What email services convert URLs to links?

Question

Aside from the visual splendor of HTML emails - links are the only thing keeping me from sending plain text emails. They are much simpler for users at times and reduce bandwidth by over 50%. However, forcing my users to copy/paste or (* shiver *) type the URL from the plain text email is not acceptable.

However, it seems like many services such as gmail and hotmail are converting URLs into HTML links. If that's true, then for some lighter emails I could finally switch to plain text (in certain cases) without bothering anyone.

Anyone know what percentage (or what systems or clients) convert text URLs into clickable links?

Some users access via the web (Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail) while others use clients (Outlook/Thunderbird).

Answer 1

All email progams I know make links clickable, web-based and normal ones.

You should consider putting the links at the end of the mail, and use "[number]" to refer to them:

You should really visit PEAR[1] and friends, PHP[2]!

[1] http://pear.php.net/
[2] http://www.php.net/

That frees you from problems with longer URLs within the text, and it keeps the text readable.

Answer 2

You must not forget one simple fact and that is every mail client make this configurable. So I for one have the option of reading / sending html emails but I don't do that. So it's totally irrelevant how many mail clients support this, the relevant question is how many users have this enabled.