How to Send a Mass Email in Gmail (Method That Works in 2025)

Ever needed to send the same email to a bunch of people without spending all day copying and pasting? Good news – you can do it right in Gmail! Whether you’re reaching out to customers, sharing updates with a group, or running a small business on a budget, I’ll walk you through how to send mass emails in Gmail. No complicated software, no tech headaches – just a simple way to get your message out. Let’s get started!

When sending mass email from Gmail is a good idea

Gmail isn’t built like a fancy email marketing tool, but sometimes, you don’t need all the bells and whistles to get a message out to a group of people quickly. That’s where sending mass emails in Gmail makes sense.

I’m not surprised at all that this method is popular. After all, Gmail is completely free (for personal use), you don’t have to learn any new interface to use it, and you can keep things personal by sending emails from your regular inbox. However, let’s talk some specifics before you get all excited about Gmail being your perfect tool:

Who should consider Gmail as an option and when?

If you’re someone who occasionally needs to email multiple people at once without making it a serious marketing operation, Gmail is a solid option. Here are some examples:

• Maybe you’re planning a family reunion, organizing a community event, or sending out reminders for a group project. Instead of forwarding the same message over and over, you can send it all at once.
• Similarly, need to send information to a class, club, or team? Gmail makes it easy to keep everyone in the loop without jumping through extra hoops.
• If you run a business on a very tight budget, Gmail lets you reach your customers without paying for email marketing software. It’s great for occasional announcements, promotions, or updates.

Now let’s talk “when” this is a good idea.

Most of all, using Gmail for mass emails works well when you’re emailing a manageable number of people (not thousands at a time), and you don’t plan on doing it very frequently.

You also don’t expect to have any fancy design tools at your disposal – we’re still talking about simple Gmail emails.

If any of this sounds like what you need, Gmail could be the perfect way to send mass emails without overcomplicating things. That being said, there are also some specific scenarios where you should reconsider:

When you shouldn’t use Gmail for sending mass emails

Gmail is great for sending occasional group emails, but it has limits – literally! If you’re planning to send large-scale campaigns or need advanced email features, Gmail might not be the best tool for the job. Here’s why:

👉 Gmail has built-in restrictions to prevent spam. If you’re using a free @gmail.com account, you can send emails to up to 500 recipients per day. If you have a Google Workspace account, that limit increases to 2,000 recipients per day.

If you need to send thousands of emails daily, you’ll likely hit these limits fast. Instead of dealing with sending failures or delays, a dedicated email marketing platform like Brevo, or Mailchimp would be a better choice. These tools are built for mass emailing and won’t suddenly cut you off when you reach a limit.

For example, Brevo – our tool of choice – lets you send 300 emails per day for free (yes, it’s less than Gmail, but you get advanced emailing features too), and up to 5,000 emails per day for $8.08 per month. You can even integrate the Brevo sender (the script that’s actually doing the sending) with your Gmail.

Another downside of using Gmail as your sender is that you risk your emails going to spam – especially if recipients mark them as spam. Too many reports, and Gmail might suspend or even disable your account. A professional email marketing service (or at least using Google Workspace with a custom domain) helps reduce this risk.

And, of course, last but not least, you’re lacking some useful email marketing features if you’re sending your mass emails via Gmail. For example, there are no email templates, no automations you could set (like drip campaigns), and no email analytics (to see your open rates, clicks, etc.)

🤷‍♂️ At the end of the day, if you’re okay with all these limitations, then Gmail can still be your tool. But if you’re planning bigger campaigns, or want analytics, switching to an email marketing tool will save you headaches.

How to send a mass email in Gmail (2 methods)

Now that we’ve touched on the pros and cons of this strategy, let’s learn two ways to send mass email with Gmail:

Method 1: Use your free @gmail.com address

If you want to use the free Gmail service to send a mass email, you have two options:

1. You can use the built-in contact management and send emails using BCC.
2. You can use a freemium extension like Gmass or Yet Another Mail Merge.

