Limitations

Mail

Sending limits

Sending limits can change without notice. Limits per day are applied over a rolling 24-hour period rather than a set time of day.

Note: Sending limits are different if your organization uses the SMTP relay service to route outgoing mail through Google. See instead sending limits for the SMTP relay service.

Limit type

Limit

Messages per day

Daily sending limit*

2,000 (500 for trial accounts)

Messages auto-forwarded

Messages automatically forwarded from another account, not included in the daily sending limit

10,000

Auto-forward mail filters

Account filters that automatically forward mail

20

Recipients per message

Addresses in the To, Cc, and Bcc fields of a single email*

2,000 (500 external)

Recipients per message sent via SMTP (by POP or IMAP users) or the Gmail API

Addresses in the To, Cc, and Bcc fields of a single email. Includes email sent using smtp-relay.gmail.com or smtp.gmail.com*

100

Total recipients per day

Individual addresses count in every mail sent; 5 emails sent to 10 addresses count as 50 recipients*

10,000

External recipients per day

Email addresses outside your primary domain, including domain aliases and alternate domains

3,000

Unique recipients per day

Individual addresses count once a day; 5 emails sent to 10 addresses count as 10 unique recipients*

3,000 (2,000 external, 500 external for trial accounts)

*Applies to internal and external recipients

What also counts towards a user's limits

  • Mail sent from a user's alternate address, or alias
  • Mail an assistant sends on your behalf (if you delegate mail to an assistant)
  • Mail sent from Gmail’s vacation responder

Unlock a user’s suspended account

G Suite administrators can check the Users section of the Google Admin console to find details on which limits were reached and when access will be restored. In some cases, an administrator can take action to restore access. For instructions, see Reset a Gmail suspension.

Accounts that are detected as sending spam might be permanently restricted from sending email. See Google's Spam and abuse policy.

Increase your limits by ending your free trial

Some limits are specific to trial accounts. At the end of your free trial period, those limits will be automatically increased when your domain is cumulatively billed for at least USD 30 (or the same amount in your currency). If you purchased your domain from Google, the amount required to increase your sending limits is USD 30 plus the cost of your domain.

If you want to increase your limits sooner, you can end your free trial and pay the amount now. For instructions, see Make a manual payment. It can take up to 48 hours to upgrade the limits after you submit the payment.

Important: While you're still in your trial period, your sending limits will not be increased.

"You have reached a limit for sending mail" error

To help prevent spam and keep accounts safe, Gmail limits the number of emails you can send per day, and the number of people you can add as recipients.

How to fix the problem

Look at the reasons below to learn how to prevent seeing this message in the future.

Note: If you use your Gmail account through your work, school, or other organization, learn about Google Apps sending limits.

You sent a message to a large group of people

You may see this message if you send an email to more than 500 recipients in a single email, or send more than 500 emails in a day.

When you get this error, you should be able to send mails again within 1 to 24 hours.

To prevent this from happening in the future, try creating a Google Group of all your email recipients and sending the message to that group's email address.

"Messages you sent couldn't be delivered"

You might see this error if a large number of emails you send:

  • Can't be delivered because the recipient's email address is invalid
  • Bounce from the recipient's email server

You may be able to send emails again after 24 hours.

To prevent this from happening in the future, check your recipient's' email addresses before sending to make sure they're up to date.

One of your recipients is a Google+ contact

You may see this message if you're replying to or sending an email whose recipients include a Google+ connection. This error isn't caused by breaking Gmail's sending limits, but is an issue that's being fixed by Gmail.

To prevent this from happening in the future, remove that recipient from the message.

Bandwidth limits

Locked out of your account? G Suite administrators can check the User list in the Google Admin console where they may find details on which limits you hit and when access will be restored (this information is not available in all cases). In some cases, a G Suite, Government or Education account administrator can reset the Gmail suspension.

To help keep our systems healthy and your account safe, all G Suite accounts have a limited amount of bandwidth. Certain activities that transfer large amounts of data in a short period of time, like synchronizing a Gmail account to a mobile phone or mail client, can cause an account to reach the bandwidth limit.

See Sync limits for recommendations specific to synchronization. Reaching the limit triggers a safeguard that temporarily disables IMAP upload for the account.

The following limits apply for G Suite or Education editions. These limits may change without notice in order to protect Google’s infrastructure.

Bandwidth limits

Limit

Per hour

Per day

Download via web client

750 MB

1250 MB

Upload via web client

300 MB

500 MB

POP and IMAP bandwidth limits

Limit

Per day

Download via IMAP

2500 MB

Download via POP

1250 MB

Upload via IMAP

500 MB

See Get started with IMAP and POP3 for instructions on using those methods.

To address migration needs, you can download your entire mailbox approximately 3 times per month.

