Without a doubt, Gmail is a powerful email platform. While it’s great for personal use, it’s also one of the premier emailing tools for businesses via Google Workspace.

But Gmail isn’t perfect.

Even though Google has built a great product, they’ve left out a few key features that can be extremely useful to the right user.

Email tracking is one such feature. Especially for business operations, having an effective way to monitor and analyze your email performance is critical.

Fortunately, even though email tracking tools aren’t native to Gmail, you can add them to your Gmail account easily via browser extensions.

Here’s a closer look at 9 of the best email tracking software for Gmail for 2023.

Email Tracker Logo1. Free Email Tracker by PandaDoc

Link: Chrome extension page.

Cost: Free.

Ideal user: Sales professionals looking for actionable insights.

If you’re looking for a straightforward, no-frills email tracker, the Free Email Tracker by PandaDoc is a powerful tool for small teams (including startups and sales groups in larger organizations).

This easy-to-use plugin helps you track email activity, providing insights on when your emails have been opened and how often they’ve been viewed. These metrics are simple and easy to review from the Sent folder inside your Gmail account.

Plus, this extension never inserts advertisements that alert recipients that their activity is being tracked. Simply add the extension to your Chrome browser and start tracking.

It’s that simple.

Mail Merge Mailtrack Logo 2. Mailtrack

Link: Homepage.

Cost: Free to $20/month per user.

Ideal user: Marketers looking for campaign and CRM support.

For many, Mailtrack is one of the premier email tracking tools on the market. The extension allows for unlimited email tracking, real-time notifications, automation, and even tracking on Android and iOS devices.

Unfortunately, to really see the power of the platform, you’ll have to pull out your wallet. The free plan allows for unlimited tracking but includes a signature ad. You also won’t see any kind of customer support until you become a paying customer.

The true power of the platform only comes to light at the highest-paid tier. Here, Mailtrack tries to fill a gap between pro-level email users sending a moderately sized volume of email (up to 10k users per send) and companies who need mass-mailer email clients to handle a heavier load.

At the Advanced tier, you’ll have access to PDF and click tracking, mail merge, and bounce detection, and even full CRM integrations. Buying yearly, you can pick up a powerful piece of tech for as little as $10/month.

Boomerang for Gmail Logo 3. Boomerang for Gmail

Link: Homepage.

Cost: Free to $50/month.

Ideal user: Users looking to integrate emails and scheduling.

Boomerang tries to round out your email workflow with unique tools to provide insights into recipient responses, written tone, and more. In addition to email tracking, the platform enables Gmail users to schedule meetings without leaving the inbox.

While these tools might not seem unique or special at first, Boomerang will surprise you. You can also find Boomerang for Outlook, iOS, and Android, so it’s possible to take the tool anywhere.

Boomerang Insights is an AI-powered tool that analyzes your text and helps you strike the right tone with each email. This can be particularly useful when trying to optimize click-through rates and boost customer engagement.

Inbox Pause stops emails from coming into your inbox until you’re ready to deal with them. This is a useful feature if you find yourself getting stuck in your inbox and you want to set clear guard rails to protect your time.

The free version offers many core features, but many of the advanced product features are withheld for members on paid plans. Pricing is annual, as well, so there isn’t a monthly option.

Streak Email Tracking Logo 4. Streak

Link: Homepage.

Cost: Free to $159/month.

Ideal user: Users looking for a solid Gmail CRM with mail merge capabilities.

Although Streak bills itself as a CRM for Gmail, the platform is loaded for bear with a suite of email tracking features and tools.

From the perspective of email tracking, the free plan allows you to monitor emails via a tracking pixel and create email templates from your snippets. However, this is just a side feature of the pipelines that can be set up to track business processes, deal flows, and more.

Past that, the free plan comes with sales pipelines, a basic CRM, full integration with Google Workspace, and more. The limitations here come primarily from the amount of data you can move through your pipeline and limitations for advanced features.

The paid plans remove these restrictions and allow you to manage even more data, access APIs, and more.

If you’re just looking for basic email tracking with some simple desktop notifications, even the free plan that Streak provides might be far too much for what you want to do. However, Streak might be the perfect fit if you’re looking to leverage Gmail as a sales tool.

RightInBox Logo 5. RightInbox

Link: Homepage.

Cost: Free to $14.95/month.

Ideal user: Users looking for a suite of helpful inbox tools.

RightInbox is a browser extension that allows you to track emails, set up sequences, create email templates, and much more. In short, the platform is a collection of tools designed to improve your inbox productivity.

If you’re planning to use this tool, we’d recommend being prepared to pay for it.  The free plan integrates seamlessly with your email service, but it only works on five emails per month, so it’s best to consider it as more of a free trial than anything else.

At the paid tier, the Personal plan seems most geared toward private use. You’ll have access to reminders, private notes, and recurring emails, but tools like sequencing, mail merge, and CRM integration until you reach the professional tier.

However you choose to use it, RightInbox can make the time spent in Gmail much more productive. From mail merge to CRM sync, it has a lot to offer in order to optimize your workflow.

Hubspot Logo 6. Hubspot Sales Hub

Link: Homepage.

Cost: Free to $450+/month.

Ideal user: Small businesses with huge growth potential.

Hubspot is used by companies big and small for everything from marketing, sales, customer service, and beyond. The platform is incredibly robust, with tens of thousands of users.

So, how does that factor into email tracking?