ℹ️ For this tutorial, we’ll focus on the first approach because it doesn’t require you to use a third-party extension.

If you don’t already have one, you’ll need to create a free Gmail account for this first method.

Then, here’s how to send your mass email:

Step 1: Add your contacts

After signing into your Gmail account, go to contacts.google.com. This should take you to the following screen:

Alternatively, from your main Gmail screen, click on the Google apps grid icon in the top-right corner to locate the Contacts app:

Next, click on the Create contact button and then on Create a contact again:

On the next page, enter the important information about each contact:

At a minimum, I recommend filling in each recipient’s first name, last name, and email address. However, if you have many addresses to input, manually adding them can be time-consuming. So you may want to use the Create multiple contacts option instead.

Even better, if you have your email addresses saved in another file format, just click on Import in the left-hand panel:

Here, you can add a CSV or vCard file.

Step 2: Create a contact group (Label)

Next, you’ll need to create a ‘Label’ for your contacts. This groups specific contacts, making it easier to send mass emails.

Click on Labels in the left-hand menu, followed by Create label:

Give your label a descriptive name. After that, you should see your new Label nested below the Labels drop-down menu on the left. You can create multiple Labels for different segments of your audience, but for this tutorial, we’ll only use one.

Now, navigate to your new list of Contacts. Hover over each one you’d like to include in your Label, selecting the box to the left:

Grouping those contacts there will allow you to easily select them all as email recipients later on.

This Label will basically serve as the mailing list for your mass emails. Remember that you can only use it for up to 500 contacts on the free Gmail plan.

Step 3: Compose your mass email

Now, you’re ready to start composing your mass email! Before you start, you may want to turn on one little-known Gmail feature: templates.

To do this, click on the settings gear icon in the upper-right corner of your screen and then See all settings. From there, go to the Advanced tab. By default, all advanced settings are disabled:

Under Templates, select Enable. Don’t forget to click on Save Changes when you’re done.

Next, return to your main Gmail page and hit Compose:

This will open a new email draft. Write your email as you usually would, or choose a pre-existing template (if any are available). You can do the latter by selecting More options in the horizontal menu below your draft. From there, click on Templates > Insert Template:

To customize your email, you can leverage many features available in the horizontal menu next to the Send button. For instance, you might click on the first icon to access all your Formatting options, such as fonts, font size, alignment, and more:

The other settings in this menu enable you to insert images, attachments, a signature, and even emojis:

Or, if you want to get super-pro, you can actually use full HTML email templates in Gmail – just copy and paste them, but there’s a catch:

Gmail only allows templates if you copy and paste fully rendered HTML templates – meaning that you can’t simply paste in HTML code, it has to be a fully generated template.

How to get your hands on such a thing? No. 1 is that you could look online for free templates and then just use those. Or, no. 2, you can go to ChatGPT – of course – and ask for a nice clean template (plus whatever other guidelines you have). Then, take the resulting code and render it through Liveweave or similar tool – just copy the output and paste it into Gmail composer:

Then:

If you don’t want to redo all the work each time you send an email, save the message draft as a new template by clicking on the more button → Templates → Save draft as template:

Step 4: Choose your recipients and send your mass email

Since you already created a label to identify your mailing list, adding recipients will be simple. Just click on Bcc in the To bar. (Tip: we’re clicking Bcc because we don’t want every individual recipient of the email to be able to see everyone else’s email address.)

Then, begin typing in the name of your label, which should auto-populate:

You should be able to view the number of members nested under this mailing list label.

Once you’ve selected the group, all of your recipients will automatically appear in the Bcc bar:

When you’re ready, simply hit Send or the arrow next to it, followed by Schedule send if you want to schedule your message for later.

You’ll see some common scheduling preferences, such as Tomorrow morning and Tomorrow afternoon. Alternatively, you can select Pick date & time if none of the default options work. Then you can send your mass email!

