DELIVTERMS: View as a Webpage

It is time to decode another common email term here on Spam Resource! Today, we're going to talk about the "View as a Webpage" (VAWP) or "view online" link.

A "View as a Webpage" link is something that email senders commonly include at the top of a newsletter or marketing email. It allows the recipient to open the full content of the email in their web browser.

I used to assume these were generally useless; that they didn't really add value to the email sender. I've come to realize that I'm wrong about that, and that this functionality is actually quite useful, for a few reasons:

• Some recipients may be using email clients that strip formatting, block images, or otherwise cause the email to look broken. 
• In those cases, a web-hosted version of the message provides a better viewing experience.
• It can also help people with accessibility needs who rely on screen readers or other tools that may not work well in email clients.

The feature is widely supported by commercial email platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Mailchimp, Campaign Monitor, and others. Those platforms typically generate a hosted version of the email campaign at send time, and then insert a unique link into the message, usually using dynamic merge tags.

Another big reason this feature matters: sharing. If you want to share a newsletter in Slack, on a blog, or elsewhere, you usually can't just forward the email or paste raw HTML. The "View as a Webpage" link gives you a clean, browser-friendly version that's going to be safe and easy to share out-of-band.

Things to note:

• These links usually work for non-subscribers, too -- meaning that the person you send it to via Slack doesn't need to be on your mailing list.
• One potential downside: VAWP URLs are sometimes unique, trackable links, that may include subscriber-identifying information. So be cautious when sharing them broadly if you're concerned about exposing recipient IDs.
• Some platforms allow these web-hosted versions to be indexed by search engines (depending on your settings), while others keep them private. That, plus what subscriber-level info could be in the URL, might mean that VAWP links aren't necessarily the way to build up an online newsletter archive,

A side note to product managers for the various email sending platforms; while I think it's fine and customary to track clicks to the VAWP version, I recommend landing on a link without per-subscriber tracking embedded in the URL. That way you won't have to deal with inflated stats (or rogue unsusbcribes) based on shared links.

Learn more:

• I referenced this in a recent post on newsletter must-haves: Five Email Newsletter Must-Haves in 2025.
• Want to see this in action? Check the top of just about any email campaign from a modern platform -- you'll probably see one.

And don't forget to check out the DELIVTERMS section here on Spam Resource, where we explain more of the common terms you'll run into when sending mail at scale.