Channel & craft
Plain-text alternative
Also known as: text version · multipart alternative
The plain-text version of an HTML email that sits alongside the HTML in the message's MIME structure: fallback for clients that don't render HTML, accessibility signal for mailbox providers, and a deliverability micro-signal.
Every well-formed email should include a plain-text alternative in its multipart/alternative MIME structure. Most modern inboxes render HTML, but plain-text serves three purposes: fallback for clients that strip HTML (rare but still exists, terminal clients, some legacy corporate gateways), accessibility for screen readers and low-bandwidth contexts, and a small deliverability signal. Mailbox providers weight messages with both parts slightly more favourably than HTML-only, because matching HTML-only structure with spam is more common. A good plain-text version isn't just the HTML with tags stripped; it's a readable rewrite with sensible line breaks, URLs written out rather than hidden in anchors, and a logical flow. Most ESPs auto-generate the plain-text version from HTML but the auto-generated output is usually poor quality.
Read next
Plain-text email versions: why they still matter in 2026
Every HTML email should ship with a plain-text twin: the same email rendered as bare text, no styling. Most ESPs auto-generate one, and most of those auto-generated versions are garbage. Here's why the plain-text version still matters in 2026 and how to make the version you ship actually work.
Email accessibility: the seven rules that make your emails readable by everyone
Roughly fifteen percent of your audience opens your email with a screen reader, on a cracked phone in direct sunlight, or with images blocked at the corporate gateway. Most programs accidentally design around them. Seven rules, most of them cheap, all of them learnable in an afternoon, close the gap.