# What is the difference between an HTML and a plain-text email campaign?
- Date: 2021-12-28
- Category: Best Practices / Campaigns
- Canonical URL: https://www.cakemail.com/blog/post/html-vs-plain-text
- Language: en
**HTML** stands for HyperText Markup Language. It’s the way web pages and email templates are coded so that text is formatted and images are added.
**Plain Text** is regular text, with no formatting options such as bold, italics, underlines, or special layout options.
**How does this affect your campaign?**
Emails can be received and viewed in both HTML or Plain-Text formats. Depending on the email client or particular settings your recipients are using, an HTML campaign may or may not be able to be displayed.
[Get the most of your email communications: contact our experts](https://www.cakemail.com/contact-us)
If HTML **is** recognized, your recipient will see the campaign with images, text, and designs you may have chosen when you created your campaign.
If the HTML **is not** recognized (which may happen if the recipient is opening on an old device, for example), it is important to have a plain text version of your campaign as well so that an email client can default to it.
Remember that plain text emails are not as easily [trackable](https://support.cakemail.com/hc/en-us/articles/360056365414-Understanding-open-rates). We also recommend you try to limit the characters in the length of the URL – not only will it look sloppy when not masked by a title, but anything over 80 characters will cause the URL to break.
Your plain text version can include URLs, such as http:// and ftp://
**Hints:**
* If you would like to know what HTML code works best for particular email clients, you can refer to the [Email Standards database](http://www.email-standards.org/) and [Litmus](http://www.litmus.com/)