I'm not certain if it still exists this way since I've been removed from the actual email templates for a while - but when I originally wrote them for my company they were multi-format supporting with the plaintext chunk as the lead portion - after that came the fancy HTML version with all the bells and whistles that the business required.
Did anyone ever read the plaintext version of the email outside our company? Probably not - but it was super useful for testing that the content was correct by dumping the full message contents to console.
Would I have been applauded for only providing customers with a plain text email? Nah, you need a really niche audience to appreciate that - I love that audience, but that audience isn't our customer base unfortunately.
The actual mechanics of email formatting are quite simple (it basically hasn't changed at all in 50+ years) so it can be quite straightforward - it just gets difficult when you try and get fancy.
Did anyone ever read the plaintext version of the email outside our company? Probably not - but it was super useful for testing that the content was correct by dumping the full message contents to console.
Would I have been applauded for only providing customers with a plain text email? Nah, you need a really niche audience to appreciate that - I love that audience, but that audience isn't our customer base unfortunately.
The actual mechanics of email formatting are quite simple (it basically hasn't changed at all in 50+ years) so it can be quite straightforward - it just gets difficult when you try and get fancy.