Support Start > Web Hosting Technical Information > "mailto:" Links

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One common type of link in a Web page is a “mailto:” link, like this:

mailto:address@example.com

The idea behind a mailto: link is that your website visitor can click on it to send you an email message.

However, mailto: links have a drawback: These kinds of links only work if your visitor has set up an email program and has configured their web browser to use that program to handle mailto: links. If the visitor has not done so, the mailto: link on your site (or on any website) won’t do anything when the visitor clicks on it, or may show an error message.

This has nothing to do with your website or our servers. A mailto: link simply tells the visitor’s web browser to open the email program on their computer, then fill in the “To:” line with the address in the link. If the visitor has no mail program set up on that computer, nothing happens.

Visitors who don’t have a default email program configured on their computer can still copy-and-paste (or re-type) your email address into their mail programs, as long as you make the email address visible as part of the text. So you should probably make your mailto: links look like this, where the address is visible:

Instead of like this where it’s hidden:

The former version allows people to see what the email address is and send to it directly.