Gmail Templates vs. Text Blaze vs. Briskine: Which Should You Use?

Meet the three contenders

All three solve the same nagging problem — you type the same things over and over — but they were built for different people. Before the scoring, the honest one-line version of each:

• Gmail Templates is the no-install baseline. It's already in your inbox, it's free, and it does the bare minimum: save a block of text, paste it back later.
• Text Blaze is the snippet engine. It expands a typed shortcut into anything — including forms you fill in, dates that calculate, and rules that branch — almost anywhere in a Chromium browser.
• Briskine is the email specialist. It's a text expander that happens to know Gmail, Outlook.com and LinkedIn by heart, with recipient variables and team-shared templates.

None of them is strictly "best." They're best at different jobs. Let's take them one at a time.

Gmail native Templates: free, built in, and basic

The baseline everyone compares against. Templates (the feature that used to be called "Canned Responses") ships inside Gmail, but it's switched off by default — you enable it under Settings → Advanced → Templates → Enable. After that you save a draft as a template from the three-dot More options menu, and insert it from the same menu later.

What's good about it is simple: it's free, there's nothing to install, and your data stays inside your existing Google account. For three or four static replies, that's genuinely all you need.

The limits show up fast, though:

• No variables. Static text only — no fill-in fields, no name or date macros. You hand-edit personalization after every insert.
• No keyboard shortcut. No abbreviation trigger either. Every insert is a mouse trip through the buried three-dot menu — three-plus clicks, every time.
• A flat, capped list. Templates max out at 50, with no folders or categories and no search — just an alphabetical dropdown.
• Single account, desktop only. No team sharing, and it doesn't exist in the Gmail iOS or Android apps at all.

Text Blaze: the power user's expander

Text Blaze is the most capable engine in this comparison, and it isn't close. You build reusable "snippets," assign each a slash-prefixed shortcut (type /ty and a full thank-you message substitutes in place), and they fire anywhere you type in a Chromium browser. The company reports 700,000-plus users across tens of thousands of companies, and it has grown from a Chrome extension into desktop apps for Windows and macOS.

Where it earns the "power" label is dynamic content:

• Fill-in forms. Snippets can hold text inputs, dropdowns, date pickers and toggles. Blank fields prompt you for a name or value each time; AutoPilot tabs you between them.
• Formulas and logic. Insert today's date, calculate values on the fly, and — on paid tiers — branch output with if/then rules so one snippet behaves differently depending on what you enter.
• Reach. It runs in Gmail, Google Docs, LinkedIn, Salesforce, Outlook web, Slack and essentially any site in Chrome or Edge.

Teams can share snippet folders that sync automatically — improve a template once and everyone has the update. Business and Enterprise tiers add user management, roles, org-wide analytics and (at the top) SSO, SCIM and audit logs.

Text Blaze is the tool you outgrow Gmail Templates into — and rarely outgrow after that.

The trade-offs are the flip side of its ambition. Snippets are cloud-synced to a Text Blaze account, stored on Google Cloud servers in the US (encrypted in transit and at rest); the company advises against putting sensitive data like PHI directly into snippets. There's no Firefox or Safari extension, the desktop apps don't yet match the Chrome extension feature-for-feature, and mobile is on the roadmap with no ETA. Pricing follows a freemium model: a permanent free tier (a small number of active snippets, limited sharing) plus paid Pro, per-user Business and custom Enterprise plans, billed per user with an annual discount. Exact figures and snippet caps move around — check blaze.today/plans for current numbers.

Briskine: email templates that know Gmail and LinkedIn

Briskine (formerly Gorgias Templates, and before that "Gmail Templates by Briskine") is the email specialist. It's a "text expander for the web," but unlike Text Blaze it's tuned for the places you actually send messages. It's open source under GPL-3, with code on GitHub, and reports use by over 100,000 people.

Its standout is how many ways you can reach a template:

• Shortcut + Tab. Assign a trigger (a word or a few characters), type it, press Tab, and it expands inline. The trigger key is rebindable in settings.
• The Briskine Dialog. A popup in any text field via Ctrl+Space, with fuzzy search, search operators, arrow-key navigation and previews sorted by last use.
• Mouse access. A floating "Briskine Bubble" auto-appears in Gmail, Outlook.com and LinkedIn fields, plus a right-click menu entry.