Simple! On all plans, HubSpot allows for some level of email tracking. The free plan limits your notifications to around 200 per month and includes some branding, but the Sales Hub Starter removes these restrictions while providing a battery of tools to beef up your email output.

Using Hubspot, you can conduct list segmentation, create thousands of email templates, create conversational bots, and quite a bit more.

Plus, HubSpot integrates with Gmail, Outlook, and Microsoft Exchange, so it’s a good fit for users who want to work inside and outside Gmail.

While we wouldn’t recommend this for smaller teams or businesses who aren’t looking at dramatic growth potential, this is a great jumping-on point for teams looking to put email and outreach at the center of their sales/marketing efforts.

Mixmax Logo 7. Mixmax

Link: Homepage.

Cost: Free to $69/month per user.

Ideal user: Revenue-driven teams selling from Gmail.

Mixmax is a sales platform that lives in your Gmail inbox. It comes equipped with the tools you’d expect from a robust platform but without the hefty learning curve.

Email tracking (and click tracking!) is part of the free plan, along with email template tools, meeting scheduling, and the ability to include polls and surveys in your emails. However, the free plan includes a signature in your emails, so individuals will know what platform you used for outreach.

Once you climb into the paid tier, the platform gains options for team sharing and collaboration, including shared calendars, email sequences, and inbox messaging. You can also run daily reports, integrate with Salesforce, and add a dialer to Gmail at the highest tier for instant, phone-based outreach.

If you plan to use email to drive revenue, Mixmax is a great option with affordable plans and feature sets at a variety of touchpoints.

Yesware Logo 8. Yesware

Link: Homepage.

Cost: Free to $85/month per seat.

Ideal user: Sales pros looking to close deals in Gmail and Outlook.

On their homepage, Yesware points out that many email outreach tools feel either too heavy or too light. In many ways, Yesware’s toolkit is a direct response to the need for a strong “in-between” option.

That also comes with some limitations, which are easy to spot in the free plan. Unlike tools that provide free and unlimited email tracking, Yesware limits tracking to emails sent within the previous 24 hours. However, the platform also includes attachment tracking, meeting scheduling, and other sales tools at no charge.

On the other hand, emails are also branded with Yesware branding unless you’re willing to pay at least $35/month for the Premium plan, and Salesforce integration is only available for Enterprise and Custom plans.

Snov.io Logo 9. Unlimited Email Tracker by Snov.io

Link: Info page.

Cost: Free.

Ideal user: Users looking for fast and friendly email tracking.

Just looking for a fast and simple email-tracking solution?  If so, the unlimited email tracker by Snov.io is one of the best email trackers on the market today.

This Chrome extension is completely free, and though it’s published and maintained by Snov.io, it has nothing to do with the platform. You won’t need to create an account or register with them to use it.

Instead, this extension integrates with Gmail, quietly tracks your email, and provides real-time desktop notifications when recipients interact with your messages. You can see a full history of opens, and built-in reminders will ensure that you don’t forget the follow-up.

Get started with free email tracking

Whether you’re aiming to keep an eye on recipient email activity or you want to check your open rates, there are several great starting points when it comes to email tracking software. 

If you’re unsure where to start or if the email analytics from email tracking providers will be beneficial for you, we’d recommend starting with a free plugin like the Free Email Tracker from PandaDoc.

Taking this approach, you’ll be able to track the number of emails quickly and simply — and at no cost to your budget or change to your existing Gmail workflow.

Add the extension to your Google Chrome browser to get started!

FAQs

  • Tracking emails is essential for email marketing and outreach campaigns. Sales reps and marketers use the information provided by tracking to better understand how recipients interact with their emails.

    Most email software reports recipient opens and views, while more sophisticated software may track link clicks, offer attachment tracking, or provide additional insights and analytics on email campaigns.

    Companies can use this information to better understand how their lead curation strategies are working and whether or not emails are actually being delivered, opened, and read.

    At the same time, the data that email tracking provides can be useful for email scheduling — particularly for follow-up emails — and for gauging which emails achieve the highest levels of engagement.

  • This will come down to how your operations are set up, what analytics you need, and what you expect from your tracking software.

    For example, a small sales team might be happy with the Free Email Tracker from PandaDoc, which provides unlimited email tracking and a simple checkmark system to verify deliverability and email opens.

    On the other hand, if you’re looking for a full-scope solution with click tracking, read receipts, and a CRM or Salesforce integration, a paid plan from a platform like Boomerang for Gmail might be a better fit.

  • Gmail is one of the primary tools inside Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), and that makes it a powerful tool for organizations using Google Workspace tools as part of their workflow.

    While it’s possible to join up with email platforms (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, etc.), these marketing tools are built for outreach at a massive scale.

    But, often, you don’t need that.

    Particularly for campaigns coming from small sales teams, simply enabling email tracking through Gmail using a Chrome extension is likely more than enough to ensure deliverability and schedule follow ups.

    With the right extensions and add-ons, you can enjoy most of the functionality of much larger email platforms while using familiar tools and keeping costs low.

  • Until quite recently, Gmelius offered email tracking. However, as of February 14, 2023, the company has made the decision to discontinue email tracking.

    If you want to track email and still use Gmelius, we’d recommend adding the Free Email Tracker from PandaDoc to your Chrome browser. That way, you can still take advantage of Gmelius’s toolkit and keep an eye on your email.