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With the endless amount of newsletters people can subscribe to, email marketers have a lot to compete with in their subscribers’ inboxes. Email newsletter templates can make it easier to design eye-catching newsletters.
I’ve found that a solid newsletter template is crucial to designing an email that people are encouraged to click through.
Discover some of my favorites below, plus tips for encouraging engagement.
Table of Contents
Email newsletter design encompasses every aspect of the structure and aesthetic of your email newsletters, such as font, images, colors, logos, content, and template layout.
From your subject line to your layout, your newsletter must be cohesive and optimized to entice readers to click and stay subscribed.
Creating a template from scratch can be time-consuming and a bit daunting, especially if you’re not very design-savvy. I like that email newsletter templates give email marketers a solid foundational design they can tweak to their liking.
By using an email design template in your next campaign, you can quickly and effectively create a consistent newsletter style that can be easily maintained even in the event it gets passed onto another DRI (Directly Responsible Individual) — just like what happened here at HubSpot.
“I became the DRI for HubSpot’s Marketing Daily Newsletter a few years into its inception,” HubSpot marketing manager and writer Erica Santiago shared with me.
“Fortunately, there was already a solid, tried-and-true template that made transitioning into the responsibility easy, so our audience never noticed a change in who was curating it.”
If done well, email newsletters can do wonders to help you build an engaged subscriber base, keep your business top-of-mind, and nurture leads that are already making their way down the funnel.
However, “done well” means more than just serving up great content. In fact, I think an often overlooked component of the newsletter creation process is the design.
Don’t have time to build out a custom template from scratch?
I’ve scoured the internet for the best resources for email newsletter templates and compiled them below.
Many of the templates have also been pre-tested for compatibility with major email service providers (ESPs) via Litmus — a web service that allows you to preview the way your email will look on different email clients and devices.
Once you find one you like, download the template and customize it to fit your needs. Depending on compatibility, you can even try out newsletter layouts on Google, Outlook, and other email providers.
Start using HubSpot’s free Email Template Builder
Price: Free and paid options available.
Best for: Email marketers who have or wish to have multiple newsletters dedicated to different topics associated with your organization.
If you’re a Marketing Hub user, HubSpot offers a great collection of email templates you can use for your next marketing email.
No need to log out and search for a template in another marketplace; these templates are available to you right within the tool.
Key Features
What I like: HubSpot provides a complete, end-to-end solution for all your marketing requirements since it provides access to our comprehensive CRM, centralizing your customer data.
Looking to create templates specifically for newsletters? HubSpot has you covered with our free specialized newsletter template builder.
Price: Free for 30 days; Pro — $9/month; Moosend+ and Enterprise — custom pricing.
Best for: Marketers and professionals who want an affordable email template builder with advanced features. Transparent pricing with the option to add advanced features and build a custom plan (Moosend+).
Moosend is a powerful email marketing platform that makes it easy to design beautiful email templates.
Whether using one of the templates or creating your own from scratch, the built-in AI Writer will give you targeted, real-time suggestions. I love that you can improve your subject lines and email copy without ever leaving the editor.
With Moosend, you can also deliver personalized automated emails to subscribers based on their interests and website behavior. If you want to grow your audience, the platform has lead-generation tools like forms and landing pages. They are easily customizable and require no prior knowledge.
Key Features
Pro tip: There’s no need to export templates — you can send your email newsletters through the platform. This makes it that much more convenient, in my opinion.
Price: Free; Individual — $79/month; Small Teams — $159/month; Enterprise — custom.
Best for: A retail brand or business that sells food, clothes, or other products. You’ll especially enjoy the countdown timers.
Litmus offers a free email template collection — from newsletter templates to account management templates. All of the templates have been tested with the platform. While you are required to create a Litmus account with your email address to access the templates, the templates themselves are free of charge.
Key Features
What I like: With its easy-to-use email builder, you can effortlessly access AI-powered email content optimization capabilities such as suggested subject lines and alternate body text tones. Something that I think is quite time-saving in this day and age!
Price: Free and paid options.
Best for: Content creators and influencers looking to grow their email lists.
ConvertKit is a creative email template platform that’s a great option for bloggers, course creators, and more. ConvertKit comes with email automation tools, sign-up forms, and many more integrations.
To use ConvertKit’s email newsletter templates, you’ll need to sign up for a plan, but the good news is that they offer both free and pro subscriptions. While this platform is more on the creative side, I believe its vast array of templates and tool integrations will help businesses in any industry upgrade their email newsletter.
