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Sending HTML emails using Thunderbird

Ingo Steinke, web developer on April 17, 2024

What happened to email formatting options? Do people either send plain-text business letters with a default signature and some simple formatting, o...
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Arpit Vasani

Title says "sending emails", and post explains composing emails. where is the "sending without using any third party service" part? Am I missing something here?

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Ingo Steinke, web developer • Edited

That's Thunderbird, a local open-source-software, as opposed to paid marketing services that businesses tend to use to send "professional newsletters".
(Note to current readers: the original post title claimed that I send "HTML email without using a third-party service")

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Marissa B • Edited

You're still using a third party service. You should probably update the title to be "without using a paid service". The current title is inaccurate and misleading.

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Ingo Steinke, web developer

If you count Thunderbird as a third-party, then I will never be self-reliant. I did not code Ubuntu Linux, I did not manufacture my laptop, and I don't provide my own electricity. Or which other party do you mean?

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Paulo Henrique

Well, if we are talking about free third party services for mail marketing, there are a few options here, for example: selfh.st/apps/

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Marissa B • Edited

A third party service is an service provided by a party that isn't you. In this case, you're using Thunderbird for the sending of HTML emails.

I clicked in here originally to see what someone had done to keep sending HTML emails in-house, but was disappointed. Cool project, just a bad title. "Composing your own HTML emails in Thunderbird" would be a lot better.

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Ingo Steinke, web developer

I think you're right. I have changed the title.

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Marissa B

Appreciate it! This will help interested folks find your article a lot easier too. 😁

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phalkmin profile image
Paulo Henrique

Hmmm... Now I'm curious with the whole "can I send bulk email in HTML using only my services?"

I know that with python this is a "10~20 line of code script" but I would need a SMTP server that is trusted anyway 🤔

(kudos to Ingo for listening - but I'm still curious 🤷‍♂️)

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marissab profile image
Marissa B

Haha that's what I was expecting to find with the original title. A home-hosted mail server project or something.

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Ingo Steinke, web developer

I used to have my own email/newsletter sending script, written in Perl back then, with random delays, rotation of subject line variations, and tests against some well-known spamassassin heuristics. If I remember correctly, the document body was a contenteditable textarea that only worked in Internet Explorer. But the outgoing mail server was just the one that the shared hosting provider provided. I guess some of my customers got their mail servers on block lists eventually. So many reasons to leave sending bulk mail to a dedicated service.