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Free Mailto Link Generator

Use this free link generator to easily create mailto link URLs to include in emails, websites, documents, etc. using all of the available fields including email, cc, bcc, subject line, and body. Enter the email details on the left and your mailto link will be generated in real-time on the right.

 This tool is provided free of charge by SendView, a slick competitor tracking platform for email marketers.

Mailto Link Settings

Your Mailto Link URL

Introduction to Email Links

Email links, often referred to as mailto links, are a simple yet powerful way to let users send an email to a specific address directly from a website, document, or even an email signature. By clicking on a mailto link, users are instantly taken to their default email client with the recipient’s address already filled in, making it easy to start a conversation or send feedback in just a few clicks. These email links are especially popular in email marketing, where businesses want to encourage direct communication with customers without adding extra steps.

A mailto link typically starts with “mailto:” followed by the specific address you want users to send messages to. You can also create pre-filled email links that include a subject and body, so users don’t have to type out their message from scratch. This is particularly useful for collecting inquiries, support requests, or feedback, as it streamlines the process for both the sender and the recipient. With a free mailto link generator, anyone can create these links quickly and easily, making it simple to embed them on websites, in documents, or anywhere you want to encourage users to send you an email. Whether you’re looking to boost customer engagement or simply make it easier for people to contact you, mailto links are a must-have tool for modern communication.

Understanding HTML Code for Email Links

Creating a mailto link is straightforward once you understand the basic HTML code behind email links. At its core, a mailto link uses the “mailto:” prefix, followed by the recipient’s email address. You can enhance these links by adding optional parameters like the subject line and email body, allowing you to pre-fill these fields for your users. For example, a mailto link with a pre-filled subject and body might look like this:

In this HTML code, the href attribute contains the mailto link, and the link text (“Contact Sales”) is what users will click on to open their email app. You can include multiple parameters, such as subject and body, to ensure the email is pre-filled with the information you want. This makes it easy for users to send you a message with just a single click, no matter which email client they use—whether it’s Gmail, Outlook, or another service. Understanding how to create and customize these hyperlinks is essential for anyone looking to add functional email links to their website or HTML document. By using the right parameters and formatting, you can ensure your mailto links work seamlessly across multiple email clients, providing a smooth experience for your users every time they click to send an email.

Mailto Link Generator FAQs

Q: How does a mailto link actually work?

There are five primary fields you can pass: to (the main recipients of the email), cc field (used to send a carbon copy of the email to secondary recipients), bcc fields (used to send a blind carbon copy, so recipients in this field are hidden from other recipients), subject line (what should appear in the subject line of the email), and body (the default text in the body of the email). You can include multiple recipients in the to, cc, or bcc fields by separating email addresses with commas, or just a single recipient if you want to target one individual. The term 'recipients' refers to all email addresses included in any of these fields.

Q: What are all the fields I can pass in a mailto link?

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?

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?

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?

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?

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. Special characters, such as quotation marks and commas, are automatically encoded by the tool to ensure the mailto link works correctly, even when you have multiple recipients or use punctuation in your message.

Q: My mailto link isn't working, what should I do?

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?

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! In addition to this generator, we offer other tools for email marketers, making it easy to integrate with your existing workflow.

Q: Why are the features of mailto links a little bit limited?

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.