Emailing documents to recipients

When you generate documents from a spreadsheet, DocuPotion can email each PDF to the person it belongs to: one personalised email per row, with the document attached. Generate 400 certificates and every student receives theirs automatically, while you watch the delivery status of each one.

Email delivery is available once you upgrade to a paid plan. On the free trial, you'll see the option with an upgrade prompt. Your documents are still generated and saved to the run for downloading.

Contents

1. Including email addresses in your spreadsheet
2. Turn on email in the Delivery step
3. Set up the email
4. Send yourself a test first
5. What recipients receive
6. Watching delivery
7. Resending failed emails
8. Bounces, spam reports, and the do-not-send list
9. Daily sending limit
10. Helping your emails reach the inbox
11. Size limits and cost

Including email addresses in your spreadsheet

Your spreadsheet needs a column of email addresses, one recipient per row. Rows with a blank or invalid address are skipped, and you're never charged for a send that didn't happen.

Every document is always saved to the run for 12 months, whether or not it's emailed. Email is an extra delivery, not a replacement for the run library.

Turn on email in the Delivery step

Upload and map your spreadsheet as usual (see Creating documents from a spreadsheet). On the Delivery step of the wizard, you'll see the Email each document card. Switch the toggle on.

Just above the toggle you'll see your daily email allowance: how many emails you can send today. See Daily sending limit below.

Set up the email

With the toggle on, fill in:

• Send to: the spreadsheet column holding each recipient's email address. DocuPotion pre-selects the likeliest column and checks its sample values: if they don't look like email addresses (say you picked a name column by mistake), you'll see a warning right there: rows without a valid address are skipped, never emailed.
• Subject: supports your merge fields, so each email can be personal. A sensible default is pre-filled; edit it freely. For example: Your certificate, {{preferred_name}}
• Message: the text of the email itself. A short friendly default is pre-filled; write your own and personalise it with merge fields using the Insert field chips (e.g. "Hello {{preferred_name}},"). An Example line shows the message resolved with your first row's data. Plain text, up to 2,000 characters; if you clear it entirely, a standard default is used.
• From name: the sender name recipients see, for example your school or company name.
• Reply-to (optional): where replies go. We recommend a mailbox you actually monitor, so recipients can reach you with questions.

Send yourself a test first

At the bottom of the email form you'll find Send yourself a test first. It sends one real email (same subject, message, and attachment name your recipients will get, filled with the first row of your spreadsheet) to any address you choose (pre-filled with your account email).

• The attached PDF carries a DEMO watermark; real runs send clean documents.
• Test emails are free: they never use a credit.
• You can send up to 10 test emails per day.

When the test looks right, click Continue, check the Review step, and generate as normal.

What recipients receive

Each recipient gets your message as a personalised plain-text email with their PDF attached:

• From: your From name <documents@send.docupotion.com>
• Subject: your subject line, with merge fields filled in from their row
• Attachment: their document, named using your file name pattern (for example Alex Johnson - Engineering.pdf )

Watching delivery

On the run screen, each row shows an email status next to its document status:

Delivery confirmations usually arrive within seconds, but can take a minute or two. The run screen keeps updating for a short while after the run completes, and always shows the latest status when you reopen it.

Resending failed emails

If any rows generated fine but their email failed, a Resend [N] failed emails (no credits) button appears on the run. It re-sends the documents that are already generated. You're never charged again, and it never re-sends emails that were already delivered.

This is also how you finish a run that hit your daily sending limit: come back the next day and resend.

Bounces, spam reports, and the do-not-send list

If an address bounces (the mailbox doesn't exist) or a recipient reports an email as spam, DocuPotion stops emailing that address permanently. Future runs show it as suppressed and don't attempt a send. This protects your future emails' deliverability: repeatedly emailing dead or unwilling addresses is what gets senders marked as spam.

If a recipient's address was suppressed by mistake (for example, their mailbox was temporarily full), contact support and we can review it.

Daily sending limit

Each account can send up to 2,000 emails per day (500 per day during your first 30 days). Your remaining allowance for today is shown on the Delivery step before you commit to a run.

• An email run larger than your remaining allowance is refused up front: nothing is generated or charged. Split the file, or run it tomorrow.
• The limit only applies to emails: you can always generate documents to the run library without any daily cap.

This limit protects the sending reputation that gets everyone's emails into inboxes. If you regularly need a higher limit, contact support.

Helping your emails reach the inbox

DocuPotion sends from an authenticated sending domain, but a few things on your side make a real difference:

• Tell recipients to expect the email: a heads-up ("your certificate will arrive by email this week") dramatically improves open rates and prevents spam reports.
• Ask recipients to check their junk folder the first time, particularly Outlook and Hotmail addresses, which are cautious with senders they haven't seen before. Marking the email as Not junk (or adding the sender to safe senders) fixes it for all future emails.
• Write a specific subject line: "Your Level 2 First Aid certificate, {{preferred_name}}" lands better with people (and spam filters) than "Document attached".
• Set a Reply-to so recipients with questions reply to you rather than reporting the email.

Size limits and cost

Email providers cap attachment sizes, so a very large PDF (over about 7 MB) can't be attached. That row's email shows as failed with a clear reason; the document itself is still generated, saved to the run, and downloadable as normal.

Email delivery costs nothing extra: it's included in the document credit, one credit per generated document, emailed or not. Resends are free, and skipped rows are never charged for a send.

Tip: test with yourself first. Use the Send yourself a test first box on the Delivery step: one free, DEMO-watermarked email to your own address before you commit to the full list.