Someone fills in your form and nothing happens. No email, no acknowledgement, just a thank-you screen they immediately close. A week later they email asking whether they registered at all, and you go and look in a spreadsheet.
The confirmation email fixes that, and it does one thing beyond reassurance: it puts something in the person's inbox that they can find again later. This guide covers the free routes first and is written by people who sell one of the paid options. The bias is disclosed.
Route 1: the Google Forms response receipt (free)
Google Forms has this built in. In the form settings you can send respondents a copy of their answers, either always or when they request it. It requires an email-collection setting to be turned on, and it costs nothing.
It is genuinely enough for a lot of forms. Where it stops is that the content is fixed: it is a receipt listing the questions and the answers, from a Google address, with no subject line of your choosing, no joining instructions and no way to include anything the form produced. If you want the email to carry a code, a map, a date or a next step, this route cannot do it.
Route 2: Apps Script and MailApp (free)
The standard free workaround is a script bound to the response sheet, triggered on submit, sending mail with MailApp or GmailApp. You control the subject, the body and any HTML you want to write, and it costs nothing beyond the time to build it.
The constraint everyone hits is quota. Apps Script mail sending has a daily limit that is materially lower on a consumer Gmail account than on a Workspace one, and it is a rolling daily cap, not a monthly one. A form that suddenly performs well is exactly when it stops sending, and the failure is silent: the spreadsheet row is already there, so nothing looks broken.
The second constraint is deliverability. Mail sent this way comes from a personal or Workspace Gmail address rather than a configured sending domain. For a handful of recipients this is fine; for a few hundred at once it starts to look to spam filters exactly like what it is, which is bulk mail from a personal account.
If you take the Apps Script route, wrap the send in a try/catch and write the result into a column on the row. Otherwise a registrant who never received their confirmation is invisible until they complain.
Route 3: the form sends it (paid)
The third option is a form that sends the confirmation itself, from a configured sending domain, as part of handling the submission. You write the subject and the body, and anything the form generated for that person can be included.
In QR to Sheets Forms the confirmation email is written per form, sent to a field you nominate as the email field, and can carry that submission's own QR code for check-in later. The email body accepts basic formatting, which is deliberately restricted to a safe set of tags because it is interpolated into mail sent on your behalf.
| Capability | Google Forms / Apps Script (DIY) | QR to Sheets |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free, within daily Gmail and Apps Script quotas | Included in the plan at 7 USD per registered device per month |
| Content you control | Receipt: none. Apps Script: full, if you write it | Subject, sender name and body, written per form |
| Can include a per-person QR code | Only if you build the generation and attach it yourself | Yes, automatically, when the QR code is enabled |
| Sending limit | A rolling daily quota that differs by account type | 2,000 a month, plus 500 per extra registered device, reset on the 1st |
| When the limit is reached | Sends fail, usually silently | The response, the Sheet row and the webhook still happen; only the email is held, and you are warned at 80 percent |
| If the mail provider is down | The trigger fails and Google retries on its own schedule | Retried automatically until it sends |
| Sending address | Your personal or Workspace Gmail address | A configured sending domain |
The rule that matters: an email must never be able to lose a response
Whichever route you pick, the submission should be stored before the email is attempted. This sounds obvious and is very commonly got wrong, because the natural way to write it is to handle the submission, send the mail, and then report success.
The failure that follows is nasty precisely because it is quiet. The person sees a thank-you screen, so they believe they registered. No email arrives, so they assume it went to spam. And if the row was never written, there is no record anywhere that they tried. Store first, deliver second.
The same logic applies to a sending allowance. Running out of email should hold the email, not reject the person. Losing a lead because a monthly allowance ran out is a far worse outcome than a missing confirmation, and it is entirely avoidable.
What to put in the email
- What they signed up for, named plainly, in the subject line.
- When and where, written out rather than left to be inferred.
- Anything they must bring or present, including the QR code if there is one.
- Who to contact if something is wrong, which prevents most support enquiries.
- Nothing that requires images to load, because many clients block them by default.
That last point is worth taking seriously if the email carries a QR code. Write the essential information as text as well, so an email with images blocked is still useful and the person knows to enable them.
When you do not need a confirmation email at all
If the form is an internal one your own staff fill in, an email to each submitter is noise. If it is a lead capture form where you contact them, the useful notification is the one to your team, which a webhook does better and faster than mail.
The confirmation email earns its place when the person needs something later: a code to present, a date to remember, or simply proof to themselves that they are on the list.
Step by step
- 1
Decide what the email is for
A receipt proves the submission arrived. A confirmation carries something the person needs later, such as a code, a date or joining instructions. They are different jobs and the second one is where the free route stops.
- 2
Collect the email address as a real email field
The confirmation can only be sent to a field the form knows is an email address. A phone or text field will not do, and a form cannot enable email delivery until a valid email field exists.
- 3
Turn the confirmation email on
It is off by default, along with the Sheet, webhook and QR deliveries. A form that collects perfectly good responses and silently emails nobody is the most common configuration mistake.
- 4
Write the subject and body
Say what they signed up for, when it is, and what they need to bring or do. If a QR code is enabled, it is included automatically, so tell them what it is for.
- 5
Send yourself a test submission
Fill in the form as a registrant would and read the email you receive on a phone. Reading it on a laptop hides the two things that actually go wrong: a subject line that truncates, and an image that does not load.
- 6
Check what happens when it fails
Confirm that a failed email does not lose the response. On any well-built form the row is stored first and the email is a delivery on top; if a mail failure can discard the submission, the design is wrong.
Frequently asked questions
Can Google Forms send a custom confirmation email?+
Not with custom content. Google Forms can email respondents a copy of their answers as a fixed receipt, but the subject and body cannot be written by you and it cannot include anything generated by the form. A custom email needs an Apps Script using MailApp.
How many confirmation emails can I send?+
On a paid QR to Sheets plan the workspace allowance is 2,000 a month plus 500 per extra registered device, shared with the Events add-on and reset on the 1st. It can be raised on request at no charge. The Apps Script route is bound by Google's daily sending quota, which is lower on a consumer Gmail account than on Workspace.
What happens when the email allowance runs out?+
The response is still accepted, the Google Sheet row is still written and the webhook still fires. Only the confirmation email is held, and the admin is warned at 80 percent of the allowance beforehand. A submission is never rejected because of an email limit.
Can the confirmation email include the person's QR code?+
Yes, when the per-submission QR code is enabled on the form. The code is unique to that submission and is scanned at the door to record their arrival in the same Google Sheet as their sign-up.
Why did my form not send any email?+
The most common reason is that the confirmation email is off. It is off by default on a new form, along with the Google Sheet, webhook and QR deliveries, and it also requires the form to have an email field nominated as the recipient.
Is the confirmation email sent immediately?+
Yes, it is sent as part of handling the submission rather than on a schedule. If the mail provider is briefly unavailable the send is retried automatically rather than dropped, so a short outage delays the email instead of losing it.