Key Features
What I like: What I find unique about ConvertKit is its ability to use the A/B test function to compare two distinct subject lines. It will split-test the subject lines (15% for each line) for the first 30% of your emails. The other 70% of the emails will have the subject line that receives the most opens.
Price: Free; Paid plans start from $11.04/month.
Best for: SMBs, startups, and solopreneurs on a budget.
EngageBay is a free email newsletter template and marketing automation software for small businesses, startups, and solopreneurs. With EngageBay, you get templates for various industries, including real estate, travel and tourism, health and fitness, ecommerce, technology, beauty, and more.
Key Features
What I like: The free email newsletter template tool allows you to customize templates to reflect your brand. I like how EngageBay’s templates are directly integrated with their CRM, making managing and personalizing your campaigns easy.
Price: Free
Best for: Beginners learning to design emails for the first time.
ZURB Studios has five responsive email templates available for free, including the newsletter one above. It has a great, fluid layout you can customize with your own colors, images, and wording.
The template kit comes with a separate CSS stylesheet and HTML file to ease the editing process. Most email code editors will place the CSS in line with the HTML itself after both are uploaded separately.
If you’re going to add images to your newsletter, keep in mind that you’ll have to create a separate folder and compress it with the CSS stylesheet before uploading.
Key Features
What I like: I personally find Zurb’s Masterclass best because it’s perfect for beginners to learn how to use the templates. You even get three free tutorials on responsive email design.
Pro tip: Once you’ve selected a template, use HubSpot’s free email marketing software to craft your message and send a newsletter out to the world.
Price: Free; Plus — $16/month; Pro — $24/month.
Best for: Marketers with little to no coding experience.
Postcards provides some of the best-designed email template builders on the market that are up-to-date and require no previous coding experience.
With Postcards, you can also easily create professional-looking emails with their pre-designed email templates that are customizable.
Their email builder is a game-changer for marketers, designers, and developers who want to streamline their email creation process and focus on what matters: crafting engaging content and design.
Key Features
What I like: You know why I think Postcards works so well? It’s a no-code platform with exceptional content history and enterprise-level collaboration features. You can store your work in the detailed version history, allowing you to go back in time and recover a successful email template.
Price: Free for 30 days; Email Marketing — $35/month billed annually; Ecommerce — $24/month billed annually.
Best for: Marketers who leverage segmentation in their emails and who wish to effectively push readers to their ecommerce sites.
Flodesk is an email newsletter design platform with over 3,000 email templates and designs to enhance your email marketing. Moreover, I’m a big fan of their contemporary template designs, which are quite eye-catching.
Key Features
Pro tip: Want to segment your customers when sending them newsletters? Well, Flodesk allows you to sort your audience so that you stay as relevant as possible.
Price: Free
Best for: Marketers new to email marketing who will appreciate 99designs’ helpful community and intuitive templates.
99designs is a growing online community and collaboration platform for designers and small businesses, and they have a great designer blog and business blog.
As a free offering to their blog readers, they released a set of 45 free email templates — perfect for newsletters, promotional messages, and personalized responses.
Key Features
Pro tip: What I think is great about 99designs is that you can also start a design contest to test custom email template options from various designers.
Price: Free and paid options available.
Best for: Businesses of all sizes. From freelancers to enterprise-level organizations who need robust collaboration and email creation features.
I think Beefree is the ultimate solution for creating captivating emails without any coding skills. With its extensive library of over 1,500 responsive templates, you’ll have a wide range of options to bring your email designs to life.
Plus, I love that there’s no sign up needed. You can just start as is.
Key Features
Pro tip: There’s even an option to hire a designer on the platform who can help you customize your email templates.
Price: Free for 30 days, plans start at $12/month.
Best for: Businesses of all sizes.
Campaign Monitor is another free email newsletter template and marketing platform. With a variety of email templates for newsletters, welcome emails, and promotional campaigns, Campaign Monitor makes designing emails easy.
It helps you maximize your sales by staying on-brand and creating a seamless customer experience.
Key Features
What I like: Campaign Monitor has one of the most unique features I’ve encountered in an email builder. That is, you can lock specific areas of the template so that your team alters only the information you want them to. This protects your brand identity and important business data.
Price: Free, paid plans start at $9/month.
Best for: Organizations with customers in various time zones.
MailerLite offers various newsletter templates for promotions, announcements, and more. With its trendy newsletter designs, MailerLite makes sure its customers stay up to date while sending newsletters.
