How to Send an Email to All Salesforce Users: Methods & Best Practices

There is no single "Send to All Users" button in Salesforce—and that is intentional. Whether you need to notify your org about a system change, communicate a policy update to your sales team, or run a structured internal campaign, Salesforce offers distinct tools for each scenario. The right method depends on the audience size, the nature of the message (internal notification versus external-style campaign), and what you need to log and track afterward. Using the wrong tool means either missing recipients, generating untrackable sends, or running into the platform's 5,000-email daily limit faster than expected. This guide maps every available method to its correct use case—so you reach all users efficiently and with the right data trail.

Understanding Who "All Salesforce Users" Actually Means Before You Send

Before selecting a send method, it helps to define precisely who you are targeting. In Salesforce, "users" are licensed individuals with active user records in your org—stored in the User object. This is distinct from Contacts, Leads, or any custom object record. Salesforce users include your internal staff: sales reps, service agents, admins, managers, and executives who log into Salesforce. They may or may not also exist as Contacts in your CRM.

The User object in Salesforce supports mass email sends, but the send behavior differs from Contact and Lead sends in important ways. According to Salesforce Help on sending emails to users, emails sent to Salesforce users from the User list view are classified as internal mass emails, which do not count against the standard 5,000 external emails daily limit. This distinction is critical—internal user emails use a separate allocation, which means an all-user send does not consume the same capacity as a marketing campaign to Contacts or Leads.

The User object has its own constraints: limited email personalization compared to Contact and Lead sends, limited reporting, and Visualforce requirements for some layouts.

Method 1: Sending Email to All Users from the User List View

The most direct native method for emailing all Salesforce users is through the User list view in Setup. This approach is available to system administrators and is best suited for operational announcements, policy updates, and one-time internal communications.

1. Navigate to Setup → Users → Users.
2. On the Users list view, create or open a view that includes all active users. Use the "Active Users" default list view or add a filter for Active = True to exclude deactivated accounts.
3. Select all records on the page using the header checkbox, then use the "Select All" option to capture users beyond the visible page.
4. From the actions dropdown, select "Send Email." Salesforce opens the mass email compose interface.
5. Choose a Salesforce email template. Text templates work for all user sends; Visualforce templates are supported for more structured layouts. Merge fields from the User object—{!User.FirstName}, {!User.Title}—populate per recipient.
6. Review the recipient count and send. Salesforce dispatches immediately with no native scheduling from the list view interface.

Salesforce creates basic send records after the send, but does not log Activity History to User records. If you need a traceable record, document the send date, subject, and recipient count manually or export the user list first.

Method 2: Using Flow Email Alerts to Reach All Users Automatically

When the communication to all users needs to be triggered by a Salesforce event—a system deployment, a record threshold, a scheduled notification—Flow-based email alerts are the right tool. Flow Builder combined with an Email Alert action sends a formatted notification to any defined recipient list—by role, profile, or the entire org.

In Flow Builder, create a Scheduled Flow (for time-based sends) or a Record-Triggered Flow (for event-based sends). Add a "Send Email Alert" action and reference an Email Alert record configured in Setup → Process Automation → Email Alerts. The Email Alert record specifies the template and the recipients, which can include "All Internal Users" as a recipient type, role-based groups, or specific user records returned by a collection variable.

The email alert guide on the MassMailer blog covers the full setup sequence for Flow-based alerts in detail. For recurring all-user sends—weekly operational updates, monthly system digests—a Scheduled Flow with an Email Alert is more reliable than manual User list view sends because it executes automatically without admin intervention. MassMailer's email notifications feature extends this capability by enabling alert tracking—delivery status, opens, and clicks—which native Flow email alerts do not provide.

Method 3: Targeting All Users by Role, Profile, or Public Group

When "all users" in practice means all users in a specific function—all sales reps, all service agents, all managers in a region—Salesforce’s Role, Profile, and Public Group structures provide precise audience targeting without building a manual list view.

