How to trigger Google Forms email notifications

Receiving Google Forms email notifications is important whether you’re the form’s creator or the respondent. Notifications let respondents know their response has gone through, and they make it easy for creators to keep track of every submission.

Google Forms is a reasonably comprehensive piece of software, but its notification system is somewhat limited. In this article, we’ll show you how to use the built-in notification system in Google Forms to send simple notifications. We’ll also go through the add-ons you can use to improve notifications and give you an alternative to Google Forms.

How you can benefit from Google Forms

Google Forms makes it easy to create a survey and send it out via email or embed it in a web page, writes Henry T. Casey, a senior editor at multimedia platform Future. The basic version is free to use, it makes it easy to create a form, and there are no limits to the number of survey responses you can receive.

But for all its benefits, Google Forms doesn’t automatically send you an email notification when someone submits a form response.

How to set up Google Forms email notifications

Luckily, setting up email notifications for Google Forms is easy. Here’s how to do it:

1. Head to the Google Form you want to receive notifications for.
2. Click on Responses.
3. Click on the three-dot icon in the upper right.
4. Click Get email notifications for new responses.

The above steps are all you need to take to receive an email notification every time someone responds to your form.

Unfortunately, though, Google doesn’t provide a summary of the response in the email. That means you have to navigate back to Google Forms to see each response in full.

What’s more, only you (the form’s creator) will receive notifications. If you want your colleagues to receive notifications, you’ll have to add them as collaborators in the form and then ask them to turn on email notifications.

Google Forms email notifications add-ons

If you’re looking for more functionality from Google’s default email notifications, there are add-ons that enable you to get email notifications that include the full survey results.

Email Notification for Google Forms add-on

This simple add-on allows you to tailor each notification email and include as much or as little of the form’s results as you want in the notification. Here’s how to use it.

1. Install the add-on from the Google Workspace Marketplace. You can install it for individual users, or administrators can install it for everyone on your team.
2. Head over to your form, click the add-ons icon (the puzzle piece), click Email Notification for Forms and then click Create Email Notification.
3. Enter a name for your notification to easily identify it. Add any email addresses that you want to send notifications to (e.g. your customer support team), as well as a sender name and email address. You can also send an automated email to each respondent who fills out the form by checking the box for Notify Form Submitter.
4. Enter the subject line and body message for the Google Forms email notification. You can use the {{All Answers}} variable to include all form fields. 
5. Click Save Rule to activate the notification.

Mailrecipe email notifications add-on

Mailrecipe is another simple Google Workspace add-on that lets you create custom email notifications for Google Form submissions while also allowing users to edit their responses after submission. Here’s how to use it.

1. Install the add-on from the Google Workspace Marketplace. Again, administrators can install this for every user. 
2. Open your form, click the add-on icon, and click Mailrecipe.
3. Click Notify collaborators.
4. Enter the email address where you want to receive notifications. Click next.
5. Enter a subject line for your notification email. 
6. All form answers are shown by default in the text of the email, but you can customize the email if you wish. 
7. Click Yes to send a test email to confirm the notification works.

How to use Jotform for email notifications instead

Another alternative is to use Jotform for your online forms instead. Jotform offers an extensive array of features, integrations, and templates compared to other form builders on the market.

Unlike Google Forms, Jotform lets you easily integrate payment processors, remove Jotform branding, customize the design of your forms, add signature fields, and create mobile-responsive forms.

Jotform also makes it easy to send automatic email notifications whenever someone completes a form. All you need to do is click the Emails tab from the Settings page of the Jotform Form Builder and select Notification email.

Notification emails come with a prebuilt, customizable template, but all response fields are displayed inside the email by default. You can add specific recipients under the Recipients tab. Under the Advanced tab, confirm that the Send email on form submitted is checked to make sure all collaborators and respondents get notifications.