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It seems that having a clickable mailto link is a good UX, especially for mobile users. But from what I understand, mailto links open up an email to spam more easily due to spam bots. At least, that's what used to be said about them years ago (today is 2018).

The question is, are mailto links still as 'dangerous' as they once were? Is spam / bots something to worry about, or does the good UX of a clickable link outweigh the negative?

I tried to find the answer to this but can't seem to find much relevant info in 2018. A few sites like Hubspot talk about using mailto links still, so it seems that maybe mailto is back to being a good option.

What do you think?

Stephen Ostermiller
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user1552794
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  • See also: Way to list “Contact Us” email address on web site, yet reduce likelihood of spam?, Are mailto: links practically deprecated? and Why do websites have a contact form? isn't an email address enough? – Stephen Ostermiller Sep 19 '18 at 19:20
  • I'm not so sure that mailto links are great UX. So many folks use web mail like Gmail or Hotmail, but the mailto link usually opens up a local mail program like Outlook. The vast majority of web mail users don't have their browsers configured to open webmail correctly when they click on a mailto link. It often takes installing browser extensions. – Stephen Ostermiller Sep 19 '18 at 19:23
  • @StephenOstermiller, UX, yes and no, depending on the niche. For websites that target end-consumers then web forms are preferred but for B2B mailto is preferred, since most businesses operate with a client. – Simon Hayter Sep 19 '18 at 21:20
  • After reviewing the question it appears to be duplicate with the one linked above. No need to suffix a year on the end of the question as old questions can be improved at any time to become more relevant, we also have bounties and bumping through quality edits. – Simon Hayter Sep 19 '18 at 21:23
  • I left an updated answer here: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/a/117845/20604 – Simon Hayter Sep 19 '18 at 21:51
  • @StephenOstermiller Thank you. I am relatively new to stackexchange so I appreciate your help. I saw some of those questions but since they're 7-8 years old I felt they did not have relevant and modern advice. In the future I will try to point to older questions and then mention how they are different and how they don't answer my question. Thanks again – user1552794 Sep 19 '18 at 23:34
  • @SimonHayter "Old questions can be improved at any time to become more relevant" If I have a question that is sort of related to a thread that is years old, how would I get answers to that thread that are more up-to-date without asking a new question? Thanks for any clarification you can offer. And thank you for posting an updated answer in that old thread. – user1552794 Sep 19 '18 at 23:34
  • @user1552794 questions are cycled on Exchange sites from time to time automatically, in additional improving any of the existing answers or questions by editing them, correcting spelling, grammar and other improvements will bump it. Finally, once you have more reputation you can spend it and run a bounty which is the best way of gaining attention. – Simon Hayter Sep 20 '18 at 10:13

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