Introduction

emailmd converts markdown to email-safe HTML that works across all email clients.

Why emailmd?

Writing good email HTML is genuinely hard. Email clients never adopted a shared rendering engine: Outlook still renders with Microsoft Word's engine, Gmail strips <style> tags and most CSS, and Yahoo Mail has quirks of its own. A layout that looks perfect in Apple Mail can be completely broken in Outlook. That's why hand-built emails end up as deeply nested tables, inline styles, and client-specific hacks.

Most teams either settle for plain-looking emails, hire a specialist, or wrestle with templating systems that demand deep knowledge of each client's limitations.

emailmd takes a different approach. You write markdown, the same syntax you already use in README files, docs, and chat. emailmd converts it into bulletproof, email-safe HTML (via MJML) that renders correctly in Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, and every other major client.

It won't cover every edge case a hand-crafted HTML email can, but it handles 80%+ of email design needs in a fraction of the time and complexity.

Quick Start

npm install emailmd

import { render } from "emailmd";

const { html, text } = await render(`
# Welcome!

Thanks for signing up.

[Get Started](https://example.com){button}
`);

// html → complete email-safe HTML (works in Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, everything)
// text → plain text version for text/plain MIME part

Prefer a visual starting point? The builder renders your markdown to a live preview as you type, and the template gallery has thirteen production-ready designs to copy and make your own.

Features

• Email-safe HTML. MJML under the hood, tested across Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, and more.
• Layout that flexes. Photo heroes, responsive columns, callouts, accordions, and the rest of the directives.
• Charts without images. Bar charts, progress meters, sparklines, KPI tiles, step trackers, and star ratings drawn from table cells and text glyphs, so they render everywhere, follow your theme into dark mode, and degrade to ASCII in the text part.
• Theming and dark mode. Brand colors, custom fonts, and automatic dark mode that follows the reader's preference.
• Buttons. Primary, secondary, and semantic button variants with one attribute.
• Frontmatter. Per-email theme overrides and metadata that live with the content.
• Linting. Deliverability and accessibility checks that catch problems before you send.
• Plain text. An automatic text/plain version alongside every render.
• Tooling. A CLI, a drop-in React builder, an MCP server for AI assistants, and reusable partials.

AI-Friendly by Design

Because it's just markdown, AI tools are a natural fit. Language models are great at writing markdown, so you can describe the email you want and get a working, production-ready template in seconds.

The MCP server closes the loop: connect it to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, or any other MCP client and the assistant doesn't just write the email, it lints the draft, renders the final HTML, and hands you a live preview link. For AI tools without MCP support, feed them the complete docs instead:

https://www.emailmd.dev/llms-full.txt

Built on MJML

emailmd uses MJML under the hood for bulletproof email HTML. Tested across Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo Mail, and more.