I’m sure you know how difficult it is to design an email. First, you have to put your idea down on paper, then translate it into code and the back and forth that comes along.
It is an overwhelming process.
But it doesn’t have to be. Thankfully, there are plenty of pre-made email design templates available out there. You can pick one and start customizing it as per your needs.
But before we jump into it, let’s define what exactly is an email design template.
Let’s get wild.
What Is An Email Design Template?
To understand what an email design template is, we have to first learn what designing emails mean.
Email design is the process of planning and building emails that make it easier for the audience to extract value from it.
The goal of designing emails is to help you connect with the email recipients. And ultimately drive them to your desired end-goal.
An email design template makes this process easier, repeatable, and scalable.
If you want a technical definition, here it goes:
An email design template is a replicable coded framework that is used to create emails.
Let’s decode this, shall we?
Imagine you are a potter and you manufacture thousands of vases each month in 3 distinct shapes.
To ease up the process and maintain consistency, you create 3 molds – one for each shape. Once a vase is set on a particular mold to take it out and give it its distinct look and design.
Email design templates work similarly.
They work as molds that help shape good looking emails repeatedly.
You have set templates for different categories – newsletter, product launch, webinar invites, and so on.
You choose one and edit it to suit your present situation.
11 Best Websites To Download Free Email Design Templates
I know what you’re thinking.
I understand email design templates are great. I can use them to create awesome emails in no time.
But where do I find them? And more importantly,
Where to download email design template for free?
Well, I have searched many places online to find free (and awesome) email design templates.
These 11 websites stood out in terms of design, deliverability, options, and reliability.
Together these websites boast of a whopping 6900+ templates on offer.
Now you don’t have any reason to waste time in designing and coding emails.
Let’s dig right in.
Designmodo provides a suite of services for web developers.
They offer an ecosystem of website builders, email builders, job portal, and a digital products marketplace.
Designmodo offers a package of 15 templates.
These include designs by Postcards, Pixel Buddha, Jason Rodriguez, Derek Punsalan, Paul Goddard, Email Octopus, Victor’s, Inox Studio, Business Marketing, and more.
99 Designs is a global creative platform that connects freelance designers with prospective clients.
99 Designs provide a package that comprises three email templates – email newsletter, promotional, and personal notification.
Each of these then comes in three different styles and five different colors (blue, green, orange, red, and violet).
Litmus is an email testing tool that offers previews in all popular email clients, apps, and devices. It also provides analytics and insights.
Litmus offers a package comprising 5 pre-tested free email design templates.
These include – newsletter, product update, receipt, simple announcement, and stationery.
They’ve tested these templates on the top 50 email clients, including outlook. So you don’t have to worry about email deliverability and rendering.
Zurb is a product design company that helps businesses create digital products such as desktop software, mobile apps, websites, and integrated services.
Zurb provides a package comprising 5 free responsive email design templates. These include – basic, hero, sidebar, sidebar hero, and newsletter.
You can preview each of these and download the one to like.
But there’s a minor problem here. These templates don’t render correctly on outlook 2007 and above.
So you’d want to keep that in mind. Other than that, these are top-class.
Envato is a global online marketplace and community for creative tools, assets, and talent.
As part of Envato Elements, its subscription service for graphic assets, educational resources, and business management tools, Envato provides a library of fully customizable, drag-and-drop email templates.
You can filter these as per your preferred email platforms like MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, ActiveCampaign, etc. Or choose a property type – responsive, retina-ready, PSD files included, SKETCH files included, and so on.
Antwort was initially created for Internations, a global ex-pat network. They then released it under the MIT license for the greater good.
It provides responsive email templates that fit and adapt to different widths so you don’t have to overwhelm desktop users with just single column layouts.
The package includes three options – single column, two-column with text, and three-column with images.
Themezy is a part of Eezy that provides 4 products as part of their ecosystem. Brusheezy provides unique photoshop brushes and patterns.
Vecteezy provides photos, icons, and illustrations. Videezy is a place for free HD videos and b-roll footage.
Themezy is a platform for free WordPress themes, and email & website templates.
It offers a gallery of templates based on the type of email – promotional, newsletter, invitation, etc.
Email on acid is an email testing platform that optimizes the pre-deployment checklist.
It checks for content and deliverability of emails and provides previews to ensure your email looks just the way you want.
As a part of their free resources, they offer 6 email design template packages.
These include Seashells, Winter Wonder, Daily Times, Summer, etc.
Pixel Buddha is an online marketplace for the creative community. It showcases free and premium creative elements such as icons, illustrations, photos, templates, font, UI kits, and much more.
Their HTML section offers both website and email templates. However, there is no option to filter them. You’ve to manually look for the ones which say ‘email’.
There are 5 templates for download – Valentine’s Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Passion, and Hola.
Really Good Emails or RGE for short is a showcase website for emails that include the design as well as the code behind it.
They’ve curated over 6500 of the web’s best and most-attractive emails on their platform powered by community submission.
When you select a particular template, you’re taken to its page where you can click on the ‘view code’ button to expose the email code.
Colorlib is an online resource that provides free and premium WordPress themes and supports WordPress based web development.
As a part of their free offerings, they provide 40 mobile-friendly & responsive HTML email templates.
Their in-house offerings include a restaurant, corporate, portfolio, blog, travel, eCommerce, newsletter, shopping, photography, email verification, and shopping-cart related email templates.
They also feature templates from outside – Cerbarus, Mailto, Omicron, Good ‘Ol Bakery, Zeta, Shopilicious, Be Shoppy, Foundation For Emails, MJML, Respmail, Passion, MailPortfolio, EDMDESIGNER, Notify, Miley, Scorpio, and Moka among others.
Over Too You
With all the templates you need, you’re now on your way to creating wonderful emails in no time.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with these till you find a favorite. Let me know which one you find the best. But if you want to directly edit an email design template and download the finished email.
Or even directly send the email right from where you edited it.
You should have a look at the post on email editors. You’ll also find the 6 most popular online email editors there.
