Convert email to a JPG image

Why turn an email into an image

Sometimes you need to show an email rather than send it. A designer wants to see how the newsletter rendered. A channel should see the full order confirmation, not a 200-character preview. A slide, a support article or a case file needs the email as it looked on the day it arrived.

Screenshots are the usual answer, and they are fiddly: scroll, capture, stitch, crop, and the sender's details are usually off-screen. MXcatch renders the whole message as a single image instead.

What the image looks like

• Full length. One tall JPG from the top of the email to the bottom, not just what fits on a screen. Very long emails are cut off at about 16,000 pixels.
• 800 pixels wide, which leaves room for the 600-pixel layouts most HTML emails are designed around.
• A header block with From, To, Date and Subject above the body, so the image carries its own context.
• Images included. Remote images are fetched once and embedded before rendering. Scripts in the email never run.

The body is rendered exactly as it displays in the MXcatch inbox, in a headless browser on MXcatch's servers.

Convert every incoming email to JPG

Actions that store or send the message — Save to S3, Save to Dropbox, Save to Google Drive, Forward and Discord — have an Also save as option. Tick JPG and an image is created for every email that arrives at the alias.

Post the image to Discord

The most common use. A Discord embed holds a text preview of about 2,000 characters; with JPG ticked, the Discord action attaches the full rendered email, which Discord shows inline in the channel.

Save it next to the original

With Save to S3, the image is written as message.jpg beside message.eml. With Dropbox or Google Drive, it goes in the email's own folder, where both services show it as a thumbnail — a quick way to scan a folder of emails by eye.

Forward it as an attachment

With Forward, the JPG is attached to the forwarded message — useful when the recipient's mail client mangles HTML emails, or when they just want a picture.

Setting it up

1. Add your domain and point its MX records at MXcatch — per-provider instructions.
2. Create an alias, for example newsletters@ or orders@.
3. Add an action via Domains → your domain → the alias → + Add action.
4. Tick JPG under Also save as and send a test email.

Save a single email as an image

In the MXcatch inbox, every message has a Download menu. Choose JPG to get the same full-length image for that one message. PDF, HTML, Text and Original (.eml) are in the same menu.

Who uses email to image

• Communities and teams on Discord who want the whole email visible in the channel.
• Email designers and marketers building a swipe file of campaigns: subscribe with an alias, save each issue as JPG, browse the folder.
• Support teams adding the email a customer received to a help article or ticket.

Other formats

A JPG is good for looking at. For a document you can print or file with selectable text, use PDF. To keep links clickable, use HTML. For only the words, use plain text.