How to Mail Merge in Gmail: Steps, Limits and Free Options

To mail merge in Gmail, start a new message and click the Use mail merge icon beside the recipients field. Add recipients from Google Contacts or a Google Sheet, then type @ to insert merge tags such as @firstname. A climbing centre can write "Hi @firstname, your bouldering course starts on Monday" once, and each of its 400 course members gets a separate copy with their own name.

The feature comes only with eligible paid Google Workspace plans, not with personal Gmail. A day's merges can reach 1,500 recipients at most.

Why you don't have mail merge in Gmail

Mail merge in Gmail appears only on eligible Google Workspace plans, so a free @gmail.com account never shows the button. Google lists seven plans: Workspace Individual, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Standard and Education Plus (Gmail Help, as of 25 October 2026).

Business Starter is not on that list. A company on Business Starter pays for Workspace and still has no mail merge.

If your plan is eligible and the button is still missing, one of these is the usual cause.

Situation	Why mail merge is unavailable	What to do
Free @gmail.com account	Not an eligible plan	Use Google's free script (next section) or move to an eligible Workspace plan
Business Starter or another unlisted plan	Not an eligible plan	Upgrade to Business Standard or higher
Eligible plan, no button	An admin has switched Mail merge off; it is on by default	Ask an admin to turn it on in the Admin console, under Apps > Google Workspace > Gmail > User settings
Enterprise or Education plan, merge reaches only colleagues	Allow for external recipients is off by default on these plans	Ask an admin to tick Allow for external recipients in the same setting
Replying, forwarding, confidential mode or plain text	Mail merge can't be used with these	Start a new message with Compose and keep rich text formatting
Gmail app on a phone	Google documents mail merge for Gmail on a computer	Open Gmail in a browser on a computer

The admin settings and their defaults are on Google's Gmail user settings page.

Is Gmail mail merge free?

Mail merge in Gmail costs nothing on top of an eligible Workspace plan, but every eligible plan is a paid one.

Google does publish a free route that works with a personal account: an Apps Script sample called Create a mail merge with Gmail & Google Sheets. Google rates it as beginner level and about 10 minutes to set up.

You copy Google's sample spreadsheet and fill in the recipient column. Then you write a Gmail draft whose placeholders match the column headers, typed inside double curly brackets. From the sheet's menu, you run Mail Merge > Send Emails, authorise the script and paste the draft's subject line.

The catch is the quota. A personal gmail.com account gets 100 email recipients per day through Apps Script, against 1,500 on Workspace (Apps Script quotas, updated 3 September 2026).

The sample's code also adds no unsubscribe link. If the email is marketing, write a line inviting people to reply if they want no more emails, and act on every reply.

How to mail merge in Gmail with Google Sheets

A Google Sheet lets you merge any column into the email, so it suits most lists better than Contacts. How mail merge works is the same in every tool: one template, one row per person. Gmail adds three rules for the sheet:

• Keep the contacts in the first tab, as text only.
• Give each column a short header made of letters and numbers, such as Course or Day. Headers become merge tags, and a header with other characters gets a position tag such as @A instead.
• Check the email column. Gmail treats an address containing special characters as invalid.

The climbing centre's sheet has four columns: Email, Name, Course and Day. The steps:

1. On your computer, open Gmail and click Compose.
2. Click Use mail merge, on the right of the To line, and turn on Mail merge.
3. Click Add from a spreadsheet, select the sheet and click Insert.
4. In the window that opens, choose the columns for Email, First name and, if you have one, Surname. Click Finish, and the sheet appears among the recipients.
5. Write the message. Type @, pick a merge tag and press Enter. Every column header becomes a tag.

Before the real send, merge to a two-row copy of the sheet that holds your own addresses. It shows how every tag reads in an actual inbox.

If a row lacks a value that a tag needs, Gmail shows an error message. You can type a default value there, so "Hi @firstname" reads "Hi there" for that person, or fix the row in the sheet. Gmail raises the same error for a contact saved only as Sam, because it can't tell a first name from a surname.

For a short list already in Google Contacts, skip the sheet. Put the people under one label and add the label as the recipient, and Gmail fills @firstname and @lastname from their contact details.

Each merged message then sits in Sent with a "Sent with mail merge" banner. Replies arrive as separate threads, one per person.

