If you didn’t know Gmail has a built-in mail merge tool… well, you’re not alone.

Google first rolled out a bare bones mail merge tool for Gmail in June 2023.

They didn’t announce it or have any sort of fanfare about it — in fact, we work in the “mail merge for Gmail” business and didn’t even hear about it until we spotted the announcement buried on their Workspace updates blog a week later.

Since the launch, Google has made a couple of improvements and upgrades to their mail merge tool (most notably, allowing for Google Sheets mail merges rather than only allowing merges with Google Contacts).

The tool’s abilities still pale in comparison to the third-party Gmail mail merge options on the market.

However, it is free. Or, at least, free with some paid Workspace subscriptions (so not totally free, but included in a current line item).

That makes it tempting.

In this article, I’ll help save you the time by giving you the results of my real hands-on experience with Gmail’s mail merge — which demonstrates exactly why it’s likely not going to meet your mail merge needs.

I’ll also share the best alternative mail merge tool for Gmail and compare it with the native option.

Let’s jump in.

Gmail’s Built-In Mail Merge Problems: Table of Contents

• The 11 Fatal Flaws of Gmail’s Native Mail Merge Feature
• The Best Alternative to Gmail’s Built-in Mail Merge: GMass

The 11 Fatal Flaws of Gmail’s Native Mail Merge Feature

Here are the critical problems I’ve found in my tests of Gmail’s mail merge tool — problems that will likely prevent this from being the solution you need to send important, personalized, individual email campaigns.

1. Gmail’s built-in mail merge isn’t available on the most popular Workspace plans.

Gmail’s mail merge comes “free” with Google Workspace plans.

But — and this is a big BUT — not the most popular Workspace plan.

Gmail’s mail merge tool is not included on the Business Starter plan. That’s the one you use, and I use, and most people you know use. It’s the one that’s $7/month.

It’s included on the Workspace Individual plan which basically no one uses; that plan is so obscure you can’t even find pricing information for it. It’s included on more expensive Business, Enterprise, and Education Workspace plans. And that’s it.

So if you’re looking for this mail merge tool and can’t find it, this is why.

You’ll have to decide if it’s worth upgrading just to use it — and if you do upgrade, then it’s really not “free” anymore.

2. You can’t mail merge in the subject line.

This is a major flaw.

One of the reasons the concept of mail merge is so important is because you can customize a subject line to speak directly to each recipient’s pain point — or, at a minimum, to jam their first name in there.

Gmail’s built-in mail merge explicitly states you can’t use mail merge in subject lines.

That alone is likely a dealbreaker for most people.

3. You can’t schedule your mail merge.

Gmail has built-in scheduling. It’s not super powerful (it’s just date and time), but it’s quick and easy to use.

Unfortunately, when you use Gmail’s mail merge tool, you lose the ability to use that scheduling option.

Once again, this is a major dealbreaker.

I talk with mail merge users daily and I know just how important scheduling is. In fact, our team here has built out our scheduling tools and continues to build them out because of just how important it is.

But Google went the other direction — and took away scheduling from people who want to send mail merges.

4. There’s no advanced mail merge options like personalized images, links, or attachments.

With Gmail’s native mail merge, you can mail merge words — and that’s it.

Modern mail merge software can do so much more. Sending personalized images, links, and even attachments are powerful tools at an email pro’s disposal.

5. There’s no tracking or analytics.

How can you know if your campaigns are working if you can’t track them?

Gmail’s native mail merge campaigns offer no analytics at all: No open rates, no click-through rates or seeing which links got clicks, no reply rates, no unsubscribe rates, no bounce rates.

I suppose you could compile a few of those manually, but that’s unnecessarily time consuming.

6. There’s no automation (around follow-ups or campaigns).

Want to send automated follow-ups to your mail merge campaign? You can’t do that with Gmail’s native mail merge tool.

Want to automate the campaign itself so it instantly goes out to any new contacts you add to your Google Sheet? Nope again.

One of the first lessons you learn when you dive into email marketing, cold email, or any other professional application of email is: Automations are golden.

With Google’s mail merge tool, you can’t employ them at all.

7. There are hard limits on how many messages you can send in a campaign and in a day.

Google has strict limits on how many emails you can send in a mail merge campaign.

You can:

• Send to a maximum of 1,500 recipients in a day.
• That’s the total if you do multiple campaigns, so, say, a 1,000-person campaign and a 500-person campaign.
• If you CC or BCC someone on the campaign, that counts against your quote. So if you send a 750-person campaign and CC someone, that’s your 1,500 sends right there. (They cap you at one CC or BCC recipient for each campaign.)
• You cannot set up a campaign to more people than that to have them spread out across multiple days.
• And you, obviously, cannot break those limits.

