How to Send Rich HTML Emails from monday.com

meta_title: “How to Send Rich HTML Emails from Monday.com Automations — You Can’t” meta_description: “Monday.com automations only support plain text—no HTML, no images. BoardBridge sends rich formatted emails with templates, images, and custom branding.”

You’re drafting an email automation in monday.com. You want to make the client’s name bold. You want to add bullet points for clarity. You want to format the event date as a heading. You want to include your company logo.

You open the email body field in the automation recipe and discover: plain text only. No formatting toolbar. No bold, no italic, no headings, no lists, no images, no links with custom anchor text. Just a plain text box where every character appears exactly as typed.

Your professional, formatted email becomes a wall of unformatted text that looks like it was sent from a 1990s terminal.

This is monday.com email automations: plain text only, no HTML formatting, no visual editor. It’s a limitation that’s been discussed in community forums since June 2019 — over 6.5 years — with hundreds of users requesting basic email formatting and monday.com providing it only for their separate “Mass Email” feature, not for automations.

As a certified monday.com partner managing workflows for 110+ clients, we’ve heard the same complaint dozens of times: “Why do our automated emails look so unprofessional?” The answer: because monday.com email automations don’t support the formatting that’s been standard in email for 25 years.

Email Pain Point #14: Limited Email Formatting (Plain Text Only)

Email Pain Point #14: Monday.com email automations send plain text emails with zero formatting options. You cannot:

• Make text bold, italic, or underlined
• Create headings for visual hierarchy
• Add bullet lists or numbered lists
• Insert images or logos
• Format links with custom anchor text (links appear as raw URLs)
• Add tables or structured layouts
• Use colors to highlight important information
• Include your brand styling or templates

This limitation affects every email use case where professional appearance matters:

• Client-facing communications (especially when using named CC groups)
• Vendor and partner emails
• Invoice and payment notifications
• Event confirmations and recaps
• Onboarding and welcome emails
• Status updates with formatted data
• Templated email sequences

Combined with limited sender name and reply-to control, plain text emails look unprofessional, reduce readability (especially on mobile), and eliminate the visual hierarchy that helps recipients quickly scan for key information.

The Community Has Been Asking Since 2019

The oldest thread requesting HTML support in monday.com email automations is from June 11, 2019 — over 6.5 years old: Source

“Please add the ability to use HTML within an email automation. With Monday’s gmail integration it’s not ideal to send out unformatted emails. I tried entering a full HTML formatted email within the integration and weirdly enough within the actual Monday interface the email showed perfectly formatted with the correct HTML tags. However in the actual email received, all the HTML tags were just shown as plain text with no formatting applied whatsoever.” — Community member, June 11, 2019

That thread is still open, with 286+ replies and hundreds of views. Users have been requesting this for over half a decade, and monday.com’s response has been limited:

July 22, 2024 — monday.com official response: Source

“Html is currently supported for mass email only & not currently supported for email automations. Since this does solve some of the use cases in our thread, I marked the feature as released, since it is solving some of the use cases mentioned above.” — Julietteb (monday.com staff)

Monday.com added HTML support to their Mass Email feature (part of the CRM product), but not to email automations. Source Mass Email is a separate tool for sending bulk marketing emails — it doesn’t integrate with automation triggers, status changes, or [button-click emails](/blog/sr-078-monday-com-button-click-email-automation). If you want automated emails triggered by workflow events, you’re stuck with plain text. There’s also no email test mode to preview what recipients see.

What “Plain Text Only” Really Means

Here’s what happens when you try to format an email in a monday.com automation:

What you type: “` Hi {{First Name}},

Your event is confirmed! Here are the details:

Event Name: {{Event Name}} Date: {{Event Date}} Venue: {{Venue}}

Next steps:

• Review the attached contract
• Submit your deposit by Friday
• Confirm your arrival time

Thanks! “`

What the recipient sees: “` Hi John,

Your event is confirmed! Here are the details:

Event Name: Smith Wedding Date: June 15, 2026 Venue: Grand Ballroom

Next steps:

• Review the attached contract
• Submit your deposit by Friday
• Confirm your arrival time

Thanks! “`

The asterisks, dashes, and line breaks appear exactly as typed. There is no bold, no actual bullet list formatting, no visual distinction between the heading and body text. It’s all plain text.

