What are Gmail Send Limits? All Questions Answered

How many emails per day can I send with Gmail?

How many emails you can send as a Gmail user depends on whether you’re a Gmail or Google Workspace user. With a Gmail account, you have an email limit of five hundred emails daily. The limit applies to either email messages or recipients, and it also applies to scheduled emails. 

That translates to about 15k emails per month with a free plan and 60,000 emails per month with a Google Workspace account. If you want unlimited mails and mass email campaigns, it’s best to look elsewhere.

For example, you can send one email to five hundred different recipients or send one hundred emails each to five different recipients. On the other hand, users of Google Workspace have a limit of two thousand email messages or ten thousand recipients per day. Google Workspace users have a larger email limit per day since these accounts are used for business purposes. 

In this case, an individual email address is considered in each single message sent – for example, twenty emails sent to twenty different email IDs will count as four hundred recipients. Each outgoing message is counted as an individual email.

This can be sufficient for some users, but if you want to send cold emails, this number of messages per day can cause you to quickly hit your daily email quota with a single campaign.

Daily limits in detail

The limit for email accounts is five hundred email messages or up to two thousand messages every day, depending on whether you have a Gmail or Google Workspace account. It is worth bearing in mind that if you go over the sending limit per day, then your account may be suspended temporarily. This means your Gmail account and not your Google Workspace.

It’s a good idea to avoid going over the Gmail sending limit as doing so could cause damage to your sender reputation and cause your email deliverability rate to drop. It’s also worth considering how you access Gmail and how this may impact the limit. For example, if you use IMAP or POP clients to access Gmail, then you are limited to sending an email message to a maximum of one hundred people at once.

Note that there is no limit per minute, which means that you can send as many messages per minute as you want, as long as you don’t go overboard the daily limit with your Gmail address.

What happens if I go over email send limits?

If you do send out more than five hundred messages with Gmail, then your account may be suspended for a day. This is usually a temporary measure to prevent you from going over the email limit. In this case, you’ll be prevented from sending any further outgoing emails for the day and you’ll receive an error message saying that you have exceeded your daily sending quota, which will lock you out for a 24-hour period. 

Source

Once again, you’ll still be able to access your Google Workspace in this rolling 24-hour period, but you’ll be locked out of Gmail for this period of time.

If you’ve sent emails that are bouncing back or if you’ve sent a large number of emails that cannot be delivered due to this or other reasons such as broken or non-existent email addresses, then Google may temporarily disable your account for a certain time period.

What is the purpose of Gmail’s send limits?

The Gmail and Google Workspace email send limits are there for a reason. There are exploitative companies and individuals that will try to find loopholes to get around spam legislation and anti-spam measures, such as sending mass emails that are designed to con people or using bots. 

The reason why Gmail has put a limit per day on the number of messages that you can send and receive each day, along with the number of addresses you can send it to at once, is to help prevent spam and keep accounts and the email accounts safe and healthy. 

The limits help to maintain the sending reputation of the platform and prevent it from getting marked as spam by external email platforms. Besides protecting your email address, it also helps to protect others from abusing Gmail for various scams such as phishing attacks.

Can I get around Gmail’s sending limits?

If you have a good reason to be sending more than five hundred emails per day, then you can set up an SMTP or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol connection to get rid of sending limits on Gmail. 

With an STMP connection, you can have a sending limit of ten thousand emails per day instead which makes it a popular choice among large organizations that send a lot of marketing and outreach emails out on a daily basis. 

Another way that you can get around the sending limits for bulk email if you don’t want to set up an SMTP, is to distribute your email campaigns across several days or opt for a newsletter platform instead. You should do this n order to ensure that you’re sticking within the daily limits while making sure that all the emails are sent to external recipients.

Can you use Gmail to send emails in bulk?

It’s not uncommon for companies to simultaneously connect with large lists of leads and prospects, while also using personalization strategies to ensure that the exchange feels tailored and personal to each individual. 

However, sending an individual email to each prospect is not a good long-term approach which is why bulk emails tend to be the preferred option if you have a large number of recipients per email. A typical sales rep could spend hours every day sending from their personal email address.

While Gmail may make it harder to send large numbers of emails due to the imposed limits, there is some good news for those who want to send mass email campaigns without writing manual emails.

For those who still want to use Gmail for sending marketing and other bulk email messages, there are several email automation tools and plugins worth considering that allow you to set up and design email campaigns using Gmail with their advanced features.

These email management tools also let you contact large numbers of external recipients with custom, personalized emails, without worrying about having your account temporarily disabled for reaching the sending limit per day. This personal touch can help you better results more quickly.

