Mailto Link Generator FAQs
Q: How does a mailto link actually work?
A: Mailto links allow you to send someone directly to a new email in their default inbox with predetermined fields.
For example, if you have a contact form on your website but you'd also like visitors to be able to easily email you at your support address,
you could include that address in a mailto link so your visitors only had to click that link to be sent directly to
an email creation window in their inbox with that support email already inserted in the "to" field.
Q: What are all the fields I can pass in a mailto link?
A: There are five primary fields you can pass: to (who the email should be send to), cc (who should be copied on the email), bcc
(who should be copied on the email but not visible to the recipient), subject line (what should should in the subject line of the email),
and body (what the default text should be in the body of the email).
Q: Can the people who click my mailto link edit the details in their email app?
A: Yes, once these details load in their email app all of those details can be edited. If they want to remove someone from the CC or BCC field,
change the subject line, edit the body, etc. they can do so. A mailto link cannot lock down that information once they are
in their email app.
Q: Can I use mailto link URLs in marketing emails?
A: Absolutely, that's one of the most common places mailto links are used. Keep in mind that if you are including
a mailto link in a marketing email, mailto links will not be tracked. If you'd like to learn more about why and options for tracking these links,
check out our
guide to tracking mailto links.
Q: Can I share mailto link URLs on social media?
A: Typically, no, social media sites will not convert mailto links to clickable links. We're not totally sure why but it likely has to do with some
combination of security and the code within social media platforms themselves being designed to look for links that start with http.
Instead, the text (ie, "mailto:test@mydomain.com") will just show up as that...text. You can try work around this by
using trackable mailto links but that's about your only option.
Q: What are all those weird characters in my mailto link?
A: Our tool applies what is called "URL encoding" to your link. This allows you to use any characters in your subject line or body
without the email app or browser getting confused about where one variable starts and one ends. For example, you may notice that your
mailto link includes ? and & characters to show where different parts of the email contents begin. If you included those in your
email body or subject line, that would break the mailto link without encoding those first.
Q: My mailto link isn't working, what should I do?
A: Send us an email and we'll take a look. This tool is new and there are a lot of email apps out there so it can
be hard to test it across all of them, but we'd be happy to see if we can fix any issues you have with specific email apps.
Q: Can I test my mailto link before I use it in an email or put it on my webiste?
A: Absolutely! In fact, once you start creating your link you'll notice right above the link a "Test This Link"
button will appear. Click that link at any time to make
sure it's working as you expected. Depending on the fields you've added to your mailto link, you should see all of those details
autopopulated in a "create email" window within your default email inbox.
Q: Is this tool free?
A: Yep, our mailto link generator is absolutely free. That said, pretty much every mailto link creator is going to be free.
If you find one that's asking you to pay, just hit back or try another Google search and you should find another tool that is free.
For us, we create tools like this for two reasons. First, to help folks who need to solve this problem. We love building tools and this was a
simple, but fun, one to build. Second, it's great marketing for us. People who need a mailto link generator are also the kind of people who often need other email
tools like ours!
Q: Why are the features of mailto links a little bit limited?
A: I've heard this a few times from folks who wish they could prepopulate a template or tracking URL or something, but
compared to other link / sharing endpoints (like social media links) mailto is actually pretty dang awesome. Mailto links allow you to customize
just about every aspect of an email message in ways that an X or Facebook link never have and likely never will.
