Gmail Error: You have reached a limit for sending mail. your message was not sent.
If you’re sending mail merge emails from your Gmail account, you’re likely aware of the basic limits that Gmail and G Suite set for your accounts. Generally, those limits are 500 emails/day for Gmail accounts and 2,000 emails/day for G Suite accounts. As is often the case though, users find that Gmail limits them below the stated values of 500 and 2,000 per day. For example, a new Gmail account can often only send 10-20 emails in its first 24-hour period. Similarly, a new G Suite account, especially when the domain is a new customer of G Suite, also has limits more restrictive than 2,000 emails/day.
Troubleshooting:
If you find that your sending volume is under the stated limits but are still getting the dreaded “You have reached a limit” bounce in Gmail, here are some strategies to help.
G Suite User? Contact G Suite Support
I’ve experienced cases where my own G Suite account was limited to 750 or 1,000 emails per 24 hours rather than 2,000. I contacted support, and they admitted that my account had been mistakenly limited and eventually resolved the issue and allowed me greater sending power. Here’s my correspondence with support:
Use the “throttle” setting to add a few seconds between emails
On Google’s official page describing Gmail sending limits, the 500 and 2,000 daily limits are mentioned. Anecdotally though, we’ve found that sending too many emails within too short a time span can also cause a limit to kick in. One support agent communicated that too many emails sent within a 10-minute period will set off red flags. Use the GMass throttle setting to add a few seconds in between emails. This will slow down the delivery of your messages, but help avoid any per-minute or per-hour limitations.
G Suite User? Perform an administrative reset
As a G Suite user, you can have your Admin reset your account’s quota if you are getting “You have reached your limit” bounces. However, this can only be done 5x/year.
Circumvent Gmail’s servers altogether
You can now use your Gmail account to send mail merge campaigns through any SMTP server, bypassing Gmail’s servers and sending limits. This will allow you to use GMass to send mail merge campaigns through your Gmail account, just like normal, but your emails will be routed through a third-party SMTP service like Sendgrid, Mailgun, or JangoSMTP.
How can you programmatically detect these bounces?
If you’re a software developer building your own mail merge system for Gmail, you may want to know how to write code to detect these “You have reached a limit” bounces. It used to be easy, because Gmail used to send these notifications from a special address, [email protected].
In the summer of 2019, however, Google changed the address to the standard bounce notification address of [email protected], which then made it more difficult to detect “reached a limit” bounces from other types of bounces, like those indicating a bad recipient email address. There is however, one distinguishing factor that separates “reached a limit” bounces from all other kinds of bounces. The “reached a limit” bounce will have a Subject line of “Re: ” plus the original email’s Subject line. All other bounces from the “mailer-daemon” address will have the subject of “Delivery Status Notification (Failure)” or “Delivery Status Notification (Delay)”. For example, if the email you sent had the Subject “Company Newsletter”, and you receive an over-limit bounce, it will have the Subject of “Re: Company Newsletter”.
It’s also worth noting that the message will be in the same language as you’ve set your Gmail settings.
The full English message is:
You have reached a limit for sending mail. Your message was not sent.
The German message is:
Sie haben die Begrenzung zum Senden von E-Mails erreicht. Ihre Nachricht konnte daher nicht gesendet werden.
The Norwegian message is:
Du har nådd grensen for sending av e-post. Meldingen din er ikke sendt.
The Spanish message is:
Has llegado al límite de mensajes que puedes enviar. Tu mensaje no se ha enviado.
Further Reading
If you do find that you’re getting bounces because you’re over your Gmail limit, GMass will re-try sending those emails for you later automatically, but you can also manually re-send to the addresses that bounced.
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Hello Maya,
Thanks e-mail received. Can you please confirm i mean be specific with me how many emails can be send with my GMASS account. and again will i be able to send anymore emails today or i have to wait till tomorrow.
Hope to read from you soon.
Many thanks
Nenille
It varies by account, see:
http://blog.gmass.co/2016/08/how-many-emails-can-you-really-send-with-gmail-and-gmass/
Sounds more like an intentional error by google to force ppl into premium membership to “avoid” such error, since a paid member has no email limits.
I would gladly pay. How do I add a paid account ???
Hi,
I hv new gmail acc., and i have subscribed for gmass, but after send 200 emails they r bouncing the emails saying that u r exceeding the limit,, how come? Limit is 500 per day ,
Plz help
The article above details the reason you reached the limit. Not every Gmail account has a 500 email/day sending limit. Consider setting an external server to avoid sending limits: https://www.gmass.co/blog/unlimited-mail-merge-sending-gmail/
Thank you.