Email marketing tools that connect with Gmail also give you further information on how many recipients have opened your email, which device they were using when they read it, where they are located, and what links they clicked on in the email if any.

Note: some of these email solutions won’t help you bypass the limit on the quantity of emails. However, it will give every email marketer the precious info they need to improve their campaigns and protect their domain reputation. If you want extra recipients, you need to get a new tool for your marketing and sales stack.

Look for an email marketing tool instead

If you still want to use Gmail as an email solution for your email marketing campaigns despite the limits, then the first thing you need to do is determine the best tool to use. While you’ll still be using the Gmail interface that you are familiar with, an extension will be needed, if you want to get around the Gmail limits and send mass emails to recipients. These email management tools will not only help you with email templates but also with various ways to create more interactive emails.

Gmass is an example of a tool for bypassing Gmail’s limitations

There are lots of options to choose from if you want to send a large volume of emails per day, so take your time to figure out what you need and find the email provider that is going to meet those needs best.

More tips for Gmail email marketing

If you’ve decided that you can work with the email limit per day or you’re going to use a tool that allows you to get around it, then, there are several tips to keep in mind when it comes to successfully using Gmail for email marketing and improving your sender score. Some of the main things to remember include:

Legal compliance

No matter which email marketing tool you use with Gmail, it’s important to ensure that you’re following the law. In the UK, you need to comply with GDPR or the General Data Protection Legislation. Before you send your first emails out using Gmail, make sure that everything is above board, or you risk damaging your sender reputation by sending emails to too many recipients per message.

This is especially important with cold email campaigns, as you don’t want to be sending to someone who never opted in to your list. These will be considered as spam emails, which will hurt your response rate, open rate, and all other metrics, all the while getting you flagged as spam.

List segmentation

When choosing a tool to use for email marketing with Gmail, one of the main things to make sure of is that it offers a list segmentation. Segmenting your email list is all about breaking it up into different categories based on user behavior, demographics, age preferences, or other criteria. When you segment your list, you’ll not only be able to send the most relevant content to your subscribers, but you are also putting yourself in with the best chance of having your email content engaged with.

This ensures that every single email will get more reactions and conversions compared to sending one and the same email to all your email recipients.

Personalization

Adding personalization to your emails should be one of the main factors that you consider when choosing a Gmail marketing tool. 

Adding personalization reduces the risk of emails becoming trapped in spam filters and increases the chance that you’ll get a positive response. Studies have found that when emails are personalized to the recipient, transaction rates increase by six hundred percent. 

Along with list segmentation, using merge fields, to ensure that each recipient is addressed personally by name, can also be used to add more personalization to emails and give them a more individual feel.

Gmail sets limits on the number of emails you can send each day as an anti-spam measure. Being aware of this, and what you can do to get around it, is crucial if you want to use Gmail for email marketing purposes.

Wrapping up

While Gmail is an amazing tool, it really is not ideal for sending out a large volume of emails per day or those with elaborate email outreach campaigns. Sending out thousands of emails through Gmail may result in undeliverable emails, landing in the spam folder, and a suspension period from Gmail. Instead, use a dedicated email service provider if you need to send many emails per day.

And on top of that, make sure you have valid email addresses to protect your sender reputation! Sign up for Bouncer today to clean up your lists and remove disabled accounts, as well as outdated, misspelled, or non-existent emails!

Gmail send limits: frequently asked questions

What are the Gmail send limits?

With a free Gmail account, you can send up to 500 messages per day. With a paid Google Workspace account, you can send emails to up to 2,000 individual addresses per day. There is no way to send unlimited emails per day with Gmail. If you want to bypass the recipient limit, it’s recommended that you sign up for a dedicated email provider and you will have virtually no limits per day.

Can I use Gmail for sending out cold emails?

Yes, although you need to pay attention to the day limit with bulk messages if you want to stay out of the junk folder. It’s also a good practice to create a separate email account for cold outreach and to do email warm-up before blasting out emails. If you don’t do email warm-up, it’s a good idea not to use your primary domain for cold emails.

What is the best way to send unlimited emails in my bulk email campaigns?

It’s best to sign up for an email client such as Mailchimp or Getresponse. These email services have some limitations for their free accounts, but you can send unlimited emails with a paid pricing plan. It’s best to evaluate your current email needs before settling on a provider.

Can I send emails through Gmail to unfamiliar addresses?

Technically, you can, but you’ll be going against anti-spam laws such as the CAN-SPAM act. Moreover, your bounce rates will go through the roof because you won’t know if the addresses are good or not unless you validate them first.