Gmail mail merge limits

Mail merge in Gmail sends to at most 1,500 recipients a day, and your ordinary emails count towards that 1,500. Once regular and merged sends together reach 1,500, no more merges go out until the daily quota resets. The rest of a typical 2,000-email daily limit stays reserved for normal email (Gmail Help, 2026).

At the climbing centre, the front desk has sent 300 booking replies by lunchtime. The afternoon merge can now reach 1,200 members, not 1,500.

On merges to typed addresses or a Contacts label, a Cc or Bcc address uses the allowance too. It receives every merged email, and each copy counts: 600 members with the manager in Bcc use 1,200 of the day's sends. A merge from a spreadsheet allows no Cc or Bcc at all.

Limit	What Gmail allows
Recipients per message	Up to 1,500 in the To line
Merge tags	Body text only: not in the subject line, in linked text or in plain text mode
Scheduling	No schedule send
Attachments	The same file goes into every copy: a 10-megabyte file sent to 500 people uses about 5 gigabytes of storage
Sender address	Your own address: no secondary domains or domain aliases
Results	The Sent banner and, after sending, a count of unsubscribed people who were skipped

A merge changes words, not sections; changing whole blocks for different readers is dynamic email content.

For attachments, Google's own tip is to upload the file to Google Drive and link to it.

Trial accounts start lower. A Google Workspace free trial can send 500 messages a day, and that limit doesn't rise during the trial.

After you convert, the limit rises once the domain has paid at least US$100 (or the equivalent) in total, and the increase can then take up to 75 days. If you bought the domain from Google, the threshold is its price plus US$100 (Gmail sending limits in Google Workspace, updated 22 October 2026).

Old sheets also hold dead addresses. When many of your emails bounce, you may have to wait 24 hours before you can send again (Gmail Help on sending limits, 2026). Verifying the addresses before merging an old list avoids that wait.

How Gmail handles unsubscribes

Gmail adds a unique unsubscribe link to the foot of each merged message, and anyone who uses it is left out of your later merges. What it doesn't give you is a list of those people.

You get an email notification each time someone unsubscribes or resubscribes. Gmail can't show you everyone who has left.

The exclusion covers only merges from the address the person left. They can still receive anything you send without mail merge, and merges from colleagues' accounts on the same domain: a member who leaves the centre's events@ merges still gets the next one from bookings@.

Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), once someone opts out, your organisation must stop sending them marketing email, from any mailbox (Information Commission's Office). Gmail records the opt-out against one address, so copy each notification into an Unsubscribed column in the sheet and filter those rows out before anyone sends.

This is a summary, not legal advice. Consent rules are explained in UK GDPR and PECR for marketing email.

Gmail mail merge add-ons

Add-ons from the Google Workspace Marketplace, and some Chrome extensions, fill the gaps in Gmail's own merge. Their makers list features such as tags in the subject line, scheduled sends, open and click tracking, and a different attachment for each person. Most also work on personal @gmail.com accounts, with a free plan capped at a small number of emails a day.

Two things don't change. The emails still leave your Gmail account, so Google's daily limit for that account applies: 500 a day on personal Gmail (Gmail Help). Spam complaints also still count against the address you use for everyday email.

An add-on asks for permission to send email from your account when you install it. Check who makes it before you allow that.

When an email platform fits better than Gmail

Move off Gmail when the merge turns into regular marketing, such as a monthly newsletter, sent from more than one mailbox like the centre's events@ and bookings@ addresses. An unsubscribe recorded against one of them leaves the others unprotected.

Moving the sheet into MailGraf

MailGraf imports contacts from a file, so the sheet comes across as a download. Three steps are specific to a Gmail merge sheet:

1. Create Course and Day first under Fields > New field, so the import can map those columns.
2. Before downloading, filter out the rows marked Unsubscribed and import them separately with Upload unsubscribed contacts.
3. In Google Sheets, click File > Download and choose CSV (comma-separated values) or Excel (.xlsx) for the remaining rows.

The rest of the import is in the MailGraf Help article on importing from a file. Once the contacts are in, the Gmail gaps close like this.

The Contacts screen shows each unsubscribe with its method (unsubscribe link, manual, imported or spam complaint) and the reason the person gave, if any.

Those contacts stay out of every later campaign, whether it goes from events@ or bookings@ (sending and list rules). The centre's next step is a MailGraf account, created from the pricing page.