What are the email sending limits of various email hosts?

Here’s your quick reference guide to email sending limits across major providers:

Free Gmail email sending limit

With a free Gmail account, users can send a maximum of 500 emails within a 24-hour period, either to one recipient each or one message to 500 recipients. This includes all email addresses in the To, Cc, and Bcc fields.

Critical Detail: This limit resets on a rolling 24-hour window, not at a fixed time like midnight. If you send email at 2 PM today, your limit resets at 2 PM tomorrow—not midnight. This rolling window catches many users off guard and is a common reason for email account blocked messages.

Best Practice: For a free Gmail account, stick to sending no more than 20 emails per hour to avoid triggering spam filters. If you exceed Gmail’s limit for sending emails, your account will get blocked for 1-24 hours.

Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) email sending limit

Google Workspace dramatically increases your capacity with 2,000 emails per day with a total daily recipient limit of 10,000, and a unique recipient limit of 3,000 per day, of which a maximum of 2,000 can be external recipients.

Important Distinction: A single message can be sent to up to 2,000 recipients, with a cap of 500 external recipients within that total. This makes Workspace accounts far superior for professional cold email campaigns.

SMTP Caveat: When using SMTP or the Gmail API, a stricter limit of 100 recipients per message typically applies. Many cold email automation tools rely on SMTP, so this lower limit often becomes your practical ceiling.

Office365 email sending limit

Microsoft takes a generous approach with Office 365 accounts allowing 10,000 recipients per day, 500 recipients per message, and a rate of 30 messages per minute.

Mail Merge Workaround: A potential work around to the 500 recipient limit per message is to do a mail merge. In a mail merge Office 365 sees each recipient as a separate message, however the 10,000 limit per day still applies.

Student Account Restrictions: Academic accounts face severe limitations. Beginning May 12, 2025 there will be new email recipient sending limits: 2,000 email recipients per day for all paid faculty and staff accounts, 500 email recipients per day for all other types of accounts (students, emeriti, and affiliates).

Outlook.com email sending limit

The difference between free and paid Outlook accounts is stark:

Free Outlook.com: Free Outlook account users are limited to sending emails to 100 recipients per message and 300 recipients per day. Additionally, free accounts can only send about 20 messages per minute.

Microsoft 365: Microsoft 365 users enjoy much more generous Office 365 email sending limits per day as they are allowed to reach up to 10,000 recipients within a 24-hour period, with each individual message allowing up to 1,000 recipients.

Attachment Limits: Outlook for Microsoft 365 has a default maximum size of 35 MB per email (including attachments), which can be raised up to 150 MB by an administrator. Free Outlook.com accounts support attachments up to 25 MB.

GoDaddy (Workspace email accounts) email sending limit

GoDaddy enforces different limits based on access method: 1,500 messages per day via Webmail, but only 500 messages per day via SMTP. Each message is limited to 100 recipients.

SMTP Reality Check: Since most cold email automation tools use SMTP, your practical limit is 500 emails daily—not 1,500. This distinction is crucial for BDRs using automation platforms.