Exclaimer Cloud generating bloated HTML signature
Posted by Microdex@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 11 comments
I'm currently deploying Exclaimer Cloud for a Google Workspace organization. The signature that I need to build is relatively simple and not hard to build with the Exclaimer designer. The problem I'm facing is that the HTML signature produced by Exclaimer is hilariously bloated. Because the organization uses S/MIME, the signature needs to be synced to Gmail and cannot be added server-side. This imposes a 10.000 character limit on the final signature. No matter what I do, Exclaimer is generating tables within tables within tables and each further layer of tables includes the same set of inline font styles with 6 properties. You can imagine this leads to a gigantic amount of HTML even for a simple layout.
Basically the layout consists of one table at the root and 5 rows. Not even 2 columns, just 5 simple table rows. Each table row houses 1 simple text block inside of it. Exclaimer will create am HTML table for the root table (so far so good) and another whole HTML table with 1 row and 1 column, wrapping each text block individually.
The pure text content of the target signature is about 800 characters. But I can't get it to work without landing beyond 12.000 characters of HTML in the end result. Even taking the HTML markup and inline styles overhead into account, I cannot comprehend how this makes sense.
Does anyone know a trick for how to resolve this?
Jumpy-Possibility754@reddit
Yeah, that’s pretty common with email signature builders. They generate extremely defensive HTML because they’re trying to survive Outlook, Gmail, Apple Mail, etc., which usually means nested tables and repeated inline styles.
If you’re hitting Gmail’s 10k limit, the easiest fix is usually to bypass the visual designer and switch to the HTML editor. Build a minimal structure yourself and only keep what’s actually needed.
Things that typically bloat these signatures: - nested single-cell tables for every text block - repeated inline font declarations - conditional comments for Outlook - CSS resets injected by the designer
For a layout like you described (basically one table with a few rows), you can usually get it down to something like one root table and simple
<tr><td>rows with shared inline styles.Another trick is defining the font stack once at the parent
<td>level instead of repeating it on every element.A lot of signature generators massively overbuild the markup for compatibility, so hand-trimming the HTML usually cuts the size dramatically.
mr_ochie@reddit
Exclaimer does not have an HTML editor, just the drag-and-drop editor in the portal. Would that it did!
shokzee@reddit
The bloat almost always comes from the visual designer generating nested table structures and inline styles for broad email client compatibility. Switch to the HTML editor and build the layout manually from a minimal table structure. You get much tighter control and the output shrinks dramatically.
A few things to strip: conditional comments, any CSS resets or base styles the designer injects by default, and font declarations beyond what you actually need. Check if Exclaimer is embedding images as base64, which adds significant size. Hosting the logo externally and referencing via URL instead will save a lot of characters.
For S/MIME specifically, a single-row table with minimal inline styles and an externally hosted image is the most compact structure that will still render correctly in Gmail and Outlook.
PPan1c@reddit
AFAIK Exclaimer does not offer a HTML editor
Microdex@reddit (OP)
Exactly, if they did, or offered importing HTML into the editor, I would've 100% done that. This would've been the best option, I think.
Master-IT-All@reddit
Oh shit. The older versions that were for Exchange Server came with an editor I'm sure. I was going to recommend using the direct editor... but
statikuz@reddit
This is one of the major reasons I went with CodeTwo. A web designer I am not, but for simple things I like to be able to create/tweak the underlying HTML.
I understand the selling point - you don't have to "code"! your marketing people can do it! but having the option to see what it generated and clean it up a bit is important to me.
zippyfreak69@reddit
The Gmail restrictions for signature file size are notoriously harsh, and as mentioned by other the issue here is the design trying to be bulletproof against anything most mail client can throw at it via the use of tables which does easily break those size limits.
I do know that the designer there is prone to adding additional "groupings" that are not 100% necessary and they can be minimized if you are particularly good at the designer there.
If you are having issues I'd suggest throwing the Exclaimer support team a ticket, they can usually trim down the number of tables more than you would expect. (I speak as formerly one of their Support Team ;-) )
There are still limits but they should be more than happy to give it a once over for you and clean it up a bit, hopefully that is enough to satify Gmails restrictions.
magfoo@reddit
Wir haben zu code2 gewechselt.
Winter_Engineer2163@reddit
This is unfortunately pretty common with tools that generate email signatures automatically. They tend to rely heavily on nested tables and inline styles to guarantee compatibility with Outlook and other email clients, which ends up producing very bloated HTML even for simple layouts.
One thing that sometimes helps is simplifying the layout as much as possible and avoiding extra containers around text blocks. Even if the designer visually shows a simple structure, the tool may still wrap every element in its own table.
Another thing you could try is exporting the generated HTML and manually cleaning it up, then pasting the optimized version back into the signature if the platform allows it. Sometimes removing redundant tables and repeated inline styles can reduce the size quite a bit.
But in general the limitation is coming from the way email HTML has to be structured for compatibility. Tools like Exclaimer tend to overcompensate for that, which is why even a simple signature can explode into thousands of characters.
PPan1c@reddit
Have you already checked the Exclaimer Knowledge Base? They have an article specifically addressing the issue you described