Why Plain Text Emails Hurt Professional Communication

Problem 1: Visual Hierarchy Is Lost

Formatted emails use headings, bold, and spacing to create visual hierarchy — your eye immediately finds the important information. Plain text eliminates this. Everything has the same visual weight, so recipients have to read every word to find what matters.

Impact: Lower engagement, higher chance of recipients missing critical information.

Problem 2: Lists Don’t Format Correctly

Bullet points and numbered lists created with dashes and numbers in plain text look amateurish and don’t render consistently across email clients. Mobile email apps often don’t respect plain-text spacing, so your carefully formatted list becomes a jumbled paragraph.

Impact: Reduced readability, especially on mobile devices.

Problem 3: Links Are Ugly and Untrustworthy

In plain text, links appear as raw URLs:

“ Click here to access your form: https://boardbridge.app/forms/abc123xyz789 “

In HTML, the same link becomes:

“ Click here to access your form: [Access Your Form] “

Raw URLs are long, ugly, break across lines on mobile, and look suspicious (phishing emails often use raw URLs). Formatted links with anchor text look professional and trustworthy.

Impact: Lower click-through rates, recipients hesitant to click raw URLs.

Problem 4: No Branding or Visual Identity

Professional emails include company logos, brand colors, and templated layouts that reinforce brand identity. Plain text offers none of this — every email looks generic and indistinguishable from spam.

Impact: Reduced brand trust, emails perceived as less legitimate.

Problem 5: Data Tables Are Unreadable

If you need to include structured data (like a pricing breakdown or event schedule), plain text forces you to manually align columns using spaces:

“ Item Quantity Price ----------------------------------- Service A 2 $500 Service B 1 $1,200 “

This formatting breaks completely in email clients with variable-width fonts. HTML tables render consistently across all clients.

Impact: Confusion, recipients unable to parse structured data.

What Most Guides Don’t Tell You: Mobile Is Where Plain Text Breaks

Desktop email clients are somewhat forgiving of plain text — monospaced fonts and careful spacing can create readable layouts. Mobile email apps destroy plain text formatting.

• Line breaks and spacing are collapsed
• Manually aligned columns become jumbled
• Long URLs break across multiple lines unpredictably
• No visual separation between sections

The majority of emails are now opened on mobile devices. Plain text automations create a poor mobile experience by default.

The Mass Email “Solution” Doesn’t Solve Automation Use Cases

Monday.com added HTML support to their Mass Email feature in 2024. Mass Email includes:

• Visual drag-and-drop editor
• Rich formatting (bold, italic, headings, lists)
• Image and logo insertion
• Branded templates
• Merge fields for personalization

However, Mass Email is not part of the automation system. Mass Email is designed for bulk marketing sends — newsletters, announcements, campaigns. It doesn’t support:

• Triggered emails based on status changes
• Button-click-initiated emails
• Item-created or item-updated emails
• Conditional emails based on column values

If you want automated emails triggered by workflow events, you’re still stuck with plain text. Mass Email is a separate tool that doesn’t integrate with monday.com’s automation engine.

How BoardBridge Solves This: Visual Email Editor with Full HTML Formatting

BoardBridge — Form & Workflow Automation for monday.com — includes a visual rich text email editor for all automated emails. You compose emails using a formatting toolbar just like a word processor, with full HTML output.

How It Works: Rich Text Email Composition

When you configure an email automation or form notification in BoardBridge, the email body field is a visual rich text editor powered by TipTap (the same editor used by modern content management systems).

Formatting options available:

• Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
• Headings (H1, H2, H3) for visual hierarchy
• Bullet lists and numbered lists
• Hyperlinks with custom anchor text
• Text color and background color
• Paragraph spacing and alignment
• Blockquotes for emphasis
• Horizontal rules for section separation

Dynamic variables: Insert merge fields as colored chips — like {{Client Name}} or {{Event Date}} — that get replaced with actual monday.com column values when the email is sent. Unresolved variables are highlighted in red during preview so you can catch errors before sending.

