How to get an email every time someone submits your Google Form

Yes, you can get an email every time a Google Form is submitted, and it takes about thirty seconds. Open the form, click Responses, click More (the three dots), then Get email notifications for new responses. From then on, each submission sends an alert to the account that switched it on.

That alert answers the question as asked, but it is narrow. It goes to one person, it does not show the submitted answers, and nobody else is told. If you need the email to reach a colleague, to include what was written, or to go to the person who filled in the form, there are three more routes, each with its own limits. This guide walks through all of them in order of effort, with the steps and figures taken from Google's own help and developer pages on October 8, 2026.

Route 1: the built in alert (thirty seconds)

The steps, exactly as Google's help page for viewing and managing responses lists them:

1. Open the form in Google Forms.
2. At the top of the form, click Responses.
3. Click More.
4. Click Get email notifications for new responses.

Clicking the same item again turns it off.

What to expect from it:

• It is personal. The setting applies to the account that clicked it. If three editors each want alerts, each of them has to switch it on while signed in as themselves.
• It tells you that something arrived, not what. To read the answers, you open the form's Responses tab or the linked spreadsheet.
• It only reaches editors. There is no field for typing in another address, such as a shared inbox.

For a form that one person watches, this is enough, and there is no reason to go further. The question to ask before adding anything is simple: does anyone other than the editor need to know, and does anyone need to see the answers without opening the form?

If yes, continue.

Route 2: send the respondent a copy

A large share of "notification" problems are really about the respondent. People submit, see a thank you message, and then email the organiser asking whether it went through. Google Forms can send the respondent a copy of their own answers without any add-on.

1. Open the form and click Settings.
2. Turn on Collect email addresses and choose Verified (the respondent signs in with a Google account) or Responder input (the respondent types an address).
3. Next to Responses, click the down arrow.
4. Next to Send responders a copy of their response, choose When requested or Always.

Always is the useful setting for registrations and applications, because it removes the question entirely. Google's help adds one caution: in certain circumstances responders may not receive the receipt because of spam filters or other counter abuse measures. Tell respondents in the confirmation message to check their spam folder if the copy does not arrive.

This copy is a receipt, not a reply. It repeats what the respondent typed. It cannot say "your place is confirmed" or "an interviewer will contact you by Friday". For that, the message has to be written by someone, or by a rule.

Route 3: an add-on that sends the answers to anyone

When the email has to go to several people, a shared address, or different people depending on an answer, a notification add-on from the Google Workspace Marketplace is the usual next step.

Google publishes its own, called Form Notifications, which is free. Its listing describes two jobs: messages to respondents as they submit, and messages to owners and editors on predetermined response thresholds. That second job is built for milestones such as "tell me at 100 registrations" rather than per submission alerts with content.

Third party add-ons fill the gap. The largest, Email Notifications for Google Forms from Digital Inspiration, showed more than 21 million installs on the Marketplace on October 8, 2026. Its published comparison shows the free edition at 20 emails per day and one notification rule per form, with CC and BCC, a different sender alias, and conditional emails based on answers available from the paid Standard edition.

Whichever add-on is chosen, three things are true of all of them:

• The mail is sent as the person who installed it. Google's own listing names the permission plainly: send email as you.
• That person's daily quota applies. The add-on runs on Apps Script, so it shares the Apps Script email limits shown below.
• If that account is suspended, the emails stop. Nothing tells the respondents.

Route 4: write a short Apps Script trigger

If the routing is simple, a few lines of Apps Script can do what a paid add-on does, with no licence and full control over the wording. Google's developer site also has a full quickstart titled "Send emails about new Google Forms submissions" that builds a small add-on with a sidebar, for anyone who wants the complete version.

The minimal version:

1. In the form, click More (the three dots), then Apps Script.
2. Replace the editor contents with the script below, put the real recipient addresses in place of the placeholder, and save.
3. In the left bar, click Triggers (the clock icon), then Add Trigger.
4. Choose the function notifyOnSubmit, event source From form, event type On form submit, and save.
5. Approve the permissions when asked, then submit a test response.

function notifyOnSubmit(e) {
  const recipients = 'REPLACE_WITH_ADDRESSES'; // comma separated
  const lines = e.response.getItemResponses().map(function (r) {
    return r.getItem().getTitle() + ': ' + r.getResponse();
  });
  const from = e.response.getRespondentEmail() || 'not collected';
  MailApp.sendEmail({
    to: recipients,
    subject: 'New response: ' + e.source.getTitle(),
    body: 'Respondent: ' + from + '\n\n' + lines.join('\n'),
  });
}

Each email now carries every question and answer, goes to whichever addresses are listed, and can be extended with conditions such as sending applications for one programme to one team and the rest to another.

