Why Recipients May Not See Images in Emails

Why Recipients May Not See Images in Emails

If the recipients on your email list do not see images in your emails, it could be due to any of three main reasons:

  1. Their email provider blocks externally-hosted images.
  2. Their email provider does not support background images in emails.
  3. A firewall is blocking access to our image servers.

In the event that images may not load in an email you send, keep the following best practices in mind when building emails:

  • Include a link to the web version of your email.
  • Set an alt attribute for all images.
  • Use a mixture of text and images in your email, rather than only including images.

 

Scenario 1: Email provider blocks images

All of the images included in your emails are hosted on our servers. This kelps reduce the size of emails and increases deliverability. This practice is referred to by email providers as "remote" or "external" images. Third-party email providers can include a setting that stipulates whether these types of images are displayed in:

  • No emails
  • A specific email (as an exception if images are set to not display)
  • All emails from a specific sender
  • All emails 

Below is a chart showing the image display options for various popular email providers:

Email Provider Show images by default Can set to always show images Can temporarily show images for a chosen email Can set to always show images from a trusted sender
Apple Mail (mobile) x x x  
Gmail x x x x
Outlook (2007-2016)   x x x
Outlook.com/Outlook Mail x x x x
Yahoo! Mail   x x  

 

Since these settings are set by your email subscribers (or their email administrators), there is no way for you to override these settings.

 

Scenario 2: Email provider does not support background images

Some email providers, including some versions of Microsoft Outlook on Windows, do not support the use of background images in emails. To ensure that these emails are delivered properly, we recommend instead using a background color that is similar to your background image.

You can find out how many of your recipients are using email providers like Outlook by viewing your Campaign Statistics in the Email dashboard.

 

Scenario 3: Email account has strict firewalls

Some email accounts, such as those used by government organizations, have very strict firewall security protections. These firewalls may often block our image hosting domains. If this happens, then the recipient's firewall administrator would need to update their settings to allow their users to see the images.

If a recipient's firewall is blocking images, then they can ask their firewall administrations to add the following image domains to be added to their email account's "allow list":

  • cmail.com
  • cmail1.com through cmail20.com

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