First, I am not a computer guru. I know just enough to be dangerous.
Second, I have an informal group of about 1000 addresses that I wish to send informational, non-commercial emails to. This group would likely never exceed 2,000.
Third, Activity over the year is sporadic. At certain times of the year, I would send zero emails. At other times, especially the first 3 months of the year, I might send 2 or 3 emails on a given day and then none for 2 weeks
What might be a simple solution to bounced and undelivered emails?
How do I buy a paid account ???????
hello, i have a paid account (G suite) and i can’t send any email why !
i get You have reached a limit.
i contact google support and they didn’t help me.
please help me i can give you gsuite email and password to fix the error
Hi Oliver,
Although Google Apps accounts are officially limited to 2,000 emails per day whilst Gmail accounts (those ending with @gmail.com or @googlemail.com) are officially limited to 500 emails per day, we have noticed over time that there are other factors that affect the send limits for an account. Age is a huge factor in this, as Google limit accounts to lower sending capacity until the account establishes its credibility. This is a measure to prevent scammers and spammers from opening accounts and sending at full capacity.
There’s some more information about these limits and factors here: https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-many-emails-can-you-really-send-with-gmass-and-gmail/ ( https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-many-emails-can-you-really-send-with-gmass-and-gmail/ )
We recommend that in situations like yours, users ‘warm up’ their account by sending smaller campaigns over time to establish a reputation for the account and the domain. We don’t want your behaviors to flag Google’s spam detectors and cause bigger problems for you down the line. The more you use your G Suite to send and receive, the more it garners reputation and sets usage behavior resulting in slowly increasing Google imposed sending limits.
I’ve never sent over 500 emails in a day. If I am lucky at Christmas I will send less then 30. So can you help me understand why this morning I got this crazy message.
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Sincerely,
Rosemary Hampton
Hi Rosemary,
Even though Gmail accounts are officially limited to 500 emails per day, we have noticed over time that there are other factors that affect the send limits for an account. Age is a huge factor in this, as Google limit accounts to lower sending capacity until the account establishes its credibility. This is a measure to prevent scammers and spammers from opening accounts and sending at full capacity.
There’s some more information about these limits and factors here: https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-many-emails-can-you-really-send-with-gmass-and-gmail/ ( https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-many-emails-can-you-really-send-with-gmass-and-gmail/ )
My account was blocking me from sending emails and I worked out by deleting my signature it allowed me to send emails. However I’ve kept deleting parts of my signature and kept testing the emails by sending to my wife’s email address and now it is saying I have reached a limit for sending emails! I keep reading about people having emails blocked due to sending large amounts of emails in bulk but i’m sending one or two to my customers and never do mailmerges. So why all of a sudden are my emails being blocked and why can I now not use my signature?!
Link exchange is nothing else except it is just placing the
other person’s weblog link on your page at appropriate place and other
person will also do similar in favor of you.
I have 40000 emails to send, but I am happy to send 200 per day. How do I gmass send only 200 per day
Hi Robert,
You can set this in your GMass settings box under the “Schedule” section in the subsection “Speed”.
Please refer to this image to see where you’ll have to input the maximum number of emails you want GMass to send daily until all emails are sent: https://marvin-wordzen.tinytake.com/media/c12e1b?filename=1583527294600_throttle+per+day.png
How long does the shut down last?
Also, when I try to forward anything that requires the recipient to click on a connection to the internet, google sends all those messages back.
Hi Caryl,
The limits are set by Google and resets every 24 hours.
Can I request a re-set earlier?
I’m just sending 150 emails/day. it’s not even 500. but still got a bounce. thumbs down
Despite of having a G-Suit account I’m not able to send 2000 mails per day. After sending 500 mails I get a usual mail You have reached a limit for sending mail ‘Your message was not sent’. I have paid $12.95 to gmass also for paid subscription. This is so frustrating. Please help and resolve the issue ASAP.
Is this usful for auto sending mail or not
Up until this morning, you could send up to 500 emails per day (25 address per message) via Gmail.
Suddenly, I received this message: “You have reached a limit for sending mail. Your message was not sent.”
Their policy has changed without notice. You can no longer send bulk messages, and my account has been frozen for 24-48 hours!
This is terrible for those of us who do not have budgets for various email services.