Published: 30 March, 2020

Why Does My Email Test Results Look Different Than My Local One?

There are a great deal of reasons why ProFundCom might show a different result to a result you performed manually (perhaps by opening the URL in a browser locally, or by sending the email to your own email client).

In all cases, ProFundCom uses the default or most common options and environments. This means you should assume that the
ProFundCom rendering is the correct one. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule. ProFundCom may be showing an artifact of our testing software, but these are usually very obvious.

MOBILE CLIENTS (IPHONE, ANDROID, ETC.)

You may see differences with mobile clients due to the OS version, device, or email app you are using locally. The current device/OS settings we use for the mobile clients can be found in this article and further information on differences seen in our Android 5.0 and 6.0 clients can be found here.

We have also seen rendering differences in emails opened on Android if they are being sent through an Exchange server. You can read more about this in the Litmus Community here.

You may also notice differences in the Android Gmail app. We are currently using IMAP accounts within the app. Using Gmail accounts in the Gmail app may show different results.

WEB-BASED EMAIL CLIENTS (GMAIL, YAHOO! MAIL, OUTLOOK.COM, ETC.)

Web-based email clients borrow their HTML rendering capabilities from the browser hosting them. ProFundCom uses Internet Explorer 11, Firefox 45 and  Chrome 49 with default settings.

If you are using a different browser to manually test the email in your own web-based email account, try updating your browser version to the one used on Litmus for IE/Firefox/Chrome to see if the differences still exist.

Another important thing to consider is your own browser’s settings. A common cause of rendering differences is font size. You should make sure that your browser’s font size is set to “Normal”. All ProFundCom browsers are set to “Normal”, and are also viewed in 1366×768 resolution.

OUTLOOK 2000 – 2003

Outlook, prior to Outlook 2007, used Internet Explorer to render an email’s HTML content. If your version of Internet Explorer is different to ours, the email may render differently. Likewise, if your copy of Internet Explorer has unusual or customized settings, it may render differently to ours. These are the browsers we use with each version of Outlook:

Outlook 2000Internet Explorer 6
Outlook 2002Internet Explorer 7
Outlook 2003Internet Explorer 7
Outlook 2007Word 2007
Outlook 2010Word 2010
Outlook 2013Word 2013

Outlook for Mac 2011 uses WebKit to render the emails, which does not rely on Internet Explorer or Word for rendering.

DPI SETTINGS

Windows has an option to change your DPI settings for text, which can sometimes change the rendering within Outlook clients. By default this is usually set at 96 DPI on Windows machines. Some users may change this to 120 DPI (or a custom number) for text for better readability. More information on Microsoft’s site here. If you have a different DPI setting than the default selection of 96 DPI on your Windows machine, you may see some rendering differences locally due to your settings. We use the default DPI setting of 96 on all of our Windows machines.

BROWSERS

If Litmus is showing something different to your own local browser, there’s a high chance it’s to do with customizations in your local browser’s settings.
A common cause of rendering differences is font size. You should make sure that your browser’s font size is set to “Normal”. All Litmus browsers are set to “Normal”.
Try removing any debugging plugins such as Firebug that may be adjusting HTML or injecting Javascript.

HTML-UPLOADED EMAIL VERSUS ESP SENT EMAIL

We highly recommend sending in your email directly from your Email Service Provider, as many times ESPs can change/alter your HTML template before your final send. Since ProFundCom does not alter your HTML code, you may see a difference between an HTML-uploaded copy versus what you see on your ESP’s sent copy.

If you send in your email directly from your ESP, you will see exactly what your subscribers see when they receive your campaign. You can easily send in an email test to ProFundCom from your ESP by using ProFundCom email addresses in the test/preview email send before sending your campaign to your subscribers.

Sending from your ESP is also best when using the spam filter analysis tools, as this will provide the most accurate reputation scoring for your email.

FORWARDED EMAIL SENT FOR TESTING TO LITMUS

Forwarding your email test to ProFundCom is not recommended, as many times email clients (especially Outlook) can change/alter the HTML template on the forward. We recommend sending your test in directly from your Email Service Provider or the mailing platform you use to send emails to your subscribers.

TABLE HEIGHTS SET TO 100%

If any of the table heights are set to 100% height within your email, this can occasionally stretch your email out to the maximum screencapture height within our email clients. You may want to remove the height=100% within your email and retest if you are seeing stretched results for your email.

Find out how ProFundCom can help you

Sign up for a 3 month trial. We’ll help you get going and answer any questions.

Try now