Method 2: Use a Google Workspace account

For this method of sending a mass email in Gmail, you’ll need to upgrade to a Google Workspace plan. You’ll be able to use the multi-send feature and send up to 2,000 emails per day.

Step 1: Sign up for Google Workspace

To begin, go to the Google Workspace website and select See plans and Get started under the one that’s the best fit for you. However, keep in mind that the multi-send mode is not available on the cheapest account type. You’ll have to get at least Business Standard in order to have access to that:

You’ll be asked a couple of standard details about your business name and settings. If you just want the cheapest setup possible, select Just you, which will set you up with a one-person account:

After that, Google will ask you about your preferred payment option and so on. Pretty standard stuff when subscribing for any new online service.

Step 2: Turn on multi-send mode

It’s now time to turn on multi-send mode, enabling you to send a mass email. To do this, start by going to your Google Workspace Gmail setup and clicking on Compose.

This will open a pretty normal looking draft displaying two new email actions in the horizontal menu next to the Send button (marked with the blue dots in the screenshot below):

When you hover over these new elements, you’ll see that the first allows you to Choose layout, and the second is Toggle multi send mode. Select the latter:

Choose Turn on to enable mass emails in Gmail. When you do this, your email draft will transform, displaying purple design elements and a Continue button instead of Send:

This different appearance can prevent you from accidentally sending a mass email when you don’t intend to.

Step 3: Draft your mass email

Now, you’re ready to create your mass email. You can build the message from scratch, but you’d likely benefit from using additional Google Workspace perks.

One of the new email actions is the Choose layout function. It provides a library of layouts options to get you started:

You can choose from layouts for Call to action, Simple Text, Announcement, Newsletter, and more. We’ll opt for a classic Newsletter layout:

Before inserting your layout, you can also modify its appearance. To do this, click on Default styling next to the palette icon in the bottom-left corner. This will open the Edit layout preferences screen:

Here, you can modify elements such as Logo, color & fonts. For instance, you might change your layout’s color palette to match your brand colors:

Click on Footer details to add a custom footer, or Links to include contact and social media information:

Once you’re happy with your selections, click on Save Changes, followed by Insert. Here’s what our new mass email draft looks like:

Next, continue customizing the various elements of your email. You’ll want to remove all placeholder information and replace it with your own. Also, be sure to add a descriptive subject.

If you want to add a personal touch, you might use mail merge tags to include each user’s details. For instance, with mail merge, you can use @firstname and @lastname tags to address users automatically.

Step 4: Choose your recipients

When you’ve finished customizing your mass email, you’re ready to choose its recipients. Simply add all recipients in the To field of your draft.

You can also use a label here, as we discussed in the previous method – using a free Gmail account. Remember that the maximum number of recipients on a standard plan is 2,000.

However, you can use the To field, and the multi-send feature will send each recipient a separate copy of your mass email by default. This means recipients will be hidden, just like when you use the Bcc field.

It’s important to note that multi-send mode only allows you to add a maximum of one person in the Cc or Bcc field. Anyone added to one of these fields will be copied in on every individual outgoing message.

Finally, you might consider using groups or lists when sending a mass email in Gmail. This can help to streamline your workflow further.

Step 5: Send your mass email

When you’ve finished adding the recipients for your mass email, click on Continue:

You should see an alert about email best practices the first time you do this. Either click on Learn more or Don’t show again.

Next, you’ll see the Ready to send screen:

Here, you can Send preview or simply select Send all to complete the process. That’s it! You’ve now successfully sent a mass email with Gmail.

One thing I have to give to Gmail here is that this user experience is very similar to what you’d find with specialized email marketing tools.

Conclusion 🧐

If you only need to email a group every now and then, Gmail does the job without extra costs or complicated setups. But if you’re sending large campaigns, need detailed analytics, or want automation, a dedicated email marketing tool will save you time and frustration.

Either way, the goal is simple: get your message to the right people, the right way!

Do you have any questions about how to send a mass email in Gmail? Ask us in the comments section below!