Gmail has a mail merge you may already pay for

Yes, if your Google Workspace plan includes it. Google's Gmail Help page on mail merge lists the eligible plans: Workspace Individual, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard and Education Plus. A free Gmail address is not on that list, and neither is Business Starter. If you are on one of the listed plans, try the built-in merge before you install anything. It covers more than most people expect, and the places where it stops are specific enough to decide by.

How Gmail's own merge works

You switch it on while writing: click Use mail merge to the right of the To line. Every recipient then gets their own copy of the email, nobody can see who else received it, and replies come back as separate threads. You personalise with merge tags. Type @ in the message and choose @firstname, @lastname, @fullname or @email, or link a spreadsheet and use any of its columns as a tag. The spreadsheet must keep the contact details on its first tab, as plain text.

Spreadsheet support arrived in June 2023. The Google Workspace Updates post announcing it said a linked Sheet can hold up to 1,500 recipients and that mail merge would fully replace the older multi-send mode in web Gmail.

Names are handled carefully. Gmail takes first and last names from Google Contacts. For anyone not in Contacts, it reads the To line, so "Lisa Rodriguez <lisa@example.com>" becomes Lisa and Rodriguez. When it cannot tell, it refuses to guess. Google's example is "Sam <sam@example.com>": Gmail cannot know whether Sam is a first or last name, so it shows an error and lets you set a default such as "Hi friend" or fix the recipient first. That is better behaviour than a merge that quietly greets someone by the wrong word.

What it adds to every copy

When mail merge is on, Gmail adds a unique unsubscribe link to the bottom of each email. Google's help page says you get an email whenever someone unsubscribes or resubscribes, that you cannot pull a list of everyone who has, and that unsubscribed people are left out of your future merges. They can still receive your ordinary, unmerged emails.

Where it stops

Google's limitations section is short and worth reading in full. The parts that matter most for outreach:

• Merge tags do not work in the subject line or in hyperlinked text, so every recipient sees the same subject.
• Mail merge cannot be combined with schedule send, reply, forward, confidential mode or plain text mode.
• You can merge to at most 1,500 recipients a day. Your regular email counts toward that 1,500, and the last 500 of a work account's 2,000 daily sends are kept for regular email.
• A Cc or Bcc address gets a copy of every merged email. Google's example: 500 recipients with one Bcc uses 1,000 of your daily sends.
• Attachments are copied into each recipient's email and use your storage. Google's example: 500 recipients and a 10MB file is about 5GB.
• You cannot merge from a secondary domain or an alias.

Then there is reporting. The help page describes no report of who opened or clicked. You find the email in Sent with a "Sent with mail merge" banner, replies arrive as their own threads, and you hear about unsubscribes. For an announcement, that is enough. For sales outreach, your next step usually depends on what each person did with the email.

Merge the announcement in Gmail. Track the send you plan to follow up one person at a time.

Pick the tool by the send

• An update to customers, a team or a community who already know you, with no individual follow-up planned: Gmail's own merge, if your plan has it.
• Outreach where each person's follow-up depends on whether they opened or clicked: a tool that reports per recipient, because the built-in merge does not.
• A free Gmail address or Business Starter: an extension or add-on either way, since the built-in merge is not on your plan.

What Fast Mail Tracker's campaign mode does

Our extension adds a Campaign switch to the Gmail compose window. You add recipients in the To line or paste a list, either bare addresses or "Name <email>", and each person gets their own copy sent from your Gmail account. Opens and clicks are recorded per recipient, and opens our filters attribute to automated scanners are kept out of the counts, so you can see which people engaged and follow up with them. The {{name}} and {{email}} fields work in the subject line as well as the body, which Gmail's merge does not allow.

It is narrower than Gmail's merge in other ways, and you should know them before you choose. There are only those two fields, with no spreadsheet columns. When a recipient has no name, {{name}} falls back to the part of the address before the @, so check your list first. A campaign cannot carry attachments yet and goes out when you press send. Like Gmail, we add an unsubscribe line to every campaign copy, plus the one click unsubscribe header defined in RFC 8058, and we skip anyone who has opted out or whose address hard bounced. Campaign mode is part of the Pro plan.

Fast Mail Tracker is in early access while Google's security review completes, so places are limited; if your next send is one you will follow up person by person, the install button below is the place to start.