compatible Email Clients:

Mobile apps/devices

• Android Gmail app
• Android Gmail app (dark)
• Android Outlook app
• Android Outlook app (dark)
• iPhone Mail
• iPad Mail
• iPhone Gmail app
• iPhone Gmail app (dark)

Desktop apps

• Apple Mail (Mac)
• AOL
• Comcast
• Gmail
• Outlook
• Yahoo

Did you know? You can get an idea of how many of your contacts are using AOL, Comcast, Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo by searching by email domain. Then you'll know which previews are the most meaningful to select!

Add the Inbox Preview add-on

To add Inbox Preview to your account:

1. In the left-hand menu, next to your account name, click . . . > Account settings.
2. Click the Ad-ons tab.
3. Scroll down to the Inbox Preview add-on and click the Add to plan button.
   
   
    
4. Check the box to agree to the terms and conditions (listed below) and authorize payment, then click the Accept button.
   
    
    

Important: The Inbox Preview add-on charge is listed as a separate line item on your monthly invoice. If you wish to remove the add-on from your account, please contact our Support team.

Use Inbox Preview

When you've finished designing your email and you're almost ready to send, giving your email a preview can help you find errors and design issues that can be corrected before you send to your contacts.
 

1. From within the email editor, click Preview & Test > Preview.
   
    
    
2. Click the Inbox tab.
3. Select the views you want to preview. Each option you select counts as one preview.
4. Click the Generate preview button.
   
    
    
5. Click on the email client names to see how your email looks in each inbox and look for common design issues. Use the scrollbar next to a desktop preview, or the controls next to a mobile preview to view the entire length of your email. 
6. (Optional) In the desktop email clients, you can click the Images and Blocked toggle to view how the email looks if images aren't enabled.
7. When you’re finished, click the X in the upper right-hand corner of the overlay to return to your email draft to correct any design issues before sending your email to your contacts. After you generate previews on the Inbox tab, you can click the Desktop tab and Mobile tab without losing them. However, once you close out of the Preview overlay, your previews aren't saved and you have to generate a new preview.
   Tip: If you need something to refer back to, you can always take a screenshot of your preview.
   
   
   
   

Did you know? Our Inbox preview is powered by Litmus. If your email preview isn't displaying as expected, for example if all the images are missing and you don't have the Blocked toggle selected, you can check for issues with email previews on the Litmus status page.

Look for issues in your email design

Every email client displays emails differently. Using Inbox Preview helps you see potential design issues across the most commonly used email clients so you can make the necessary edits to your content.

Email length

Some email clients clip or distort your email message if it exceeds a certain size. Email recipients scan emails quickly to see if the content is interesting before moving on to something else, so the more scrolling a reader has to do, the less interested they become. If the bottom of the email gets cut off in several previews, it's best to shorten your message.


 

Call-to-action placement

Make sure your main call-to-action link or button is clearly visible in each preview so that your contacts see it at first glance. Having a single call-to-action helps keep your email short, too!

Appearance when images don't display

Based on the email client used and the email client's image settings, some recipients can't see the images in your email. For example, Comcast doesn't display images, and Outlook hides images until the recipient grants permission to view them. To make sure your message still works without images, each desktop option in Inbox Preview has a toggle switch so you can view what your email looks like with images and when they are blocked. Make sure to add a detailed image description to each image in your template so that your contacts have an idea of what they're missing when your images don't display!

Font style

Not all email clients support the same fonts. When  a font isn't supported, it gets swapped out for a supported font and can change the branding and style of your email. If your fonts look different or odd, check your template in the editor to make sure you're using a web-safe font. If you chose a font from the "Other" category, consider changing it to one of the first nine fonts in the list to avoid display issues.

• Example of a font from the "Other" category displaying as intended:
  
  
  
  
• Example of how the same font is changed when the font isn't supported by an email client:
  
  
   

Color contrast

Mobile devices can be put into "Dark Mode" so that screens aren't as bright in low-light environments, but each email operating system has different ways of handling colors and contrast that can make your email look much different than how you intended it. This includes colors being inverted, poor contrast that results in elements of your email not being visible, and image distortion.

• Example of an email displayed as intended:
  
  
   
• Example of the same email displayed with "dark mode" enabled and poor contrast in logo image:
  
  
   

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