Effects

When trying to access a suspended account, you receive an error message on the sign in page. The suspension typically lasts for one hour but can last as long as 24 hours. A user can access and use the account again after the end of this suspension period, at which time the bandwidth limit is automatically reset.

Causes

  • Don't perform migrations or bulk operations using IMAP
    • Avoid large copy/paste or drag/drop operations when using IMAP.
    • If you're migrating, use a supported migration option, and avoid using IMAP to upload messages.
    • These recommendations are particularly important if you've exceeded the upload bandwidth limit via IMAP.
    • If you need to download a large amount of data, try throttling the tool you're using or download in parts.
  • Prevent continuous retries
  • Some email clients may retry failed actions again and again until they use up the account's bandwidth allowance. Try to recreate the profile or sync relationship on all IMAP clients to make sure that they aren't retrying any pending actions.

Recommendations

  • Reduce email label counts
  • Reducing the total number of labels in Gmail and the number of labels applied to each email lowers the number of folders and emails your Google account needs to transfer to your email client. We recommend using no more than 500 labels.
  • Use other resources to transfer and share files
  • Try an alternative to email when sharing many large files at the same time. Use other Google resources, such as Drive, Sites, Picasa, and YouTube, to reduce the risk of your email account using excessive bandwidth.
  • IMAP bandwidth limits:
  • These items apply to any application that uses IMAP to synchronize email with Gmail, including common email clients, backup tools, and BlackBerry® Internet Service (BIS). Other sync methods count against the sync bandwidth limits.
    • Manage your IMAP clients
    • Having multiple clients means every message gets downloaded multiple times, proportionally increasing bandwidth consumption. Remove or disable unused IMAP clients, quit IMAP clients when not in use, and make sure all clients are configured according to the recommended IMAP client settings.
    • Check for unknown/unwanted IMAP clients
    • Tools or services that back up G Suite data commonly use IMAP to access email. If you're using such services, make sure they're configured accordingly.
    • In some cases, a user or administrator may have set up an IMAP client and stopped using it without disabling it, or wasn't aware that a service or tool uses IMAP to access G Suite.
      • The administrator should check the Google Admin console and see if any G Suite Marketplace apps are using IMAP.
      • Users should navigate to their Google accounts authorizations page and revoke any unwanted items under Connected Sites, Apps, and Services and Application-specific passwords (if applicable).
      • Users should change their G Suite passwords to make sure any IMAP clients set up using those passwords can't access the accounts anymore. Then, enable desired clients one by one, a few hours apart, to pinpoint any offending client.
    • Check your IMAP sync settings
    • These recommendations are particularly important if you've exceeded the download bandwidth limit via IMAP.
      • Synchronize fewer labels using the Show in IMAP checkboxes in the Labels tab of your Gmail settings. We recommend synchronizing no more than 200 labels.
      • Synchronize fewer messages in each label by changing the Folder Size Limits value in the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab of your Gmail settings.



Recommendations for sending bulk email

Here are some ways to avoid exceeding limits when sending a large amount of mail, such as for a marketing campaign:

  • Stagger mass communications over 2 days—Send messages to one group of recipients, wait 24 hours, and then send to another group.
  • Send mail to a group address—Send mail to many email addresses using a single group address. For example, contact all users in your organization by adding everyone in the domain to an email list. For more details, see Groups and Group policies and limits.
  • Use a Marketplace solution—Many third-party developers offer apps for sending bulk mailings. For ideas, go to the G Suite Marketplace.
  • Note: Google does not offer technical support for Marketplace apps. Marketplace solutions are created by third-party developers for a general audience.
  • Build an App Engine solution—Developers can increase mail limits by building a customized application. See App Engine for mail.
  • Use a local mail server—If you have a local mail server, use it to send mail directly to recipients to avoid sending limits. This local server should also be added to your SPF record to stop the messages from being marked as spam.
  • Review bulk sending guidelines and best practices—Some email recipients might report bulk messages as spam. Therefore, you need to ensure that all recipients are willing to receive the emails. You can also check email settings for any incorrectly configured forwarding rules or filters. For details, see our bulk sending guidelines and best practices.

There are a number of reasons why you may see the "This message was blocked because its content presents a potential security issue" error in Gmail. Gmail blocks messages that may spread viruses, like messages that include executable files or certain links.

Why messages get blocked

Messages that have attachments

To prevent against potential viruses, Gmail doesn't allow you to attach certain types of files, including:

  • Certain file types (listed below), including their compressed form (like .gz or .bz2 files) or when found within archives (like .zip or .tgz files)
  • Documents with malicious macros
  • Archives whose listed file content is password protected
  • Archives whose content includes a password protected archive

Note: If you try to attach a document that is too large, your message won't send. Learn more about attachments and file size limits.