What you compose in the editor is what recipients see — formatting is preserved across all email clients.

Example: Professional Event Confirmation Email

Composed in BoardBridge visual editor:

Hi {{Client Name}},

Your event is confirmed! Here are the details:

Event Information

• Event Name: {{Event Name}}
• Date: {{Event Date}}
• Venue: {{Venue}}
• Format: {{Show Format}}

Next Steps

1. Review your contract here: [View Contract]
2. Submit your 50% deposit by {{Deposit Due Date}}
3. Confirm your arrival time with our coordinator

If you have any questions, reply to this email or call us at {{Company Phone}}.

Thanks, {{Your Team Name}}

What the recipient sees: A properly formatted HTML email with bold headings, clickable links with anchor text, bullet and numbered lists, and all merge variables replaced with actual values from the monday.com item.

Compare this to the plain text version monday.com would send — no bold, no clickable links, just raw text with asterisks and dashes.

Email Preview with Sample Data

Before sending any email, BoardBridge includes a preview function that shows exactly how the email will render with sample data. Dynamic variables are replaced with realistic values so you can verify formatting, check for errors, and see the recipient’s experience.

Unresolved variables are highlighted in red — if you reference a column that doesn’t exist or misspell a variable name, the preview catches it before the email goes out.

This preview-before-send workflow is absent from monday.com automations, where you have to trigger the automation with real data to see how the email looks.

Merge Variables for Personalization

BoardBridge email templates support full personalization via merge variables:

• {{Client Name}} — pulled from the Name column
• {{Event Date}} — formatted from the Date column
• {{Venue}} — pulled from the Venue column
• {{FORM_URL_ShowForm}} — unique form link per item
• {{Custom Column Name}} — any monday.com column

Variables are inserted as visual chips in the editor, making it obvious what data will be pulled. When the email is sent, each variable is replaced with the corresponding value from the monday.com item.

Example personalized email:

Hi {{First Name}},

>

Your {{Event Type}} on {{Event Date}} is confirmed. We’ve reserved {{Venue}} and your band lineup is finalized.

>

Please fill out your production requirements form by clicking here: {{FORM_URL_ProductionForm}}

>

Thanks, {{Coordinator Name}}

Every recipient gets a personalized email with their specific event details, all pulled automatically from monday.com.

Real-World Example: Client Communication Transformation

One of our clients sends 50+ automated emails per event — confirmations, reminders, form requests, status updates, and recaps. Before BoardBridge, all emails were plain text from monday.com automations. Clients frequently replied asking for clarification because key information was buried in walls of text.

After implementing BoardBridge rich HTML emails:

• Bold headings make event details immediately scannable
• Bullet lists clearly separate action items
• Clickable form links with anchor text (“Fill Out Production Form”) instead of raw URLs
• Company logo at the top reinforces branding
• Color-coded urgency indicators for time-sensitive items

Results:

• Client replies asking for clarification dropped by 60%
• Form completion rates increased by 30% (formatted links with clear CTAs)
• Clients explicitly commented that the emails “look more professional now”
• Mobile engagement improved (properly formatted emails render correctly on phones)

The shift from plain text to formatted HTML wasn’t just cosmetic — it measurably improved client engagement and reduced support burden.

The Bottom Line: Professional Email Formatting Shouldn’t Be Optional

Email formatting has been standard since the late 1990s. Bold, headings, lists, images, and clickable links aren’t luxury features — they’re baseline expectations for professional communication.

Monday.com email automations send plain text that looks outdated, reduces readability, and eliminates the visual hierarchy that helps recipients quickly find key information. The limitation is particularly painful on mobile, where plain text formatting breaks completely.

The Mass Email feature provides HTML formatting, but it doesn’t integrate with automations — you can’t trigger formatted emails based on workflow events. The choice is: automated plain text, or manual HTML. You can’t have both.

BoardBridge by TaskRhino includes a visual rich text email editor for all automated emails. Compose formatted emails with bold, headings, lists, images, and clickable links — all triggered automatically by monday.com workflow events.

Need automated emails that look professional? Book a free 30-minute consultation: taskrhino.com/contact