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Why the Font in Your Email Survey May Look Different

Alex Bitca avatar
Written by Alex Bitca
Updated over 2 weeks ago

When you select a custom font for your email survey, some email clients may replace it with a fallback font. This is expected behavior in certain cases.

Why this happens

  • Limited font support: Many popular email clients (like Gmail in the browser or mobile apps) do not load custom web fonts at all, and instead use their own default fonts.

  • Security and performance rules: Some clients block external font files for security or to improve loading speed.

  • CSS changes by email clients: Email services may strip or rewrite the code that loads your font.

  • Outlook limitations: Most versions of Outlook (especially desktop) almost never load external web fonts, always falling back to system fonts.

What to expect

  • Custom brand fonts (e.g., Montserrat, Open Sans) will not display in Gmail, Outlook desktop, and many mobile clients (or supported in rare cases like Apple Mail).

  • Fallback fonts will appear in Gmail, Outlook, and other clients that don’t support web fonts.

  • Different environment in browser view: When a survey is opened in a new browser tab, it loads in a normal web environment where fonts can be fetched, unlike inside an email client, which often blocks them.

Best practice for your survey

Use a font that is most likely to be displayed consistently in all email clients, such as:

  • Arial

  • Arial Black

  • Courier New

  • Georgia

  • Impact

  • Times New Roman

  • Trebuchet MS

  • Verdana

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