Free email templates: eight designed starters to open, rebrand and send

Most lists of free email templates are a gallery of screenshots and a download link to a zip of HTML you then have to make work. These are different in one way that matters: each of the eight is a starter in the product, a design you copy into your own templates with one click and then edit, brand and send without leaving the dashboard. There is no file to download and nothing to paste.

Each design below is pictured as the dashboard’s starter gallery draws it, with a sample company called Acme in the brand kit. The pictures show the top of each email, which is where a design makes its first impression. The prices, codes and dates in them are each starter’s sample values, there so the design reads as a finished email rather than a wall of placeholders.

Template emailing, in the sense this post means it, is sending from a stored, versioned design rather than HTML assembled in application code. The design lives in one place, the facts about one recipient arrive with the send, and the two meet at render time. The rest of the post covers the eight designs, then how to open one, what makes an email template render everywhere, how variables work, and the API way to do all of it.

Two are account emails, the kind your product sends on its own, and six are marketing emails you send to a list as a campaign. Each entry says what the design is for, what your brand kit changes in it, and what you would edit first.

Welcome, minimal

The first email after somebody signs up, cut down to one headline, three lines signed by the team, an illustration and one button. It is the design to reach for when the welcome has a single job, which is getting a new account to its first action. It declares two variables, first_name and get_started_url, and the subject greets the reader by name.

The kit sets the wordmark at the top (or your logo, once the kit has one), the company name in the body and the sign-off, and the address in the footer. The first edit is usually the headline and the button’s label: “Start writing” is right for a writing tool and wrong for almost anything else.

Password reset, illustrated

A reset link on a white card, with an illustration above it and a help line under it. It declares first_name, reset_url, expires_in and support_email, and the preheader carries the expiry, so the reader learns how long the link lasts before opening the email. The paragraph under the button says plainly what happens if they did not ask for the reset: nothing has changed and the current password still works.

This is a transactional email, so the footer carries the company name and address but no unsubscribe link. Keep the copy short; a reset email is read on a phone, in a hurry, by somebody who is locked out.

Sunny promo

A bright, playful offer: a thin band across the top, one big headline over a product photograph, a second beat of copy with a lifestyle picture, and the promo code on a yellow band where nobody can miss it. It is built for a first-purchase discount and declares only shop_url and promo_code, so a campaign can change the code without anyone touching the design.

Replace the two photographs with your own product first; they are the design’s loudest element. The wordmark and the welcome line take your company name from the kit.

Storefront

A shop’s seasonal edit: a hero photograph, a short pitch, then three best sellers side by side, each with its own button, and a gift-ideas block to close. It declares a URL per product, product_1_url to product_3_url, plus shop_url and gifts_url, because every link is a send variable: a starter cannot know your domain, and a placeholder pointing at somebody else’s site is a live link the first time it goes out unedited.

The three-column row stacks into one column on a phone. Swap the four pictures and the product names, and set the five links in the send.

Gift card

A gift with a code to redeem: the value set huge on a navy band, the expiry under it, the code on a pale strip, one button, and three small icons for payment, returns and shipping. It declares gift_amount, expires_on, promo_code and offer_url, and the subject names both the amount and your company, so it reads as a gift from somebody rather than a coupon from nobody.

The anniversary line at the top is copy to rewrite for your own occasion. The icons are drawn for this design and ship with it; you can keep them or delete the row.

Editorial launch

A product launch set like a magazine page: serif headings, the price beside the photograph, then a longer read about the thing being launched. It suits a single product with a story behind it, and declares just shop_url and learn_more_url.

The headings are pinned to a serif face because the face is the style, so this is one of the designs where the kit’s font does not apply to the headlines. The lower headline is written as an instruction to the author on purpose: it is the line you are meant to replace.

Glow offer

Sage and forest green, serif capitals, the code on a pale band and a full-bleed photograph. It is the calmer counterpart to Sunny promo, built for a beauty or wellness offer, and it declares promo_code and shop_url; the preheader repeats the code, so it shows in the inbox list before the email is opened.

The photograph does most of the work here. Replace it with one of your own that has the same quiet background, or the green bands will fight it.

Newsletter

A monthly digest: three stories with thumbnails, a reply prompt and an unsubscribe link. It is the newsletter template to start from when you want people to read the issue, not just scan it, and it declares issue_date, a URL per story and reply_url.

It is the one design of the eight with an unsubscribe link in its footer, filled in per recipient when it goes out as a campaign. The other marketing designs are not left without one: a campaign whose body has no unsubscribe link gets a plain footer with the link and your postal address appended, so no campaign leaves without both.

A starter becomes yours in one step and stays yours afterwards. The copy is an ordinary template in your Project, with the starter’s layout as its first version, open on the canvas.