I like that MailerLite provides data insights as well. One thing I find useful about MailerLite is that they will send your emails based on your customers’ time zones, allowing you to send emails that get the most opens. MailerLite also provides A/B split testing tools so you can identify the best version of every email you send.
Key Features
Pro tip: With the free plan, you can create your own custom templates. However, if you want to access their template options, you’ll have to look into their paid plans.
Price: Free; paid plans start at $8.33/month.
Best for: Email marketers on a budget and small to medium-sized businesses.
Sender is an all-in-one email and SMS marketing platform for ecommerce and small to medium-sized businesses who want to reach out to their customers at an affordable and accessible price.
Sender provides delivery-friendly text and branded HTML email newsletters to connect with your email subscribers and biggest fans. Sender also allows you to design highly responsive and eye-catching pop-ups and forms to attract sign-ups and execute SMS marketing for higher conversions.
Key Features
What I like: The best part of using Sender is the access to their support team — I was surprised by their swift response time!
Price: $12 per month or $80 per month.
Best for: Non-profit organizations.
Do you run a non-profit? If so, this is the newsletter tool specifically for you. Constant Contact is an email newsletter builder that offers specific templates to help non-profits raise funds and market their missions.
With hundreds of templates to choose from, you’ll be sure to find a design based on the template you need and what type of non-profit you run.
I think an amazing feature from Constant Contact is the business analytics. While using the platform, you can see when emails are sent, delivered, opened, and shared. You will also be able to see top trends and send personalized emails to your donors and subscribers.
Key Features
What I like: Fundraising is easier with their integration options, such as DonorPerfect, Blackbaud, Neon CRM, and Qgiv. I also found it easy to add any features to promote your events.
Price: Free
Best for: Sending marketing emails on multiple devices.
Download 16 free HTML, CSS, and PSD customizable email templates on Themezy.
You don’t have to submit an email address to get started, and there are various color schemes and layouts to meet your email list’s needs.
Key Features
Pro tip: The templates are designed to be responsive across devices to ensure that your subscribers can read your newsletter. So, if you’re sending emails on every gadget like I am, you can be sure that your template works regardless.
Price: Free for 14 days, then payments based on the number of subscribers. For up to 500 contacts, it’s $19/month, and the price goes up from there.
Best for: Ecommerce brands.
Drip offers email marketing and SMS marketing for ecommerce brands. Drip is a new platform that lets you set up email marketing campaigns through hundreds of customizable templates.
Along with their email newsletter templates, Drip offers excellent CRM tools, data analytics, and trend trackers. As a result, you’ll be able to better market yourself through your campaigns.
Key Features
What I like: You know what I find convenient about Drip? It comes with 150 native integrations, so you can use it with almost any marketing platform.
Price: Free
Best for: Email marketers who love visuals.
If your marketing strategy is heavily reliant on visuals, I think MailPortfolio is perfect for you. It’s a minimalist template with no added background distractions.
While it was made for those looking to display personal creative portfolios, I believe it’s also suitable for larger businesses and organizations.
Key Features
(Note: older versions of Outlook may not render all of the fonts, and the Android Gmail app is not fully supported.)
Pro tip: Make sure you don’t use the stock images on the MailPortfolio template. You have to change them — otherwise, your newsletters won’t work as well. Something I learned the hard way.
Price: Free
Best for: Multi-purpose newsletters.
This template is based on Google’s Material Design and has a robotic-retro feel. It is perfect for sending out multi-purpose newsletters featuring new products, events, and other announcements at the same time.
Key Features
Pro tip: What I’ve learned is that if you’re having trouble downloading the template, you can access it from Paul’s Google Drive link, too.
Price: Free
Best for: Marketers looking for a minimalist design.
I think Briar is the perfect newsletter template for marketers looking for a fluid, minimalist design featuring images and text that don’t overshadow each other.
It’s perfect for sending out regular newsletters, and you can customize the inline CSS files.
Key Features
Pro tip: One hack I learned is that you can easily use these templates for your MailChimp campaigns with their own HTML file.
Price: Free
Best for: Product or sale announcements.
EmailOctopus is a marketing service that launched a series of 11 templates that can be used to create newsletters for a variety of industries.
Whether you’re marketing for a fashion brand or a medical supply company, one of the templates will fit your needs.
The templates have the “typical” newsletter look but allow you to add product announcements, feature stories, and CTAs wherever you’d like.
