Top Mail Merge Tools for Gmail - Feature & Price Comparison [Mass Emails for Sales, Partnership & Influencer Outreach]

As a sales, public relations, or business development professional, email outreach tends to be a key part of your work.

Thankfully, sending personalized emails in bulk can be done in a breeze through mail merge software.

Imagine working on a list of 46 contacts. Emailing them individually would be a time-consuming and tedious task. On top of that, it's prone to errors.

Thanks to mass email services (via mail merge apps), you’re able to reach out to a list of contacts in one go. Using a template, fields can be personalized. You can customize variables such as name, company name, their job title, etc.

Here is a list of leading mail merge tools for Gmail:

To inform your purchasing decision, let's break down the following options:

1. Vocus.io - complete suite of Gmail tools for sales
2. Gmass - send & schedule mass emails
3. MailShake - cold email outreach tool
4. ContactMonkey - bulk emails for internal & external purposes
5. SalesHandy - track & schedule emails
6. Woodpecker.co - cold emails & followups

Vocus.io - complete suite of Gmail tools for sales

Looking for a mass email service? Vocus.io is an industry-leading solution based on features, positive reviews and cost-effectiveness.

Pricing Plans

Subscription plans for bulk emails start at just $10/mo.

There is also the Professional plan for just $20/mo. This includes extra features like multi-stage campaigns (i.e. automated followups for Gmail mail merge) and file attachments for mail merge.

The plans are straightforward. Prices are per user per month. You're charged monthly so you can cancel anytime.

While looking at the price tag, consider that Vocus.io does far more than just bulk emails. We’ll expound on this below.

Note: Vocus.io Basic plan costs just $5/mo, though this tier doesn’t include Gmail mail merge.

Overview

What you get from Vocus.io mail merge:

• Industry-leading email tracking - track email opens and link clicks of each recipient who interacted with your email. You can even use branded URLs for tracking.
• Create campaigns - Bulk emails can be launched in a breeze. With Vocus.io Starter and Professional plans, you can launch any number of campaigns per month.
• Analytics - Each Gmail mail merge campaign comes with a report that you can share with other teammates on Vocus.io
• Configure automated followups - Professional Plan subscribers can configure multi-stage mail merge. In other words, you can add as many auto-followup email “stages” as you want to each campaign
• Mail merge with attachments - the Pro plan allows you to add file attachments (e.g. PDFs, slide decks, Word documents, and much more)
• Native Salesforce Integration - the tight integration allows Salesforce users to launch and log advanced campaigns
• CRM integration via auto-BCC - not using Salesforce? Vocus.io integrates with other CRMs via auto-BCC

Note that these features are built for Gmail (running via the Chrome Extension). This works for macOS, Windows 10, Linux, Chrome OS, or anywhere you use Chrome.

More features (much more than mail merge)

Unlike competing products, Vocus.io is a suite of tools for sales, growth and client success teams. It includes powerful features that you can use for individual emails (not just bulk campaigns).

Here’s a 2-minute demo:

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GMass - send & schedule mass emails

Pricing Plans

GMass has a three-tier pricing plan for individuals and special pricing for teams.

The Minimal Plan goes for $8.95/mo, the Standard Plan is at $12.95/mo, and the Premium Plan (that includes auto-followups) goes for $19.95/mo.

The Premium Plan for teams starts at $89/mo for 5 users. If you have a team of 100 users, it would cost $994/mo or $9,949/yr.

Overview

All plans support email open and link click tracking. However, only the Premium Plan includes the automatic follow-up feature.

Users can configure up to 8 stages of auto follow-ups. They can choose whether the automatic follow-up is based on recipients opening, replying or clicking.

For CRM integration, they have an auto-BCC feature, though they lack a direct integration with Salesforce.

MailShake - cold email outreach tool

Pricing Plans

Their monthly plans range from $39/mo to $99/mo. They have annual commitments that go for $29 for Basic, $44 for Pro, and $75 for Omni.