File types you can't include as attachments

.ADE, .ADP, .BAT, .CHM, .CMD, .COM, .CPL, .EXE, .HTA, .INS, .ISP, .JAR, .JSE, .LIB, .LNK, .MDE, .MSC, .MSP, .MST, .PIF, .SCR, .SCT, .SHB, .SYS, .VB, .VBE, .VBS, .VXD, .WSC, .WSF, .WSH

Messages that don't have attachments

Sometimes messages are blocked when you don't include any attachments.

This can happen when you include content, images, or links that might share viruses.

Groups

Groups policies and limits

As a security measure, all G Suite groups have limits on message activity, invitations and size, and membership. If you reach one of the limits, you are prevented from the activity whose limit you reached. The restriction typically lasts an hour, but can last as long as 24 hours.

The following limits apply for G Suite or Education accounts. The value of these limits may change without notice in order to protect Google's infrastructure.

Message limits

All recipient counts refer to the total number of recipients, not the total number of unique recipients. For example, if one of the group members is another group consisting of two users, it counts as three recipients (the group and its two members).

Note: Limits for G Suite trial users are lower.

Type

Description

Limit

Total recipients per group

Maximum number of group message recipients

6,200,000 per hour

Total external recipients per group

Maximum number of group message external recipients

50,000 per day

Total external recipients per domain

Maximum number of external recipients for all groups in a domain*

100,000 per day

Total inbound emails per group

Maximum number of email messages the Google Groups server accepts per group**

300 per 5 minutes

Total message size

Maximum total gigabytes (GB) per group

2.4 GB per hour

Total messages per sender to a specific group

Maximum number of messages a sender can send to a specific group

1,800 per hour

* External recipients are recipients that are outside of your domain. For customer accounts with multiple domains, recipients in all associated domains count as internal recipients. The limit on external recipients increases with the size of the G Suite account; a customer with 20,000 users has a limit larger than 10,000 per day.

** If archiving is enabled for the group, then the maximum number of messages received is 1 message per second.

Group invitations and size

Group invitation and size limits only apply to actions performed in the Groups web interface. Domain administrators can add more members to a group using the Google Admin console or the G Suite Provisioning API.

Note: Limits for G Suite trial users are lower.

Type

Description

Limit

Joins per day

Maximum number of groups a single user can join in a day

30 per day

Creations per week

Maximum number of groups a single user can create in a week

5 per week

External member additions at one time

Maximum number of external members that can be added at one time using web interface

10 per session

External member additions per day, per group

Maximum number of external members* that can be added to a single group in a day

100 per day, per group

External member invitations per day, per group

Maximum number of external members that can be invited to a single group in a day

500 per day, per group

* External recipients are recipients that are outside of your domain.

Membership

If you are the owner or manager of a group, it counts as two memberships, one as a group member and one as the owner or manager. A user is an indirect member of a group if they belong to a different group that's nested in the group.

Type

Description

Limit

Direct membership

Maximum number of groups a user can be a direct member of

2,000

Combined direct and indirect membership

Maximum number of groups a user can be a direct or indirect member of

5,000

Examples

  • You can be the owner or manager of a maximum of 1,000 groups.
  • You can be an indirect member of 3,500 groups and a direct member of 1,500 groups.
  • You can be the manager of 500 groups and and a direct member of 1,000 groups.
  • You can be the owner of 1,000 groups and an indirect member of 3,000 groups.

Google Drive

File sizes

These are the documents, spreadsheets, and presentation sizes you can store in Google Drive.

  • Documents: Up to 1.02 million characters. If you convert a text document to Google Docs format, it can be up to 50 MB.
  • Spreadsheets: Up to 2 million cells for spreadsheets that are created in or converted to Google Sheets.
  • Presentations: Up to 100 MB for presentations converted to Google Slides.
  • All other files: Up to 5 TB.

Supported file types

These are the most common file types you can view in Google Drive:

General files

  • Archive files (.ZIP, .RAR, tar, gzip)
  • Audio formats (MP3, MPEG, WAV, .ogg)
  • Image files (.JPEG, .PNG, .GIF, .BMP)
  • Markup/Code (.CSS, .HTML, .PHP, .C, .CPP, .H, .HPP, .JS)
  • Text files (.TXT)
  • Video files (WebM, .MPEG4, .3GPP, .MOV, .AVI, .MPEGPS, .WMV, .FLV, .ogg)

Adobe files

  • Autodesk AutoCad (.DXF)
  • Illustrator (.AI)
  • Photoshop (.PSD)
  • Portable Document Format (.PDF)
  • PostScript (.EPS, .PS)
  • Scalable Vector Graphics (.SVG)
  • Tagged Image File Format (.TIFF) - best with RGB .TIFF images
  • TrueType (.TTF)

Microsoft files

  • Excel (.XLS and .XLSX)
  • PowerPoint (.PPT and .PPTX)
  • Word (.DOC and .DOCX)
  • XML Paper Specification (.XPS)

Calendar

Issue

Occasionally a user may see an error message that he or she cannot perform an operation due to Calendar limits, such as:

  • Unable to save event. This means you have reached the limit for the number of events you can edit.
  • Calendar usage limits exceeded. This is the result of an API call. (Don't mix this up with the message "Daily quota exceeded," which points to insufficient API quota.)
  • There was a problem saving your changes. Please try again in a few minutes. This message will be followed by a more descriptive description on the limits that have been reached.

