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Comment by Eupolemos | Hacker News Reader

I'm remaking my workplace's transactional emails these days (order confirmation, receipt etc. for an online shop - emails customers also reply to when stuff doesn't go as expected). We want something responsive for smartphones, but are primarily a B2B company.

I made what they wanted with MJML. Looked good in a browser, gmail and phone.

Outlook had a few issues, can't remember which right now.

But replying from Outlook simply broke the styling completely. Gaps between each section, complete mess. Not the impression you want to give the customers when their order goes wrong. B2B means Outlook is what out customers use.

I've found that replying via Outlook is the ultimate integrity test of an eamil.

Now I'm making them by hand and it is a madening cargo cult bonanza. Takes a lot of time.

I guess MJML is fine for marketing.

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> But replying from Outlook simply broke the styling completely

This is an Outlook problem, not an MJML or even an HTML problem.

If you inspect the HTML for the email sent vs what Outlook sends on a reply you’ll see it has changed the code.

Here’s an excellent highlight of this bug https://www.hteumeuleu.com/2016/super-mail-forward-an-email-...

The end user doesn't know that, and doesn't care.

Your boss is not your end user. The way your boss interacts with the emails you send is not the way your end users do. Optimising for your boss is not how this channel should work, though I appreciate there are a lot of bosses out there who don’t understand this.

I don't understand your point.

Are you complaining that his boss is forcing him to implement something that his end users can use?

If so, why isn't his boss right?

Personally, I'd say that yeah, he's supposed to work for his end user, why would he do anything else?

My point is that, from the perspective of email, you frequently receive internal feedback that doesn't correspond to how users actually use email.

For example, if the org uses desktop Outlook but < 1% of your audience does, is it worth optimising the email for that audience based on internal feedback?

If someone notices that something weird happens when an email is replied to or forwarded, is that something worth acting on based on the real world frequency of that action?

> This is an Outlook problem, not an MJML or even an HTML problem.

Though you are technically correct, I just don't think this is a constructive attitude. Half the job of making emails is working around (Outlook) bugs. This is just the annoying world email coding.

If MJML is content ignoring Outlook bugs, MJML just isn't a satisfying tool for email makers.

Sure, it'll get the job done for some marketing, but now the developer isn't learning skills that will make robust emails beyond that.

Making robust emails becomes a completely separate skillset and the developer who chose to invest time in MJML will have to start all over learninging the necessary skills if he needs to make email you can actually reply to.

> Though you are technically correct, I just don't think this is a constructive attitude.

I’ve worked in email for a decade, you do what you can with the tools you've been given. An email will never look perfect everywhere and while I agree with the general sentiment you’re talking about regarding folks learning proper email code rather than relying on tools, I also think the quality of emails sent is substantially higher now thanks to those tools.

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