Find out what is the maximum email size limit for emails & file attachments sent to popular email account providers, such as Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo and others.

Why is there a maximum email size limit

Mainly for security reasons, all email server providers limit the maximum email size that an email account can receive. Otherwise, if there would be no maximum email size limit, the email server would risk to be bombarded with very large emails, causing it to cease working properly.

Some free email address providers also enforce commercial limitations on the email size: the free account gets a low maximum email size limit, but you can increase the maximum limit by upgrading to a paid account.

What happens when you hit the maximum email size limit?

Obviously, if you send an email that exceeds the maximum email size limit of the recipient’s email provider, your email will bounce off and you will receive an email error back in your mailbox. Usually, you will receive one of the following error messages:
– “Attachment size exceeds the allowable limit”;
– “552: Message size exceeds maximum permitted”;
– “System Undeliverable, message size exceeds outgoing message size limit”;
– “The size of the message you are trying to send exceeds the global size limit of the server. The message was not sent; reduce the message size and try again”.

Maximum email size limit for Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo, AOL, etc

Here is the values list of the maximum email size limit for various email providers and email client applications. These email size limits usually apply on both sending and receiving emails.

Can you bypass these maximum email size limits?

A simple answer would be: no, you can’t bypass these maximum size limits. However, there are workarounds:
– if you are an Outlook user, you can install Weight Diet for Outlook and automatically compress outgoing file attachments, so they have more chances to “fit”;
– you can upload the files-to-be-attached to cloud storage servers (like DropBox, Google Drive or SkyDrive) and include the download link in your email.

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