1. Set your brand kit — In Settings → Brand, add your logo, company name, postal address and footer line. Every starter reads them, so a copy opens already wearing your name.
2. Pick a starter — Open Templates, choose Browse starters, and open the design you want. Its page shows the email drawn with your brand kit and the starter's sample values.
3. Copy it into your templates — Choose Start from this. The copy is an ordinary draft template in your Project, open on the canvas, and it keeps no link to the library.
4. Edit it on the canvas — Replace the pictures and the copy, drag in or remove blocks, and change colours per block. The variables panel lists every placeholder the design declares.
5. Test, then publish — Send a test email to yourself, read it on a phone and a desktop client, and publish the version. Only a published template can be sent.
6. Send it — Send it to a list as a campaign, or from code by naming the template's ID or alias in POST /emails with the values its variables need.

The canvas is a drag and drop email editor over the same blocks the starters are written in: sections of one to three columns, and headings, text, pictures, buttons, lines, spacers, social links and a footer inside them. Drag a block from the Blocks panel to place it; move, duplicate or delete it from its toolbar. A picture you upload is hosted for you, and the email’s Inbox preview setting holds the preview text a mail list shows after the subject.

An email is not a web page. It is opened in a dozen clients with a dozen rendering engines, one of which is the Word engine inside Outlook for Windows, and the gap between a design that looks right in one client and one that looks right in all of them is mostly five habits. The eight starters follow all five, because they are compiled rather than written by hand.

• Tables for layout. Columns are nested tables, with conditional comments that only Outlook for Windows reads, so a three-column row holds its shape there and stacks on a phone. Flexbox and grid are not something to rely on in email.
• Inline styles. Every colour, size and spacing is written on the element it applies to. The one <style> block carries the responsive rules, which a client that strips it can lose without losing the design.
• Dark mode you do not depend on. Clients handle dark mode in different ways, and caniemail’s table for prefers-color-scheme shows fewer than half of the clients it tests honouring a dark-mode stylesheet, with Outlook for Windows among those that do not. So the starters do not ship one. They pick palettes with enough contrast to stay readable when a client inverts them, and the test send is where you check that on your own phone.
• Alt text on every picture. Images are often blocked until the reader allows them, and alt text is what shows instead. The W3C images tutorial gives the rule: a picture that carries information gets a short description of it. Every picture in the eight has one, and the wordmark is live text, so the email still says who it is from with images off.
• A plain-text part. Each compile also writes a plain-text version, sent beside the HTML as multipart/alternative. RFC 2046 defines that type as alternative versions of the same information, with the richest last, so a client that cannot show HTML shows the text.

Size matters too. Gmail clips a long message behind a “view entire message” link, which hides the footer and its unsubscribe link with it. The largest of the eight, Storefront, compiles to under 40 KB of HTML, well inside that limit.

A starter carries two kinds of placeholder, and they belong to different people. {{first_name}} is the recipient’s: it is declared on the template with a type, and each send fills it. {{brand.company_name}} is your Project’s: it comes from the brand kit, is never declared, and cannot be set by a send.

Every starter declares exactly the variables its layout uses, and the API holds every template to that rule: a placeholder that is used but not declared, or declared but never used, is refused when the template is saved rather than discovered in a customer’s inbox. A declared variable can carry a fallback for the send that leaves it out. Email template variables done right covers the rules in full, including escaping and versions, and the glossary entry for a template has the short definition.

The links are variables too. None of the eight hard-codes a URL, because a starter cannot know your domain. That is the reason Storefront declares five URLs and Newsletter four: each one is a place your send says where the button goes.

Everything above works from code as well. GET /starters lists the library, and a create that names a starter instead of html makes the same copy the dashboard makes: the starter’s subject, layout and variables become version 1, and the copy opens in the visual editor if anyone opens it later.

curl https://api.rasket.com/starters \  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RASKET_API_KEY" \  -H "User-Agent: acme-shop/1.0"

curl https://api.rasket.com/templates \  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RASKET_API_KEY" \  -H "User-Agent: acme-shop/1.0" \  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \  -d '{    "name": "Welcome",    "alias": "welcome",    "starter": "welcome-minimal"  }'

Anything else in the create wins over the starter’s: a subject, text or variables you send overrides it, and the alias is yours to choose. The alias is the handle your code holds, so a send names the template the same way whichever environment created it. Publish the copy, then send it by its ID or alias with the values it declares:

curl https://api.rasket.com/emails \  -H "Authorization: Bearer $RASKET_API_KEY" \  -H "User-Agent: acme-shop/1.0" \  -H "Idempotency-Key: welcome-user-8812" \  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \  -d '{    "from": "Acme <hello@send.acme.example>",    "to": ["ada@example.com"],    "template": {      "id": "welcome",      "variables": {        "first_name": "Ada",        "get_started_url": "https://app.acme.example/start"      }    }  }'

The request carries no html and no subject, because the template supplies both. The idempotency key is derived from the user the welcome is for, so a retried sign-up cannot welcome anyone twice. The six marketing designs are usually sent to a list instead, as a campaign; Campaigns covers that, and the templates page covers versions, typed variables and the editor. The full request shapes are in the templates reference.