4 Plugins That Enable Your WordPress Site to Send HTML Emails

Did you know that WordPress doesn’t HTML emails? It’s true. There’s no option to turn on to send HTML emails, which means that if you want to brand the communication generated from your site, you’re out of luck. You may be so used to emails sent from WordPress that you no longer notice that they are ugly, plain text messages with raw URLs.

Improve Business Branding by Enabling HTML Emails

This is where plugins come to the rescue. You cannot afford to send unbranded emails on behalf of your business, not even once. If you’re in your user’s email box, you need to make the best impression possible, because you may not get another chance.

For several years there have been many hacks floating around to allow WordPress to send HTML emails, but they can be difficult and messy to implement. Depending on what emails you want to target, there are now a few updated plugins to choose from.

1. The HTML Emails Plugin will transform your email notifications.

Install HTML Emails and you’ll be able to convert the default plain text email notifications into fully customizable, attractive HTML emails. Check out the default output:

You can, of course, customize the email templates to be branded for your business. Currently this plugin only handles new user registration emails and comment and trackback notifications. Multi-site support is coming soon.

2. The News Mailer plugin lets you send HTML news and update emails to registered members.

The News Mailer plugin is a great option if you want a simple way to email users who are registered with your site, instead of using a third party service. If you want start sending HTML newsletters, then this plugin will let you do that through your WordPress dashboard.

3. The Subscribe2 plugin sends a list of subscribers an HTML email notification when you publish a new blog.

The Subscribe2 plugin provides a comprehensive subscription management and HTML email notification system for WordPress blogs. You have the option of sending an email on a per-post basis or periodically in a digest email.

4. The MailPress plugin sends HTML emails with dedicated themes and templates.

MailPress a much larger plugin that will basically give your WordPress site a full-featured mailing platform. It offers double opt-in subscription, subscriptions to comments, newsletters, post notifications, and mailing lists with a full templating system. This is your option if you need something very robust.

What use is it to have a fully customized CMS if all of your notification and news emails are completely generic? Any of these plugins will help to remedy that for you. If you know of any more plugins out there that are compatible with the latest version of WordPress, please feel free to let us know in the comments.

Sarah Gooding on Google+