So if you want to send a larger campaign, their answer is… no.

This does not have to be the case. When we get to the section on using GMass for mail merges, I’ll show you how you can send to unlimited recipients — whether in one day or distributed over many days.

8. It’s missing every possible advanced or even slightly advanced feature you could want from a mail merge platform.

I’ve talked to (quite literally) 10,000+ mail merge senders over the past few years.

And one of the things I’ve learned is: You never know which feature is going to be the one that makes them say, “YES! That’s what I’ve been looking for.”

Maybe it’s A/B testing. Maybe it’s quick email polls. Maybe it’s automatically skipping holidays or weekends. Maybe it’s sharing unsubscribe or bounce lists across a team. Maybe it’s being able to send a new campaign as replies to prior messages.

Maybe it’s one of the hundreds of other things that Google’s mail merge doesn’t have.

9. Google doesn’t seem invested in the tool. (So start clearing a plot for it in the Google graveyard?)

As I said in the intro of this message, Google gave their mail merge feature exactly zero fanfare when it launched.

It’s years later now and they’ve still given it zero publicity.

They have one 1:33-long video about how to use it and a single page in the Gmail help docs.

It’s received one update.

It’s still buried inside of their less popular Workspace plans.

The evidence all points in the same direction: Gmail’s native mail merge tool isn’t a priority for Google.

And we all know what happens to products that Google doesn’t really find important. (We’ve all lost a product or two to the Google graveyard — products that were a lot bigger and more widely-used than their native mail merge.)

I’m not saying Gmail’s built-in mail merge is going to vanish tomorrow — but I wouldn’t be shocked if it did.

10. Gmail’s built-in mail merge is wildly impractical for any real business purpose.

After everything I’ve detailed above, you’ve probably arrived at the same conclusion I have: Gmail’s native mail merge tool just isn’t made for doing any real business.

If you need to send out some personalized birthday invitations as a one-time thing, it would be fine for that.

If you’re just trying to save a little time when you need to email a few dozen people all a similar-but-slightly-personalized email, it would be fine for that.

But if you’re sending anything important… anything with real business implications… anything that requires care and thought and consideration — this tool isn’t going to get the job done.

11. Even though you’re sending through Gmail, there’s still a decent chance you’ll go to spam — and they kinda shrug that off.

And one more thing, before we dive into the alternative.

As I’ve spoken with people from time to time who ask me about Gmail’s built-in mail merge, one of the common refrains I hear is: I bet it has great deliverability!

After all, you’re sending through Gmail using a Gmail tool, Google’s gotta prioritize getting you to the inbox… right?

Nope.

In the Google documentation about their mail merge tool, it’s clear they’re not giving any preferential deliverability treatment to mail merge senders. They talk a bit about following best practices and all the usual stuff, and that’s it.

No tips. No techniques. No strategies. No tools to help you avoid spam.

You won’t get any sort of appreciable deliverability advantage by using Gmail’s native tool.

The Best Alternative to Gmail’s Built-in Mail Merge: GMass

So… if Gmail’s native mail merge tool is this critically flawed, what do you do?

GMass is the answer.

GMass is a Chrome extension that transforms Gmail into an email sending and mail merge platform — but it’s WAY more powerful than Gmail’s mail merge.

Yet, somehow, it’s not any more complicated to use.

It still works inside Gmail, it still works with Google Sheets, and it has pretty much no learning curve.

If you’re sending mail merges that matter — for business, to subscribers, to job candidates, cold outreach, even important invitations or other personal messages — you need a professional tool.

Here are just some of the things you can do with GMass that are infinitely superior to Gmail’s native mail merge tool.

1. GMass has more sophisticated mail merge capabilities than Gmail (and, yes, you can mail merge in the subject line with GMass).

Gmail’s mail merge allows for basic text merges (first names, company name, things like that).

With GMass, first of all, you can do all that mail merge personalization too — and mail merge in the subject line.

But GMass also gives you way more mail merge options that can save you tons of time and make your emails that much more effective:

• Personalized links.
• Personalized images.
• Personalized attachments.
• Personalized CC and BCC recipients.
• Conditional content, using if…then logic.
• Mail merge inside of automated follow-ups.

2. GMass has advanced scheduling tools for your mail merges.

Gmail does not allow you to schedule mail merges.

GMass not only allows you to schedule mail merges — it has advanced scheduling to give you the pinpoint control over when your messages go out.

