WooCommerce and WordPress email templates are HTML, styled with inline CSS because most email clients ignore or strip regular stylesheets — which means a template that looks right in a browser preview can render completely differently in an actual inbox, where support for CSS varies wildly between Gmail, Outlook, and everything else.
Compare how it renders in an actual inbox, not just the preview
WooCommerce’s own email preview (Settings → Emails, then preview a template) shows how the HTML renders in a browser, which isn’t the same as how Outlook or Gmail’s app will actually display it.
Send yourself a real test email and open it in the inbox you actually use day to day — if it looks fine there but wrong for customers, the difference is almost always which email client is involved, which narrows where the formatting is breaking.
Email template branding & formatting repair
Order and notification emails that look wrong in a real inbox, even when the preview looks fine.
- Full backup taken before we start
- If we can’t fix it, you get your money back
- We never ask for your own password
This or something else?
| Email template looks broken, misaligned, or unbranded in an actual inbox | This fix covers it |
| Emails aren’t arriving at all, formatting isn’t the issue | A deliverability fix instead |
| You want the email’s actual wording changed, not its appearance | A content-editing task, not a template repair |
| Logo or colours are simply outdated, not technically broken | This fix covers it; a straightforward branding refresh |
| The issue is specific to WooCommerce order emails | This fix covers it; same underlying template system |
What you are seeing
- The email logo, colours, or layout not matching the rest of the site’s branding
- Text or images misaligned, especially noticeably in one specific email client
- A template that looked fine at launch but has drifted from the current site design
- Broken image links, showing as missing pictures in the inbox
- Layout that looks fine on desktop but breaks on mobile email apps
Common causes
- CSS that isn’t inlined, so email clients that ignore stylesheets show unstyled content
- Image paths referencing a domain, protocol, or location that’s since changed
- A theme or plugin update overriding WooCommerce’s default email template files
- Table-based layout markup edited in a way that breaks in stricter email clients
- Branding elements simply never updated after a site redesign
What we do
- Send test emails across major clients to see exactly where formatting breaks
- Identify whether the issue is CSS inlining, broken paths, or template structure
- Repair or rebuild the affected template section
- Update branding elements to match the current site
- Re-test across the same clients to confirm consistent rendering
- Check other email templates for the same underlying issue
What is included
- The template repaired and rendering consistently across major email clients
- Branding elements updated to match your current site
- Testing across desktop and mobile email clients
- The pre-fix backup of the original template, kept for 30 days
Not included
- A full email design overhaul beyond fixing what’s broken and updating branding
- Ongoing testing as email clients change their own rendering behaviour
- Fixing a delivery problem, as distinct from a formatting one
- Custom email templates built from scratch for new email types
Questions about this fix
Why does it look fine when I preview it but wrong when a customer gets it?
The preview usually renders in your browser, not an actual email client, and the two handle CSS very differently — a real test send tells you far more.
Will this affect just order emails, or every email the site sends?
It depends which templates share the affected code — some sites use one shared template for every email type, others keep them fully separate.
Do broken images in emails mean the images are gone from my site?
Not usually — it's almost always the path referenced in the email being wrong (an old domain, or http instead of https) rather than the image being missing.
Is this something that will break again after a theme update?
Possibly, if the theme's own update overwrites the same files again, which is why we note exactly what changed so it's quick to reapply.
Can you make emails look identical to a specific design I have in mind?
Within what email clients actually support, yes — some effects that work on a website don't render the same way in an inbox, and we'll say so honestly if something isn't realistic.
Related fixes
If this is the second time this year
A bad update breaking the site is a symptom of updates not being tested first. Care plans run every update on a staging clone before it reaches your live site, which is the actual fix for this happening again.
Your access, your rules
Create a separate admin account for us and delete it when we are done. For anything else, we get in touch and agree a method — never a form field on this site, never by reply to an email.
We back up first, always
Before anything is touched we take a full backup and keep it for 30 days. If a fix goes wrong, we put the site back exactly as it was.
If it is not what you bought
If the problem turns out smaller than what you ordered, we refund the difference. If it is bigger, we stop and send a quote before doing any extra work.
If we cannot fix it
You get back what we received. Diagnosis is on us — you only pay when the problem is actually solved. The payment processor takes its fee before the money reaches us, so we never hold it and it is not ours to return. That is true here as everywhere else.
If it comes back
Reply within seven days of delivery and we put it back on the bench at no cost. The fix is not finished until it holds.
What we are responsible for
If something goes wrong with a fix, our responsibility is limited to what you paid for it. We take a full backup first so mistakes can be undone, and we tell you before doing anything outside what you bought.