Why is the email editor so terrible?

[DSurman]

I'm at my wits end with this editor. Anyone else?

-If you highlight the text and change the fonts, it doesn't change, if you highlight the whole thing and tell it to make everything one font and one size, it only changes a few portions.

-It's sometimes absolutely impossible to tell which font is used as default, and sometimes it's not one of the selectable fonts, so you have to change the whole thing (and we're back to the first issue)

-There's no way to add in text to a template without it changing the font and font size, which is also usually difficult to discern.

It's making my emails look really bad - I can use the Outlook sales tool and manage these from outlook, but that's tricky if I'm scheduling appointments in outlook and sending email confirmations as I like to have them side by side.

I don't understand. Please, Hubspot. Help us. The message editor on this forum is 1000x better than the on-board tool. 

[Victor_Becerra]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for all the feedback. I have connected with the teams internally who own this. Our teams are actively planning improvements to the text editor experience. Keep an eye out in your portal for the fixes and continue to leverage the ideas forum for any net-new feature requests

Best,

Victor

[GCox]

Adding a comment because I'm also astounded at how poor text editing in email templates is in this platform. Any/all linked sales documents default to Sans Serif regardless of what default font settings are for the user account.

Sometimes I'm able to fix this manually in my templates by highlighting/selecting just the text from the linked sales doc and changing it to match my default font type, but that manual change does not always take effect or stick. If I accidentally highlight a single character or space in addition to the impacted text, it never works - in this scenario when I select "More" in the editor to change the font it says that the text is already in my default font setting, but it clearly isn't and if an email is sent using that template, the sales doc link text will display in Sans Serif.

Lately I've been experiencing this problem even when selecting only the impacted text - it says the text that is clearly Sans Serif is already in my default font (Verdana). There is no way to change it to the font it's supposed to be, because the editor thinks it's already in that font! Recently I highlighted the text that was in Sans Serif, as usual the editor told me it was actually in Verdana (even though it wasn't), and out of pure frustration I selected Sans Serif as the font I wanted to change it to, even though that was already the font it was displaying in. To my amazement it converted the text from Sans Serif to Verdana when I did that, literally watched it change on my screen to Verdana as soon as I set the font to Sans Serif?

Super buggy code, and as the other forum on this topic notes the issue also impacts any/all text pasted into templates. There has to be a better way. 

[GCox]

Following up to add that I submitted a support ticket for this and the HubSpot AI support model was aware of the bug but also confirmed that the desired font/format should display as intended for the recipient if/when sent through Outlook. It just for some reason cannot make the desired font display within the platform itself? After some testing I was able to confirm that is correct. 

So even though the font displays incorrectly on the email preview inside the email editor in HubSpot, as long as you have it formatted the way you want it should display correctly/differently in the recipient's inbox. This is particularly confusing because the font continues to display incorrectly when viewing the email from the record's activity history after it has been sent, but if you go back to your sent folder in Outlook it will be in the desired font (at least it was for me). I sent it from my work email to a personal email so was able to check both my sent folder and inbox to confirm that it displayed correctly in both. 

While this technically satisfies the needs of the sender, it is very confusing and dissapointing that there does not seem to be a solution for the issue within the email editor itself, or the platforms activity history feed. Hopefully HubSpot can work this out in the future to create a less confusing experience for their customers. 

[DSurman]

I could've written this myself - it so unbelievably bad. I'm constantly highlighting the full text to change all of it and then changing it back to what I want (both font and size) just to be sure it looks acceptable. 

Many many many hours of my work life have been lost to this horrible editor.

[WWendel]

Also having this issue and have had enough of it. Never has been an issue with other CRM tools I have used. You use the templates, they are in a different text format/color than what you type into them. Makes it hard to tweak emails that you are trying to base off a template in Hubspot. The workaround is just using Outlook, but it would be great if this email editor just worked in the tool. 

[leeanneg25]

It's the worst I've ever used. Just not good at all.

[Lucila-Andimol]

Hey @DSurman 

so styles in general are defined by the style sheet of your theme

this shouldn't be inforced manually when editing content because you might get some issues seeing this (because it depends in which style is going to prevail)

Besides this, the edit sometimes gets tricky though and you mught not see the style applied while editing but you might get to see it if you do a preview. If you see it at the preview this means its going to stick when you publish the email and send it.

Hope this helps understand better how it works

[DSurman]

This is not a solution, so I'm unsure why it keeps being marked as one. 

I'm talking about the built in email editor for communicating with contacts - not the marketing email editor. That one is moderately better than the other, but this does not solve the problems.

[DSurman]

For the marketing/email hub, you have a preview, but just sending regular emails to a contact via their record, you don't have that option. I find the marketing email editor easier to edit and format, really, and those issues are easier to spot (even with all the little issues it does have). But this is for the emails straight to contacts.

[Crystal_Hopper]

Hi @DSurman, yes, I've experienced some of this. 

To check, change, verify your email fonts, click the Settings (gear icon, upper right) and use the search to dig into various settings:

I have noticed when highlighting text that I want to apply a style to, that linked text included in the highlight does not take the style change. I have to individually highlight only linked text and apply the style.

Guess I just decided that was ok, but you're right, it isn't ok and the email editor could surely use some work. Did you by chance contact Support about this?

[DSurman]

I haven't - everyone I know says the same about the editor, though, so I thought it wasn't really a support issue since the thing is working the way it's supposed to, but the way it's supposed to work is just...honestly, it's bad.

I've never encountered a text editing box that functioned so badly. I jump through so many hoops in the hope that the emails will turn out okay and look like they were written by a professional adult.

This one that we use for the forum is so much better. I wish this one was the same as the one that's integrated.

[Jnix284]

@DSurman are you using copy/paste to add text to the emails? Sometimes styles can be copied from the original source that can interfere with the editor and make it difficult to overwrite/change.

Highlighting the text and clicking Clear Formatting will remove any applied formatting to allow you to restyle as needed:

[DSurman]

This is one of the issues and I recognise that, but even when I clear the formatting, sometimes even that doesn't solve the issue. I've cleared everything, reset the font and font size, and still, the emails don't look right once sent. 

The other issue is with templates - if I add or change anything, with some templates the font remains consistent, in others, it does not. It's also extremely difficult to spot sometimes, and you only notice it once sent or viewed from Outlook.

I just think we shouldn't really have these issues with the email text editor. It should be fast and simple like this one is. No faffing around. I've set the default fonts to now match and re-done my templates in Tahoma, because choosing "San Serif" doesn't always work and unify the fonts, who knows why. but I'm sending hundreds of emails through the week - if I use someone else's template and they use a different default from mine, same issue. 

My wish for this is that the differences would be easier to spot, easier to change, and faster. When sending hundreds of emails a week, it would save me actual hours. A setting like "paste and match formatting" would be life-changing.

[Jnix284]

@DSurman Thank you for the additional context, I can feel your frustration and understand that it's not ideal to have to modify the fonts every time.

Outlook is always going to be an outlier in terms of fonts and styles in email, it is one of the most restrictive as far as CSS is concerned.

I think your "paste and match formatting" idea is great, you should add it as an idea here - if you share the link back in this thread, I'd be happy to upvote!

[DSurman]

Aye, we're 4 years out from this one, but it does already exist: HubSpot Community - Ability to format easily - HubSpot Community

[Jnix284]

@DSurman great that you found an existing idea, bummer that it's already existed so long and hasn't gained much traction.

I've upvoted and added a comment, will also share it to see if we can get more upvotes.