Maximum URL length in emails

in plain text mode, not HTML

[sun818]

What is a safe length for a URL in your e-mail communications? I'm talking about mailto:, http: or ftp: links you might include in an e-mail. I know when I reply to long URLs, they tend to break after 78 characters (using Outlook). We've discussed the merits of having incoming links with keywords being beneficial. But is having a keyword rich URL worth making it difficult for tech unsavvy users? I've had more than one visitor tell me: "the link you gave me doesn't work..."

[BlueSky]

Why not use easier to type/remember URLs in emails and when the visitor clicks on them the server converts these shorts ones to the regular URLs?

[sun818]

Hi BlueSky, that is a consideration. I suppose for branding reasons, I'd want to use the actual URL and not a redirection service. Other reason would be maintenance reasons. If I had to create a translation table for every URL, that would be work I would rather invest elsewhere.

[BlueSky]

Oh, okay. Well, I did a little searching. According to RFC 2822, for plain text emails: "Lines of characters in the body MUST be limited to 998 characters, and SHOULD be limited to 78 characters, excluding the CRLF."

RFC 2822: [faqs.org...]

So, you're probably safe if you keep it 78 or less. Higher than that you take your chances on whether an email client will break the URL on you.

[sun818]

Thanks BlueSky, that is good to know. My Outlook default for text wrapping at 76 characters. No doubt, it is to accomodate the "Internet style quoting: >". What e-mail program do you use BlueSky?

I was thinking the text wrapping must behave differently for Eudora, Pegasus, and web based mail services like Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL Web Mail, mail2web, etc? Personally, I like the URL scheme for WW since the keywords aren't spammy and its very short.

[BlueSky]

I use Outlook Express. Sometimes I receive emails with broken long links, but strangely most times they aren't. I've got a few emails which have links 120-125 characters long. They wrap fine to the next line. Now, that I think about this more, the ones which usually come broken are generated with a PC mail client while these others are server-side generated. Might be worth testing whether regular Outlook and other client software can handle longer URLs too if they're originated via script.

I like the shorter URLs myself and use them. Discounting rogue bots, about 30% of my visitors come to me via direct address.

[rogerd]

I do some opt-in sale e-mailings, and to make the URLs simpler, I send people to a simple URL, e.g., mydomain.com/sale.htm . The user is sent to the more complex URL automatically, in this case via Server.Transfer (it's an ASP site).