Key features
What I like: EmailOctopus is also GDPR compliant, so I find using all their free templates safe.
Price: Free and paid options available.
Best for: Companies that want bulk emails on a budget.
MailBluster brings you an interactive solution for the best email newsletter design.
Apart from all the essential email marketing features, MailBluster includes a hefty lot of free email newsletter templates.
Choose from a mass collection of their newsletter templates or create from scratch to build your own. Also, you can customize your own template by editing the existing one from their large template gallery.
Key Features
What I like: MailBluster offers a free option that allows you to send 62,000 monthly emails and unlimited subscribers. This is probably the best deal for any company wanting bulk email services.
Price: Free for 250 subscribers or less; paid plans start at $20/month and go up from there, depending on the number of subscribers and email sends.
Best for: Ecommerce brands.
Klaviyo has what we’re all here for — aesthetically pleasing template designs. But Klaviyo offers more than that.
It pulls helpful data from your tech stack via custom and pre-built integrations from ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and Adobe Commerce. It can also integrate with other platforms like Facebook and Google Ads.
With all this data, Klaviyo can help you create a complete profile of every customer, which will consist of:
I find this super impressive and helpful as a marketer.
Key Features
What I like: Klaviyo’s features make segmentation and personalization simple.
Price: Free trial, then $49 or $69 per month.
Best for: A wide variety of businesses and organizations.
Publicate boasts a wide variety of email templates for just about any industry that you can customize for your brand with their drag-and-drop editor. All their templates are responsive and optimized for speed.
Publicate also integrates with Gmail and Outlook and allows users to view detailed analytics of their emails’ performances.
Key Features
What I like: I especially enjoy that it includes a Brand Kit — you can upload brand images and logos to be used in your messages.
Price: Free to custom enterprise pricing based on the number of contacts. Paid plans start at $16/month for 500 contacts.
Best for: Marketers seeking an all-in-one email marketing platform.
Omnisend is a marketing automation platform that operates email, push notifications, pop-ups, and more.
I love that you can grow your email list by collecting visitor information right on your website and sending automated email campaigns with Omnisend.
With Omnisend, users can set up segmented campaigns across various channels and track metrics. You can also sync Omnisend to your store for better results.
Key Features
What I like: Omnisend leverages AI to help users come up with subject lines.
Price: $59 for an all-in-one bundle.
Best for: These templates are perfect for product features and testimonials from satisfied customers.
Feshto is an email bundle that helps ecommerce companies feature products in their newsletters and share testimonials from satisfied customers. It comes with a weekly digest module, which is their version of a newsletter.
I appreciate that the module features a chic, clean design that ensures your images and copy are not distracting from each other.
You can choose from their various layouts, such as “Weekly Digest,” “City Story,” and “Blog Article.” While the default themes are black and white, you can make edits in your preferred WYSIWYG editor.
Feshto’s templates are responsive and compatible with all major ESPs.
Price: $6-$29 per template.
Best for: Purchasing individual email templates.
I think ThemeForest is an awesome resource for email templates if you have some budget to spend. Their library has over 460 newsletter templates in all different colors, styles, and themes.
The templates are rated using a four-star system, and you can filter by rating, price, recency, and popularity.
Here’s one example from its library:
Market – Responsive Newsletter with Template Builder ($20)
This template has eight pre-built layouts, 24 color variations, 24 full-layered PSD files, and more. Plus, it’s supported by all major email clients.
Price: Free
Best for: If you’re looking for written templates that you can put into your email tool, these are the templates for you.
HubSpot offers free email templates that empower you to market and sell your business over email without writing a single line from scratch. These free email template downloads save you time and money.
The templates can be downloaded right to your computer and can be used by any type of business.
Price: Free to $350 per month.
Best for: All email marketing needs.
Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing platform that helps small and large businesses scale and grow their business through marketing techniques and automations.
Mailchimp has a variety of pre-made templates in its email newsletter tool.
Aside from giving you over 100 designs to choose from, Mailchimp also gives you the option to download their Email Blueprints, which allows you to customize HTML templates.
Price: Free to $259 a month.
Best for: Marketers looking for a full-service email provider in addition to templates.
ActiveCampaign is a full-service email provider that offers email marketing automation and CRM tools.
Its library of newsletter templates allows you to create conversion-optimized, visually impactful emails without touching a single line of code.