• Schedule a campaign (and its follow-ups).
• Set a daily end time for your campaign.
• Set the time zone for your sends.
• Choose to only send on certain days (like skipping weekends).
• Skip sending on holidays.
• Throttle your sends to add pauses between messages.

3. GMass gives you full detailed analytics and tracking.

If you can’t measure something, you can’t improve it.

Gmail’s built-in mail merge offers no tracking or analytics. GMass offers more data than you’ll get anywhere else.

• Track opens, clicks, replies, unsubscribes, bounces, and more.
• Open rate with bots removed.
• Custom tracking domains for a deliverability boost.
• Sharable campaign reports.
• Write campaign tracking data back to Google Sheets.

4. You can break Gmail’s limits with GMass to send virtually unlimited emails.

Gmail’s built-in mail merge limits you to about 75% of your account’s daily sending capacity. You can’t create a larger campaign.

GMass, in stark contrast, doesn’t put any restrictions on campaign size.

In fact, GMass gives you lots of ways to break Gmail’s limits to send campaigns of any size:

• Automatically distribute large campaigns across multiple days.
• Use a SMTP server to send virtually unlimited emails in a single day.
• With MultiSend, use inbox rotation to spread a campaign across multiple sending addresses.
• Apply to use GMass’s in-house SMTP servers (for opt-in email and cold email) to send large campaigns.

5. GMass has automated follow-ups for your campaigns.

There’s no way to automate follow-ups using Gmail’s mail merge tool. (Or some of the other lowest-cost mail merge tools like YAMM.)

With GMass, you get incredibly easy-to-use auto follow-ups — and you can create them right in the settings box.

• Send automated follow-ups that go out until a recipient takes a desired action (click, reply, and more).
• Send plain text or rich text auto follow-ups.
• Send follow-ups as replies to previous messages.
• Schedule auto follow-ups.
• Send triggered emails (automated follow-ups that go out immediately when someone takes an action on your campaign).

6. GMass has tons of other easy-to-use but powerful features.

No matter what you need to do, GMass probably can do it — and do it right inside Gmail.

Just some of the quick tools at your disposal are:

• Recurring campaigns that go out every time you add a new contact to your Google Sheet.
• A/B testing.
• AI campaign writing and creation.
• Preview text.
• Simple email polls.
• Shared templates with team members.
• Shared unsubscribe and bounce lists with team members.

7. You get advanced deliverability tools with GMass to help you hit the inbox.

As noted earlier, sending your mail merges through Google doesn’t have any specific deliverability benefit.

GMass has a whole suite of advanced deliverability tools to help you get to the inbox and avoid the spam folder.

• Spam Solver, which tests your campaign on real inboxes and gives you AI-powered advice to improve your inbox rate.
• Free email address verification.
• Spintax (and the AI-powered, one-click SpinMax) to vary up the content of your emails.
• Custom tracking domains so you control your own reputation.
• Embedded images.

8. GMass plans come with unlimited everything.

Gmail’s built-in mail merge puts a strict limit on campaign size and daily send volume.

Pretty much all other email sending platforms (from Mailchimp to the ones that do mail merge, like YAMM, Mailmeteor, and Mailsuite), put a limit on something. Whether it’s your number of emails in a day or month, number of contacts, or number of campaigns.

GMass doesn’t put any limits on anything. With every single GMass plan you get unlimited emails, unlimited contacts, and unlimited campaigns.

(Plus unlimited spam solver usage, unlimited sending domains, and unlimited email address verification.)

Check out GMass’s pricing and you’ll see the math really starts to make a lot of sense.

9. GMass has support for when you need help.

Gmail’s native mail merge has exactly one YouTube video and one help doc.

It’s not a complex tool, so it’s possible you won’t need more help than that — but if you do need support, you won’t get any.

GMass, on the other hand, has a full support team. There’s also extensive documentation to walk you through every feature.

But beyond that, you can also get help with things like strategy and deliverability from our Facebook group and during our live Q&As.

10. With 400,000 users and incredible reviews, GMass isn’t going anywhere — and just keeps on improving.

GMass has been around since 2015 and originated the idea of mail merge inside Gmail.

And it’s not going anywhere.

GMass has nearly 400,000 users (who’ve given GMass an average rating of 4.8 out of 5 stars across 10,000+ reviews).

And GMass just keeps growing — developing new features that users want, need, and ask for, and continuing to lead the industry with new ideas and innovations.

So once you get comfortable using GMass, you don’t have to worry about it disappearing. Learn it once, and keep on using it.

Ready to give GMass a try? Just install the Chrome extension and you’ll be up and running on your free trial in a matter of minutes.