Why does my email look different from the editor?

Your email is the same in the editor, in Preview, and in an inbox. The difference is in how it’s shown. The email in the editor is the desktop width. A phone, a mail app, and dark mode each draw the email a little differently. Find the cause that matches below. Its article has the fix.

Start with Preview

Select Preview in the top bar. It opens on Mobile and shows the email as Jounce sends it, not as the editor shows it. On a phone, most side-by-side columns stack into one, and a big headline can step down a size so it fits.

Desktop is the wide view. Plain text shows the words alone, which is what a mail app shows when it can’t show the design. If the preview looks right and your inbox doesn’t, the mail app is the difference. See Preview your email.

The images

An email carries links to its pictures, not the pictures. The reader’s mail app fetches each one when it opens the email, and some apps wait until the reader asks. Until then, each picture shows its description instead. See How images travel in email.

If a reader says the pictures are missing, see Why can’t they see the images in my email?

The fonts

Your words travel as text, and each mail app shows only the fonts it has. Jounce sends no font for a mail app to fetch. An app that lacks your brand’s font shows the close match Jounce names for it. Words a layout sends as a picture, such as a headline set on a photo, look the same everywhere.

In an email that opens in the earlier editor, Apple Mail and the iPhone’s Mail app show the font as you picked it. Gmail and Outlook don’t. An exact-look font there goes out as a picture of the heading. See Email-safe and exact-look fonts.

If the font isn’t the one on your website, the brand scan may have swapped it for one that shows in email. See Why did Jounce swap my font?

Dark mode

A mail app in dark mode can recolor an email on its own: a light background may turn dark, and dark text light. Jounce tells the mail app that the email handles its own colors, and the mail app decides what it does with that.

To see what your readers see, send a test to a phone with dark mode on.

The end is missing

Gmail cuts a long email short and hides the rest behind a View entire message link. The editor warns when an email gets that heavy. See Why does the editor say Gmail will clip this?

Still different? Send a test

The preview is the email as it goes out, but only an inbox shows what a mail app does with it. Send a test to yourself, then open it on your phone and in the mail app your readers use most. See Send a test email.