ActiveCampaign is free, but you will need to sign up for an account to use and view their email templates. You can use the majority of their templates for free, but if you want some customization, you’ll want to upgrade to a paid account.
Price: Free; Canva Pro — $15/month.
Best for: A platform with great design and customization options.
Canva is an online graphics software that provides free templates for a multitude of things like Instagram posts, resumes, and email newsletters.
I think Canva is a great tool because you can find free templates for specific niches like fashion, tech, culinary, and many more.
While there is a paid tier, many of the premade templates are free, and you can add your own customizations without having to pay extra.
Price: Premium – $9.99 per month; Teams – $12.99 per month.
Best for: Those looking for a graphic design tool.
Adobe Express, formerly known as Adobe Spark, is another browser-based graphic design tool that has a multitude of templates and functions to help any company create a newsletter.
Similar to Canva, Adobe offers premade templates based on industry categories like photography, architecture, and fashion. To access the templates, you must sign up for an account with Adobe.
Price: Free
Best for: Finding free email templates with no strings attached.
CakeMail is an email marketing tool that includes user-friendly automation tools and allows you to create customizable emails for any person, occasion, and niche.
CakeMail offers over 50 free editable email templates that are divided into smaller niche categories.
One of the advantages of CakeMail is that you do not have to sign up to use the email templates provided, but if you would like to see how your email campaigns are performing, you can register for an account.
Price: Free
Best for: HTML email design.
MJML is an HTML-based email designer. They have a wide variety of free templates that are customized for the type of email marketing your company is trying to do, including newsletters, promotions, and seasonal emails.
Once you find a template that you like, MJML allows you to see the template and the HTML code in real time as you edit it.
Because MJML is HTML-based, you will have to copy your code and transfer it to the HTML editor in an email marketing service to use the template.
Price: Varies, pay per template.
Best for: Purchasing affordable, individual templates.
TemplateMonster offers a variety of email newsletter templates, all of which are available for relatively low prices.
I find their templates are clean, customizable, and easy to use, and they’re compatible with most major email clients, such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail.
Additionally, the templates come with built-in responsive layouts for screen adaptability and PSD sources for a litany of customization options.
Price: Free and paid email templates.
Best for: Microsoft Office users.
Microsoft Office has a variety of tools, including extensive templates that can be used for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
You can further narrow down your templates depending on the category of your business. While Microsoft does offer free templates, they are limited. For paid templates, you have to download Microsoft 365.
Now that you have the resources to find a template, it’s time for the fun part: customizing it. In my opinion, how well you customize your chosen template will make or break your newsletter.
Follow the steps I outline below to design winning email newsletters.
To help with the overall flow of your email, you need to refine your headings and subheadings.
Not only do they draw attention to the most important parts of your newsletter, but they also divide sections and give your text a visual hierarchy to help readers process information in the correct sequence.
Choose consistent typography, colors, and spacing to give your email a cohesive look. You’ll want to choose colors that complement each other and don’t overwhelm the eye.
I recommend sticking to your already established brand colors.
Knowing a little color theory will pay off and help you create engaging emails.
Speaking of cohesiveness, swapping the template’s stock colors for your own branding can quickly create a cohesive design.
Use your own logos, brand color scheme, and visual aesthetic so that all of your marketing materials have a similar theme.
No one wants to open a newsletter to see a wall of text. I recommend you keep your messaging concise so that readers can quickly scan it while getting all the pertinent information they need.
Images can greatly increase the readability of your newsletter and provide much-needed buffers between text.
Images and infographics are also great ways to display information in an engaging way. They should be high-quality and in line with your brand’s messaging.
As more people use phones to access email, making sure your newsletter has a mobile-friendly design is a must. Choose a responsive design that adapts to whatever mode (tablet, mobile, or desktop) your readers are using.
Increase conversions and engagement by using attention-grabbing CTAs. Entice your readers to click using persuasive language, eye-pleasing colors, and proper placement.
Using a contrasting color design will help your CTA stand out. I find that adding a well-designed button can attract subscribers’ attention and prompt them to take action.
To find the best newsletter format, you’ll need to use A/B testing to determine which performs better. Test out different designs over a set period of time, compare results, and go with the one that performs the best.
Ready to draft your next email newsletter campaign? I hope this blog has made you feel more prepared.
Download one of the excellent newsletter templates from the template galleries and landing pages above. Then, learn how to craft an email newsletter your audience will want to engage with.
Editor’s Note: The post was originally published in December 2018 but was updated for comprehensiveness in December 2019.
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