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Free + Pro 4-email series

Counter — dispatch, receipt, event ticket and back-in-stock emails

Four emails a shop actually sends, built in MJML in a 1970s ledger style: the parcel went out, here is your receipt, your seat is held, the thing you asked about is back. Warm paper, oxblood, squared corners. Built for Outlook, Gmail and Apple Mail, dark mode wired up. The dispatch email is free.

  • MJML 4.15
  • Tables + VML
  • Dark mode
  • 600 px
  • No images

How it renders

What actually happens in each client, and why the markup is built the way it is.

Outlook 2019

600 px · tables + VML
Dispatch email rendered in a light inbox

browser rendering at 600 px — not a capture from this client

What matters here

Outlook renders mail through the Word engine, which ignores border-radius and media queries. Neither matters here: the system has no rounded corners to lose, and the email is built to stay in the light palette on Outlook by design. Every rule and box border sits on a table cell, which the Word engine draws reliably.

Built for

  • Outlook 2016
  • Outlook 2019
  • Outlook 365
  • Outlook.com
  • Gmail web
  • Gmail iOS
  • Apple Mail
  • Yahoo Mail
  • Thunderbird

Light and dark inbox

Dispatch email rendered in a light inbox
light inbox · 600 px
The same email in a dark inbox, warm brown rather than grey
dark inbox · 600 px

Dark mode is handled with prefers-color-scheme plus [data-ogsc] fallbacks for Outlook.com, which rewrites colours instead of reading media queries.

Desktop and mobile

Dispatch email rendered in a light inbox
light inbox · 600 px
Dispatch email at 360 pixels wide, the two columns stacked
narrow · 360 px

Client support

ClientLightDark
Outlook 2016 / 2019 / 365 (Windows) ✓ —
Outlook.com ✓ ✓
Gmail web ✓ ✓
Gmail iOS and Android ✓ partial
Apple Mail ✓ ✓
Yahoo Mail ✓ ✓
Thunderbird ✓ ✓

“partial” means the client applies its own colour inversion rather than reading the palette in the source. Nothing breaks — it simply is not identical to the design.

Pro

$9

Every page, the Pro-only pages, the source files, no attribution, and 12 months of updates and email support.

Email 1 — dispatch, compiled HTML
yes
Emails 2–4 — receipt, event ticket, back in stock
yes
MJML source and shared theme
yes
Dark palette from the design system
yes
Credit link
not required
Updates and support
12 months, email

Licence

Use it in unlimited personal and commercial projects, including client work.
Do not resell the template itself, alone or in a bundle.

Full licence terms →

Four emails, one shop

Most email packs are a receipt and three variations on a receipt. This one covers the moments a small shop with a counter and a programme of evenings actually writes to people: the parcel left, the card cleared, the seat is held, the book you wanted is on the shelf.

They share a masthead, a footer and a theme file, so changing the address or the brand colour is one edit rather than four.

Why there are no images

Not a limitation — a decision. Images in email are blocked by default in Outlook and by a fair share of Gmail users, they inflate the message, and they are the first thing to break when the recipient is on a train. Everything here is drawn with table cells and background colours: the logo mark is a 22 px square, the date chip on the ticket email is a bordered cell, the call to action is a cell with an <a> in it.

That also means nothing to host, nothing to re-upload when the CDN moves, and no broken-image icon in the one email that has to look trustworthy.

The call to action is not a button

<button> does not work in email, and a styled <a> alone collapses in Outlook. Every call to action here is a table cell with bgcolor set, wrapping a link with its own padding. Clumsy in source, reliable in the inbox.

Dark mode, and where it stops

The dark palette is the design system’s own — warm brown, not a grey inversion. It is wired up with prefers-color-scheme and the [data-ogsc] attribute Outlook.com uses to rewrite colours.

Outlook on Windows ignores media queries entirely and stays light. That is deliberate rather than an oversight: a half-converted email is worse than a light one, and the light palette is the one the system was drawn in.

Tokens

Placeholders are {{double_braces}} — what Handlebars, Mustache, Liquid, Django and most sending tools already read. Nothing needs data you would not already have on the order.

Built for, not tested in

These follow the rules that make email work — nested tables, inline styles, no flex or grid, 600 px, VML where a background needs it. We have not run them through a paid rendering service, and this page will not pretend otherwise. Send yourself a test first; that is good practice with any template, including this one.

Free archive

  • dist/01-dispatch.html
  • README.md · LICENCE.txt

Pro archive

  • src/*.mjml · 4 emails
  • src/_theme, _masthead, _footer · shared
  • dist/*.html · compiled, all four
  • index.html · preview page
  • README.md · LICENCE.txt (Pro)

Read before you build

Version history

  • 1.0.0 2026-09-24

    First release

  • 35 KB
    heaviest email
  • 0
    images or webfonts
  • 0
    flex or grid rules
  • 9
    clients targeted

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Tell us what happened

Goes straight to a person. No account, no ticket number.

What is this about?

We keep the message and the page it came from. Nothing else — not your IP, not your browser. Privacy.