Email Alerts support recipient types that include Roles, Roles and Subordinates, and Public Groups directly in the recipient configuration. A single Email Alert can target everyone in the "Sales Manager" role and all subordinate roles simultaneously—meaning a single send reaches a dynamically maintained group that automatically includes new users assigned to that role. No list maintenance is required.

Public Groups are particularly useful for cross-role all-user sends. An admin can create a Public Group containing all active users across the org and reference that group as the recipient in an Email Alert. When new users are added to the org, adding them to the Public Group automatically includes them in future group-targeted sends. Salesforce’s Public Groups documentation covers setup and management—this approach scales far better than rebuilding a list view every time the team changes.

When All-User Emails Become a Campaign: Limits and Tracking Gaps

Internal user communications are operationally simple at small scales. The friction emerges when the all-user send becomes structured and recurring—an internal newsletter, a product update series, a monthly org-wide communication from leadership—that requires open rate visibility, click tracking, and a log of who engaged with what content.

Native Salesforce provides none of this for User object sends. Send List Email from the User list view does not log Activity History, does not capture opens or clicks, and provides no delivery confirmation dashboard. The sending admin cannot answer: Did every user receive it? Who opened it? Who clicked the linked document?

This gap is most visible in larger orgs where internal communications function more like email campaigns than simple notifications. The solution is the same as for external campaigns: a native Salesforce email application that logs every send, open, and click event to Activity Timeline—enabling the same engagement visibility for internal user communications that you already have for bulk email Salesforce sends to Contacts and Leads. Salesforce Ben’s overview of Salesforce email best practices for tracking architecture, covering both internal and external sends.

Best Practices for All-User Email in Salesforce

Four practices improve quality and reduce errors across all-user Salesforce sends.

Filter to active users only. Before any send, filter the User list view or recipient group to Active = True. Deactivated users still exist as records in Salesforce, but cannot log in—sending to them wastes allocation and may generate bounces if the associated email address has been deactivated at the domain level. Even internal sends benefit from email verification to catch deactivated or misspelled addresses before they become bounces.

Use templates, not composed messages. Every internal send should use a Salesforce email template rather than a composed email. Templates enforce consistent formatting, support merge fields addressing each user by name, and create a reusable asset. For branded internal newsletters, the MassMailer email template builder provides a drag-and-drop interface that produces Lightning-compatible templates without HTML expertise.

Document every send. Native Salesforce does not maintain a send history for User object mass emails in the same way Campaign records do for Contact sends. Log each all-user send manually—date, subject line, recipient count, and template used—in a shared document or custom Salesforce record. This creates an audit trail and prevents duplicate sends when multiple admins manage internal communications.

For structured recurring sends, create a Salesforce Campaign and add users as Campaign Members. This enables response rate reporting and transforms an untracked notification into a documented initiative with measurable outcomes. See how to send an email campaign in Salesforce for the full workflow.

Track Every Internal Send—Opens, Clicks, and Delivery—Right Inside Salesforce

MassMailer extends Salesforce email alerts, and mass sends with full engagement tracking—every open, click, and bounce logged to Activity Timeline, including sends to internal users. Install MassMailer free from the AppExchange and start tracking your next all-user communication the moment it lands.

Key Takeaways

• Emails sent to Salesforce users from the User list view are classified as internal mass emails and do not count against the standard 5,000 external email daily limit—they use a separate allocation.
• The most direct native method is Setup → Users → select all active users → Send Email; best suited for one-time operational announcements and policy updates.
• Flow-based email alerts are the right tool for event-triggered or scheduled all-user sends—they execute automatically without admin intervention and support Role, Profile, and Public Group recipients.
• Public Groups are the most maintainable targeting structure for recurring all-user sends—new users added to the group are automatically included in future group-targeted email alerts.
• Native Salesforce does not track opens, clicks, or log Activity History for User object mass email sends—engagement visibility for internal communications requires a native AppExchange email application.
• For structured recurring all-user communications, creating a Campaign record and adding users as members transforms a one-time notification into a documented, measurable communication initiative.