Individual Gmail accounts can send up to 500 emails over a 24-hour rolling period. That’s more than enough for the everyday user to say their piece. But the same can’t be said for B2B SaaS email marketers.
The average click-through rate for email marketing is just shy of 5%. This means email marketers must send thousands, if not tens of thousands, of emails a day to get a sizeable return.
If you want to scale your sending volume, you’ll need to adjust your processes to evade spam filters and the dreaded blacklist. At scale, you may want to consider automating your warm-up and credibility-boosting protocols to save time.
In this article, we’ll lay down some solutions to improve your email deliverability without straining your time and resources. We’ll cover the following:
- The reason behind GMail’s strict sending limits
- Type of limits that prevent your email from entering a lead’s inbox
- Free Gmail accounts vs. Google Workspace sending limits
- Best practices for bulk sending emails
Why Does Gmail Limit Sending?
Let’s face it: Our inboxes are overflowing with spam and digital clutter. We know it, and Google and other email service providers (ESPs) know it, too.
Spam isn’t just idle inbox filler. Some spam can also be dangerous.
Many circulating emails come from people with malicious intent. These bad actors send emails en masse into an unsuspecting user’s inbox, using spoofing, phishing, and impersonation tactics to con them.
There are spam laws like the CAN-SPAM Act and the GDPR Compliance Law to combat this, but loopholes are found, and users are put at risk. By limiting sending, Google also lowers their own legal risk by ensuring all users stay compliant with data regulation laws.
Gmail and other ESPs enforced strict sending limits to protect their users from these security breaches and improve service quality. This applies to both individual users and Google Workspace subscribers.
It just so happens that these roadblocks also hinder email marketers from reaching the very people who would love their product. These sending limits present a challenge, but it’s not impossible to overcome.
In fact, you can reap even greater rewards by circumventing this limit and landing in your lead’s primary inbox. But this all starts by knowing how to overcome this high volume limit.
Types of Limits
- Daily sending limits for Gmail accounts: The maximum individual sending limit, according to Google, is 500 per day. For Google Workspace users, this rises to 2,000 per day. POP3 and IMAP users have a limit of 100 emails per day. However, Google also has silent, algorithmic tools that can detect changes in your sending patterns. If you all of a sudden increase your sending volume from 10 to 500 over three consecutive days, your risk of getting flagged increases.
- Limits on the number of recipients per message: As a rule of thumb, sending 100 emails in one go is more suspicious in Google’s eyes than sending 10 emails in intervals throughout the day. This is the case regardless if you’re sending them in BBC, CC, or To field. That said, the limit per message differs on a case-by-case basis based on the sender’s domain reputation.
- Restrictions on bulk emails and automated sending: Certain spam trigger words, a bad subject line, or a history of getting your emails flagged as spam or bounced back can limit your bulk email sending ability.
👉Check out our list of over 700 spam trigger words
Google has other sending limits. Refer to the screenshot below for the terms for their Google Workspace account holders as of July 2024:
Gmail Sending Limits for Different Account Types
As alluded to, certain Google accounts have a higher sending limit than others. The two main Google account types are Gmail and Workspace (formerly G-Suite).
On the other hand, Workspace is for professional accounts with exclusive features.
Exceeding your daily limit can harm your sender's reputation and get your account temporarily suspended. This is why it’s important to know your account type’s limits and stay within them.
Free Gmail Accounts
Gmail is a free account type meant for the everyday consumer. It ends with an @gmail.com domain. The sending limit is 500 emails over a 24-hour rolling period, and this applies to both browsers and mobile.
A rolling period means that if you send 500 emails at 3:00 PM on a day, you’ll have to wait until 3:00 PM the next day before you can send another set of emails. If you send 150 emails at 10:00 AM, 200 emails at 2:00 PM, and 300 emails at 5:00 PM, you’ll be imposed the sending limit cap until 10:00 AM the following day. By then, you can send a total of 150 new emails—right until it reaches 2:00 PM, where you can then send an additional 200 emails.
Depending on your workflow, you may also choose to send it anytime between 10:00 AM and 5:00 PM (or beyond). Just be sure that your sending limit from 24 hours prior has been fully replenished.
That said, new accounts are restricted from sending emails en masse at the start. Your new email address will be monitored by Google to determine whether you’re a human or a bot.
In such cases, it’s important to warm up your email address and incrementally build up its email volume.
By having people positively engage with your emails (whether it’s by marking them as “Favorite” or replying), Google will categorize that email as human-owned, thereby granting you complete access to send emails up to your email address’s sending limit.
Google Workspace Accounts
Google Workspace accounts are typically for professionals and businesses. The domain addresses can be tailored to match the business’s website, such as @awesomebusiness.com. This enhances the business's professional image while also providing numerous features.
Google Workspace holders with a premium plan get access to the 2,000 email-sending limit over a 24-hour rolling period, while those with the trial plan have access to a 300 email-sending limit.
That said, subscribing to the highest-tier Google Workspace plan doesn’t automatically grant you the 2,000 email-sending limit.
You can gain access to that only when the following conditions are met:
- Your domain is fully converted to a paid Google Workspace account
- You have spent over $100 on your account
- 60 days have passed since you’ve exceeded the $100 spent
Google enforces this measure to prevent the easy creation of new, spammy accounts.
Best Practices For Sending Emails In Bulk
Even if you’re following Google’s guidelines, it’s essential to adhere to the best practices for sending bulk emails. This will ensure you maximize your ROI and effectively deliver your email to your recipients.
- Warm up your IP Address with Instantly.ai: Increase the volume of emails sent incrementally to ensure that your IP address isn’t tagged as a source of spam.
- Set up the appropriate authentication: To prove your legitimacy, DMARC should recognize your email, DKIM, and SPF as an authorized and official domain.
- Put an unsubscribe button: Allow users to opt-out whenever they want to stop receiving emails.
- Segment your email list: Create a distribution list to segment your customers for organized sending schedules and database management.
- Remove bad emails: Remove suppressed or bounced email addresses from your list forever.
- Always iterate: Adjust your email marketing campaign to adapt to the times.
- Keep spam rates low: If your email does end up getting tagged as spam, ensure that it’s minimal. A spam rate of less than 0.3% is optimal.
Gmail Sending Limit Solutions for High-Volume Senders
Formulating an effective marketing campaign can be tricky. Aside from having a high rate of deliverability, you also need to ensure that each part of the campaign is clean and optimized.
If there are underlying issues in your campaign, such as a lack of a proper email warm-up, your emails may not even be seen by your target audience, much more convert.
If you’re sending a large volume of emails daily, the maximum allowable limit of 2,000 can be a huge bottleneck to your entire operations.
That doesn’t have to be the case, though. There are a few ways you can get around Google’s imposed limit and scale your email marketing campaign to tens of thousands of sent emails daily.
Improving Sender Reputation with Instantly
This cold email marketing software has a database of 200,000 emails ready to interact with brand-new email addresses, helping you achieve high sending legitimacy within two to three weeks.
Instantly's Email Warmup safeguards your domain's reputation by fostering trust with mailbox providers. Achieving "inbox" status for your emails is just the beginning. You need to continually demonstrate to ESPs that your content is valuable and not spam. Executing this involves maintaining a steady sending history and minimizing your bounce rate.
Conclusion
Even in optimal conditions, a typical Gmail account can only send 500 emails daily, while a typical Google Workspace user can send 2,000 emails daily. This limitation is imposed to prevent spammers and phishers from taking advantage of an email network.
Even if you're new to email marketing, these limits won’t be much of a hurdle—Instantly is here to help you scale. Sign up today.
