Email formatting basics (links in plain text emails)

Question

Sending an email from a server isn't quite as easy as sending it from a client.

I know I can choose to send plain text or html, but I want to keep things as simple as possible.

I have a link in the email that the user should click to reset their password.

When I send the whole link, and check my gmail, it becomes a hyperlink automatically.

My guess is that this isn't the case in all email clients.

What are my options for sending a link in plain text format?

Is the only way to be sure to have a clickable link to use html?

If I use html, what is the minimum markup I must have?

Answer 1

If you send your email in plain text, then your URL will be plain text. It's plain text, you can't dress it up.

If you send it as HTML, just use a simple anchor tag and use the URL as both the href and the text. That way if a mail client removes the link at least the user will still be able to copy/paste the url.