26 Professional Email Signature Examples, and a Free Generator to Build Yours

Most people write their signature once, in a hurry, and never look at it again. It ends up as four lines of grey text, or a giant image that half of recipients never see. Meanwhile it goes out on every message you send, which makes it the single most repeated piece of design you own.

The examples below are a shortcut. Each one is a finished signature for a particular kind of job, so you can see what the shape looks like before you write a word of your own. Pick the closest, open it in the generator, and swap in your details.

What makes a professional email signature

A professional email signature holds your name, your role, the company you work for, and the one or two ways you actually want people to reach you. That is close to the whole list.

The common mistake is treating it as a place to put everything. A signature carrying four phone numbers, six social icons, a quote, a legal disclaimer, and a banner is not more useful than one with a name and a number, it is just longer. Every extra line dilutes the ones that matter, and on a phone the important details get pushed off the first screen.

Two rules cover most of it. Keep it to five or six lines of text, and make sure someone can find your name and your role without reading carefully.

Email signature templates, and which one to use

Every email signature template is a variation on four layouts. Picking the layout first makes the rest of the decisions small.

Stacked.

Name, role, company and contact details on their own lines, no image. It is the narrowest template, which is why it survives phone screens and reading panes that crush everything else.

Horizontal with a headshot.

A photo or logo on the left, a vertical rule, then your details on the right. The most common template in sales and consulting, and the one that most needs the 600 pixel width limit respected.

Minimal, text only.

Three or four lines and nothing else. Ugly in a mock-up, flawless in practice: it renders identically in every client, loads instantly, and never arrives as an attachment.

Branded with a logo and a QR code.

A company logo above the divider and a QR code beside your details, so a recipient can save you as a contact from a single scan instead of retyping an address.

If you are not sure, start stacked. It is the template that fails most gracefully, and moving to a horizontal one later costs you two minutes.

Email signature design: what to keep and what to cut

Good email signature design is mostly subtraction. Four rules cover almost all of it.

One accent colour, used once.

Put it on the divider or on your name, not on both and not on every icon. A signature carrying three brand colours reads as a banner ad rather than as a sign-off.

Two type sizes, no more.

Your name a little larger, everything else at one size. Use a web-safe family, because a font your recipient does not have is substituted by their client and your careful spacing goes with it.

Give it room to breathe.

A blank line between the sign-off and the signature, and a divider rule rather than a box. Borders and background fills are the first things Outlook strips.

Check it in dark mode.

A black logo on a transparent background disappears against a dark inbox. Either give the logo a light plate behind it or use a version that reads on both.

The test is simple. Shrink the window to a phone width, read it once, and see whether your name and your role are the first two things you noticed.

How to create an email signature

1. Choose a layout. Start with a horizontal one if you want a headshot, or a stacked one if you mostly send from a phone.
2. Add your name, role, and company. These three carry the most weight, so let them sit at the top.
3. Add one phone number and one link. Resist adding a second of either.
4. Upload a logo or a headshot, not both, unless you have room for them to sit comfortably.
5. Set your brand colour on the divider or your name. One accent colour is enough.
6. Copy the finished signature and paste it into your email client using the steps below.

Start building yours

How to add a signature in Gmail

Open Gmail, click the gear icon, then See all settings. Stay on the General tab and scroll to the Signature section. Click Create new, give it a name, then paste your signature into the box.

Below the editor, set your new signature as the default for new emails and for replies. These are separate settings and Gmail leaves both empty by default, which is why signatures often appear on new messages but not on replies.

Paste the rendered signature rather than raw HTML. Gmail keeps the formatting from a copied block and will show you the code as plain text if you paste the source.

How to add a signature in Outlook

In Outlook on the web, open Settings, then Mail, then Compose and reply. Paste your signature into the editor and choose whether it applies to new messages, replies, or both.

In the Outlook desktop app, go to File, Options, Mail, then Signatures. The desktop version renders HTML differently from the web version and strips some styling, background colours in particular. If your signature looks right in Gmail and wrong in Outlook, that difference is almost always the cause. Keep the layout simple and avoid relying on background fills.

How to add a signature in Apple Mail and on iPhone

In Apple Mail on a Mac, open Mail, then Settings, then Signatures. Before you paste, uncheck "Always match my default message font", or Apple Mail will flatten your formatting into the default font.

On iPhone, go to Settings, Mail, then Signature. Mobile signatures are plain text only, so use a short version here: your name, your role, and a link. Keep the full formatted version on desktop.

Sizes and limits that keep a signature working

Most broken signatures come down to a handful of numbers rather than anything about the design.

Keep the total width under 600 pixels.

Anything wider gets cut off in narrow reading panes and on phones.

Never put contact details inside an image.

Many clients block images by default. If your name and number live in a graphic, they disappear for those readers. Keep every detail as real text and treat images as decoration on top.

Host your images, do not embed them.

Embedded images arrive as attachments in some clients, which looks like spam and adds weight to every message.

Stay under 100 KB in total.

Gmail clips messages past roughly 102 KB, and once a message is clipped your signature sits behind a "View entire message" link that nobody clicks.

Keeping a signature consistent across a team

One signature is easy. Forty is where it falls apart, usually within a month of anyone changing role.

Give everyone the same layout, the same font, the same accent colour, and the same field order, then let the details differ. The fastest way to get there is a single template that each person fills in, rather than a document describing what a signature should look like and hoping people follow it. ConnectMachine team plans keep the layout in one place so a change to the format applies to everyone.

Who it is for

• Sales reps whose first contact with a prospect is a cold email
• Recruiters emailing candidates who need an easy way to reach back
• Consultants and freelancers who want every proposal to look established
• Small teams who want one consistent look without hiring a designer
• Anyone who has been meaning to fix their signature for two years

The bottom line

Your signature goes out on every message you send, which makes it worth twenty minutes once rather than a rushed guess you live with for years. Keep it short, keep the details as text, size the images properly, and check it in the clients your recipients actually use.