Templates support recipient variables and helpers — {{to.first_name}} pulls a name straight off the page — and can even set To/Cc/Bcc and send from a different address. The rich-text editor (bold, color, tables, emoji) works on both tiers; image uploads and file attachments are reserved for the paid Premium tier. It runs in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and Opera, with first-class Gmail / Outlook.com / LinkedIn support (on LinkedIn that covers messages, posts and comments) plus a mobile swipe-to-insert option.

The free tier is generous in spots and hard-capped in others: one user, a maximum of 30 templates, no card required. Team sharing, image uploads, attachments and unlimited templates sit behind the paid Premium tier — a freemium model in the region of $7 per person per month as of 2026, with annual billing giving roughly two months free, plus volume discounts for larger teams and nonprofits. Treat that figure as indicative and confirm on their pricing page.

The full comparison table

The same tools, scored across the dimensions that decide a daily workflow. No single column wins everything — that's the point.

Dimension	Gmail Templates	Text Blaze	Briskine
Where it works	Gmail web only	Most Chromium sites	Gmail, Outlook, LinkedIn + any field
Insert method	3-click menu	Type /shortcut, expands	Shortcut+Tab, dialog, or bubble
Variables / dynamic fields	None	Forms, formulas, if/then	Recipient vars + helpers
Rich formatting	Basic	Images & tables (paid)	Color, tables, emoji; images (paid)
Privacy / storage	Your Google account	Cloud (vendor servers)	Cloud (open source helps)
Team sharing	No	Yes (paid tiers)	Yes (Premium)
Pricing model	Free	Freemium, per-user	Freemium, per-user
Learning curve	Trivial	Steepest (worth it)	Moderate

A few honest notes the cells can't hold. Text Blaze's "most Chromium sites" excludes Firefox and Safari extensions. Briskine's "open source helps" privacy caveat still means your content lives on a vendor's servers. And every pricing figure above shifts — read each as a model, not a quote.

Verdict, by who you are

The right answer depends entirely on the job. Four common profiles:

The casual Gmail-only user. You send a few repeat emails a week and never leave Gmail. Use Gmail's native Templates. It's free, it's already there, and installing anything else is overkill. The three-click insert only stings at volume — and you don't have volume.

The power user who wants snippets everywhere. You live across Gmail, Docs, Salesforce, Slack and a dozen web apps, and you want forms, dates that calculate, and logic that branches. Text Blaze. Nothing else here matches its dynamic engine or its reach across the Chromium web. Accept the learning curve and the cloud sync as the cost of that power.

The sales or support team. You need a shared library everyone edits, with recipient variables and rich formatting, mostly inside email and LinkedIn. Briskine or Text Blaze Business — Briskine if email and LinkedIn are the center of gravity and you value open-source auditability; Text Blaze if your team also works across many other tools and wants org-wide analytics. Both are paid per seat for the team features.

The privacy-conscious, keyboard-first individual. You want speed and you don't want your templates living on someone else's servers, behind an account, behind a subscription. That's a real gap none of the three above fill cleanly — which is where the fourth option comes in.

Pick the tool for the job you actually do — not the one with the longest feature list.

Where a local-first option fits

If you're in that last group — keyboard-first, privacy-minded, and tired of accounts — Canned Responses is the honest fourth pick. It deliberately doesn't try to out-feature Text Blaze. It does one thing the cloud tools don't: it keeps everything on your device.

• Local-first, no account. Templates live on your machine and are never uploaded. The extension inserts text only — it never reads or sends your mail, and never auto-sends.
• One-keystroke insert. A searchable picker opens at your cursor with a rebindable shortcut (Alt+A by default); pick a template, it drops in at the caret.
• Gmail and LinkedIn. The same library works in Gmail and across linkedin.com — messages, InMail, connection notes and comments.
• The basics that matter. {first_name}-style variables filled inline, ;shortcut + Tab expansion, categories, favorites, and import/export to JSON.
• Free while in beta. Everything's unlocked; early users keep it.

What it won't do is the cloud-and-team stuff the others are built for: no synced team folders, no formulas or if/then logic, no central admin console. If those are your requirements, Text Blaze or Briskine is the better answer, and we'd say so plainly. But if you want fast inserts in Gmail and LinkedIn without handing your snippets to a server, local-first is the cleaner fit.

One last word on price. Every tool here moves its pricing around, and several gate the feature you came for behind a paid tier. Before you commit, open the vendor's own pricing page and confirm what's free, what's capped, and what costs money this month. Don't trust a comparison article's dollar figure — including ours.

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