While they don't have a free trial, you can get a refund with their 30-day money-back guarantee.

Overview

By default, users can track the open/click rates using one of MailShake's shared domains. Users can also use a custom tracking domain.

Using Zapier, it allows MailShake and Salesforce to connect. Once integrated, Mailshake lets you set up a BCC setting for your team.

MailShake's automatic follow-up feature allows users to set each follow-up as a new email or a reply to a previous message.

Aside from automatic follow-ups, MailShake supports drip emails. Note that these drip emails aren’t auto-followup campaigns. They’re meant to be uninterrupted regardless of how your contacts engage. We typically expect this kind of drip email feature from another class of email marketing products (e.g. ActiveCampaign and MailChimp).

They also have a list-cleaning add-on that costs $10 per 5,000 recipients. This feature analyzes your list for bad or high-risk email addresses for you to review. This increases the chance of higher email deliverability to your campaign.

Not a Gmail user? MailShake's mass email service also works with Outlook, Exchange, and Office 365.

ContactMonkey - bulk emails for internal & external purposes

Pricing Plans

ContactMonkey has plans for Sales Teams and for Internal Communications.

Their Internal Comms Tool allows businesses to send personalized mass emails to employees. These emails can be newsletters, surveys, social reactions to increase employee engagement. They have special price configurations for this scenario.

Let’s discuss the Sales Teams plan further.

Like other mass email services, they offer 3 types of plans. The Professional plan which has basic features is at $15 per user per month, Team plan is $20, and Salesforce plan is $32. Their annual plan pricing is cheaper if you intend to use this tool for a longer period.

Features Overview

Each email opened is tracked including links, locations, and devices used within Gmail. Through ContactMonkey’s email tracking, you can review when you should send a follow-up email.

They don't happen to support auto-followups.

You can attach files of up to 5MB to your mass email campaign using the normal Gmail attachment feature.

Integrating this SalesForce with ContactMonkey can easily be done with Gmail or Outlook. Once you're done setting it up, you can configure the auto-BCC settings (though they don't have a direct integration with SalesForce).

SalesHandy - track & schedule emails

Pricing Plans

SalesHandy’s plans range from $9/mo to $50/mo. They also have annual plans that come with a 20% discount.

Overview

Like Vocus.io, SalesHandy's features go beyond mail merge. They also help you track individual emails.

While it lacks native/direct Salesforce integration, it happens to support Zapier.

If you plan to send mail merge with attachments, you would be able to track how your recipients interact with it.

They do support multi-stage mail merge, though it is limited to 9 stages.

Woodpecker.co - cold emails & followups

Pricing Plans

Woodpecker's pricing starts at $40 per user per month. Customized pricing is available for the enterprise plan.

They also offer a 14-day trial without requiring a credit card. During the trial period, you can send up to 150 emails.

Overview

Woodpecker is a dedicated cold email tool. Unlike Vocus.io, their tools can’t be part of your other email workflows.

They have the basic email tracking features and you can configure up to 7 stages of follow-up.

One disadvantage is the lack of support for attaching documents. To make up for the lack of a native Salesforce integration, Woodpecker connects with Zapier.

Conclusion

There’s a range of ways to send bulk emails. As a professional, you’ll want a reliable tool for sales, press release distribution, and other forms of outreach.

You’ll want to consider key factors like:

• Price
• Other features that come with the package
• Support for Gmail mail merge attachments
• Email tracking abilities
• Auto-followups or multi-stage campaigns
• Integration with your CRM (like SalesForce)

This breakdown happens to focus on Gmail so these are the options we presented. If you happen to be using Outlook, you may consider MailShake or ContactMonkey.

If your sales or client success organization depends on Gmail, Vocus.io is a leading Gmail mail merge solution in terms of features, quality, and price. Also, g suite mail merge is just the tip of the iceberg as Vocus.io is a complete suite of Gmail tools to make your outreach automation more effective.

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