Why is this happening? Google Calendar puts certain limits in place to protect our users and infrastructure from abusive behavior. When these limits are reached by a user, Google Calendar will go into read-only mode for that user, and all edit actions will fail for a certain period of time. Most users will never hit these limits, as they are well above the activity level of a typical Calendar user.

When a user makes changes to non-primary calendars (such as secondary calendars or a manager’s calendar), all actions are counted under the user's own account and not the limits of the processed calendars. G Suite administrators who use Google Calendar heavily or anyone using a third-party tool or API to manipulate events therefore have an increased risk of hitting Calendar limits.

Resolution

If users hit the Google Calendar limits, they should be able to edit their calendars normally again within several hours. Users will still be able to view events in Calendar during that period.

More Information

If a user sees one of these messages it’s probably due to one of the following reasons:

  • Creating too many events
  • If a user has created more than 10,000 events in his or her calendar within a short period of time, that user might lose calendar edit access.
  • Creating too many calendars
  • If a user creates more than 25 new calendars within a short period of time, that user's calendar might go into read-only mode.
  • Sending too many invitations or emails to external guests
  • In order to prevent spamming, Google Calendar limits the number of invitations a user can send to external guests. This limit varies depending on the action, and is usually between 100-300 guests.
  • G Suite users can send invitations to any number of guests from their primary domain, or from secondary domains associated with their primary domain.
  • Sharing calendars with too many users
  • If a user shares one or more calendars with many other users within a short period of time, Google Calendar might switch into read-only mode for that user. It’s almost impossible to reach this limit by updating sharing settings manually, but it can happen with some API-based tools or third-party apps.

Contacts

When you use Google Contacts with G Suite, you have the following allocation for storing contacts.

Shared external contacts in your global Directory

  • Maximum number of external contacts: 50,000
  • Total storage space: 20MB
  • Maximum size per contact: 2KB

These limits only include external contacts, which don't have G Suite accounts in your domains. These limits don't include internal users who do have accounts. You can have as many internal profiles as you have users in your account.

Personal contacts per user account

  • Maximum number of contacts: 25,000
  • Total storage space: 20MB
  • Maximum size per contact: 128KB

Limitations with multiple domains

When you add a domain to your G Suite account, you need to keep in mind some limitations so that you can set up the primary and secondary domains correctly. The following topics discuss different features for primary and secondary domains.

Tip: G Suite uses the name of your primary domain as the name for your organization as a whole. This is the organization name referenced in the sharing options that users see. When you add other domains, you might want to change your organization name to a more inclusive name.

Google Admin console

  • You can't set different policies or configuration settings for different domains. All settings in the Google Admin console apply to all domains that are part of your account.
  • You can specify only one logo for your domains. The same logo appears for users in all domains that are part of your account.

Domain names and aliases

  • G Suite account merge is not supported. Some current G Suite customers with multiple domains have separate G Suite accounts for each domain. Google does not currently support merging multiple G Suite accounts into a single multiple domain account.
  • Migration from domain aliases is not supported. Some current G Suite customers use domain aliases for their non-primary domains. Google does not currently support the conversion of domain aliases into multi domain accounts.
  • In the legacy free edition of G Suite, secondary domains are not supported. The legacy free edition of G Suite only supports domain aliases. All the other restrictions tied to domain aliases apply.

Account access URLs

  • You cannot create a global URL for accessing G Suite. Users access G Suite with a URL that includes the domain name from their email address, for example http://docs.google.com/a/subsidiaryA.com. You can't provide a global URL that users from all domains share.

Google Drive

  • You can't restrict sharing to users in a single domain. Sharing options are based on the organization as a whole (or organizational units with some G Suite editions), not individual domains. With G Suite Business, G Suite for Education, or G Suite for Nonprofits, you can create an organizational unit for everyone at a particular domain and then restrict sharing for that organizational unit.
  • To share a document with the users in a single domain (or any other subset of users), create a Google Group that includes all the users and share the document with that group.

Google Sites

  • Searches for sites return sites only in the same domain as the user. For example, a user with an address in a secondary domain will not find sites created in the primary domain.

When you delete a secondary domain, all sites created on the domain are also deleted. To avoid data loss, copy all sites on the domain you plan to delete to other domains. For details, see Transfer a website to G Suite.

Google App Engine

  • Applications that use Google App Engine are not available for users at non primary domains.