Two practical notes. The trigger runs as the person who created it, so create it from a shared role account if the organisation allows that. And open the trigger's settings to set failure notification to immediately, so a broken run sends an email instead of failing in silence.

The limits that decide whether it keeps working

Routes 3 and 4 both run on Apps Script and share the same quotas. Google's quotas page, checked October 8, 2026:

Recipients are counted per address. A script that emails three colleagues about every submission uses three recipients per response, so a personal Gmail account runs out after 33 submissions in a day. After that, emails stop until the quota resets, and the form keeps accepting answers as if nothing happened.

The form itself also has ceilings that affect notifications indirectly. Google's help now states that starting in September 2026, each form can hold up to 1 GB of total storage and receive up to 500,000 responses. It also notes that the response summary may not appear once a form has more than 50,000 responses, and that syncing with Sheets can stop beyond 100,000. Long running intake forms should be checked against those numbers.

Test it before anyone depends on it

Notification setups tend to fail quietly, so a ten minute test before the form goes public saves a lot of explaining later. Run through these in order, using a real address you can check:

1. Submit a test response from a different account. Use a browser where the editor is not signed in, so the test looks like a real respondent. Confirm the built in alert arrives in the editor's inbox.
2. Check the respondent copy. If Send responders a copy of their response is set to Always, confirm the copy arrives at the test address, and look in the spam folder if it does not.
3. Check every recipient of the add-on or script. Each address on the list should receive the email. A typo in one address does not stop the others, so it is easy to miss.
4. Read the From line and the subject. This is what recipients see in a busy inbox. A subject that includes the form name, or an applicant name, is far easier to sort than a generic one.
5. Delete the test responses afterwards. Otherwise they sit in the summary charts and the export, and someone will eventually count them.

Then repeat step 1 once a month, or whenever the person who set it up changes roles. That single check catches the two most common failures: an exhausted quota and a suspended sending account.

When an email per submission is not the real goal

Every route above answers the question of how to find out. None of them answers the question of who is dealing with it. That difference matters as soon as more than one person receives the alert.

Picture a shared enquiry form whose alerts go to three people. Each alert lands in three inboxes. One person replies from their own mailbox. The other two cannot see that, so either both assume someone else has it and nobody replies, or two of them reply with different answers. The spreadsheet behind the form has a row for each response and no column saying who replied or what they said, unless someone adds one and keeps it current by hand.

Teams in this position usually try more notifications first: a second rule, a chat channel, a daily digest. The volume of alerts goes up and the question "did anyone answer this one" stays. The missing pieces are an owner on each response, a status that moves from new to answered to closed, and the reply kept next to the answers instead of in one person's sent folder.

That is the gap form tools with response management are built around. Each response gets an owner and a stage, the reply is sent from the same screen as the answers, and every message stays on the record so the next person can see what was said. Recruiting, event registration, and enquiry desks are the common cases where this shape pays off. Pricing in this category is usually set by the number of people using it rather than by response volume, which is worth checking on the pricing page before comparing against the cost of a paid add-on.

What to change first

Switch on the built in alert and the respondent copy today, because both are free and solve the two most common complaints. If someone other than the editor needs to act on each submission, add a script or an add-on and check its daily quota against your busiest day. If more than one person is replying, give each response an owner and a status, whether in a maintained spreadsheet column or in a tool such as Halict that keeps the reply on the response.

Q1. Can Google Forms send the notification email to more than one person?

Not with the built in setting, which only alerts the editor who switched it on. Each editor can turn it on for themselves. To send to other addresses, such as a shared inbox, use a notification add-on or an Apps Script trigger that lists the recipients.

Q2. Does the Google Forms notification email include the answers?

The built in alert does not. It only says that a new response arrived, so the answers are read in the form or the linked spreadsheet. Add-ons and Apps Script triggers can put every question and answer in the body of the email.

Q3. Why did the Google Forms submission emails stop arriving?

The most common causes are the daily Apps Script email quota, which is 100 recipients on a personal account and 1,500 on a Google Workspace account, and the sending account being suspended or losing access. For the built in alert, check that the setting is still on for the signed in account.

Q4. How does the person who filled in the form get a confirmation?

Turn on Collect email addresses in Settings, then set Send responders a copy of their response to Always. They receive a copy of their answers by email. Google notes that spam filters can occasionally block these receipts.

Q5. Is there a limit on responses per Google Form?

Google's help states that starting in September 2026, each form can receive up to 500,000 responses and hold up to 1 GB of total storage. The summary view may not appear above 50,000 responses, and Sheets syncing can stop above 100,000.