Foundation for Emails

Foundation for Emails (formerly known as Ink) is a comprehensive CSS framework developed by ZURB designed to solve the complexity of responsive email design. In the 2026 landscape, it remains a critical tool for developers who require a robust, local-first development environment rather than SaaS-based drag-and-drop builders. The framework utilizes 'Inky', a proprietary templating language that abstracts the archaic nested table structures required by legacy email clients like Microsoft Outlook into modern, readable HTML tags. Its technical architecture is built on a Node.js workflow, integrating Gulp for task automation, Sass for CSS preprocessing, and Panini for Handlebars-based templating. This allow developers to maintain modular codebases, automate CSS inlining—a mandatory step for email compatibility—and optimize assets before deployment. While many contemporary tools have shifted towards cloud environments, Foundation for Emails maintains its market position by offering unparalleled control over the final output, making it the preferred choice for enterprise-grade transactional emails and highly customized marketing campaigns that must render perfectly across hundreds of device and client combinations.