Is your Email Size Too Large? Here’s How to Tell and Fix It
If you enthusiastically hit the send button on your email only to receive an error message, you know the importance of knowing email size limits.
Your email attachments, images, text, and HTML formatting together contribute to the email size.
While there is no official standard for maximum email size, it usually varies with your email provider. Most providers have their own size limits to prevent server overloading.
Understanding email size is important to send the right emails without facing spam and delivery issues.
This guide will equip you with the knowledge of average email sizes, ways to spot large email size issues, and best practices for faster loading times.
Average Size of an Email
There is no standard email size limit; however, most email services set a maximum of 75 KB or 7000 words of plain text.
The text is just the starting point, and many factors affect the email size limit, such as:
- Formatting: Rich text formatting, such as bold or highlights, can add to extra email size.
- Attachment size: Larger email attachments take up a lot of server space, making it time-consuming to process large amounts of data.
- Multimedia files: In-message images, GIFs, audio, and video can overload emails and lead to delivery issues.
- Header: The email header could look insignificant, yet it counts toward the size of the email.
- HTML: Using HTML formatting for increased styling and functionality can consume more space.
- Duplicate message: Most rich text emails are accompanied by basic text versions, increasing the email size.
Always consider the file sizes and alternatives for larger video or audio attachments.
Understanding Common Email Sizes
Although the overall size of an email will depend on your provider, most set limits on the size of the attachments, dimensions of the visuals, and even the size of the email templates.
The table below contains common sizes for the above-discussed aspects.
| Aspect | Ideal Size | Maximum Size | Why it is important |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email template width | 600 pixels | 700 pixels | Recommended width for most common email clients to ensure proper display of emails across devices |
| Email template height | 1500 pixels | 3000 pixels | Allows enough space for including critical information on the top |
| Email file size | 75 KB | 100 KB | Keeping the file size under 100 KB is ideal for faster loading and delivery time |
| Header height | 70 pixels | 200 pixels | The header contains the logo and navigation |
| Content blocks (Total height) | 800 pixels | 1200 pixels | This is the space for your main message, broken down into sections for better readability |
Choosing the right dimensions is critical for the proper display of emails on different devices. Let’s go through each of them in detail.
Choosing the Right Email Design Size
While choosing compelling email design elements is crucial, crafting the message according to the right size increases the effectiveness of your emails.
These guidelines will help you choose the right dimensions.
1. Email Design Height
The good news is there’s no minimum size for email height. It depends on the length of your content and multimedia in the emails.
A best practice is to put the most important information above the fold (350px), allowing recipients to view them first. Each email campaign can have a different email height. For example, a transactional email is relatively shorter than a marketing newsletter.
Consider the following aspects before deciding on your email height:
- Content length: Since readers skim emails, it’s important to make your point quickly and concisely.
- Scannability: Break long paragraphs into readable chunks of text and balance them with visuals, if any.
- Engagement: Capture the recipients’ attention with compelling visuals and headlines.
- Flexible layouts: Consider designing emails with flexible layouts for increased responsiveness across devices.
- Media queries: Use media queries in the CSS to adjust designs for smaller screens, such as reducing image sizes or stacking columns.
- Logical flow: Ensure your email content flows logically and guides the users towards the desired action.
A long email (over 1200 pixels) is usually used for content-heavy emails like product launches, event invitations, or educational content. However, only include relevant information and avoid overwhelming the readers with scroll-heavy content.
2. Email Design Width
The golden rule for email width is 600 pixels. This is the average width used by desktop email clients. Anything more than this will not be displayed correctly across email clients, especially Gmail.
Sticking to this standard ensures your emails render correctly across various email clients and devices. 600 pixels width prevents horizontal scrolling on desktop screens, creating a good user experience. But this would be true back when monitors had 1024 pixels.
It’s 2024, and the typical desktop resolution is 1920 * 1080. This means you can get as creative as you want with your emails. However, remember to keep it clean and easily readable.
Additionally, using responsive design width, also known as fluid width, can adapt to different screen sizes. This approach is essential for mobile email marketing to ensure your emails look good across smaller screens.
3. Email Header Sizes
The email header is the first component recipients see when they open your emails. The typical email header is around 600-800 pixels in width and around 100-150 pixels in height.
Email headers with 200px or below give enough space for branding and navigation without taking up too much email room. Ensure to align your tagline, logo, and other elements according to this ratio. For example, keeping your header tagline between 18-22 pixels can help recipients view the space more clearly.
4. Email Weight
Email weight refers to the file size of your emails. Along with spammy subject lines, email file sizes are often the culprits for poor email deliverability rates. Maintaining an email body between 20 KB and 102 KB avoids rendering issues.
Image file size issues arise due to:
- Lengthy email content,
- Too many images,
- Large videos or images,
- Uncompressed files,
- Custom fonts,
- Coding style,
- Animated GIFs.
Depending on your email campaign type, it’s best to compress images to reduce the weight of the email.
The email file size is usually measured in two ways:
- The weight of the code: This refers to the bytes in HTML content, including tables, links, and text.
- Loaded email weight: It includes all other elements, such as the images, media, and attachments, along with the HTML to render the email entirely.
With the risks of Gmail clipping emails over 102 KB, it’s essential to keep your emails weightless for intact delivery. And it doesn’t end there — longer and heavier emails can have negative consequences, including slower loading times and poorer deliverability rates.
What Happens When Your Email Size is Too Big?
Email on Acid ran several tests and found emails over 100 KB in size caused email deliverability issues.
When your file size is too big, a couple of things could happen:
- Your email might not send: Most email providers have a cap on the email file size limit and attachments. Exceeding the limit can give error messages.
- The recipient might not receive it: Even if the email successfully leaves your inbox, the recipient’s server might reject the heavy email.
- Email providers could clip your emails: Gmail clips emails that exceed 102 KB and leaves readers with the “View entire message” note, which can lead to poor user experience.
- Could slow down loading times: Large emails with heavy text, images, and videos can consume more time to load, frustrating users and leading to lower engagement.
- Increased spam scores: Often, spam filters are trained to spot emails with large file sizes, resulting in higher spam scores and lower sender reputation.
- Incomplete rendering: Heavy emails can stop rendering mid-way, leaving users with truncated content.
- Higher data consumption: Large emails can use more data, which can be problematic for users with limited internet data plans.
You can reduce the email file size as you update old coding and freshen up your email design. If you’re just starting out, there are ways to figure out the email size before hitting the send button.
How to Tell if Your Email is Too Large?
One way is to examine your email attachments to determine their file size. Often, attachments contribute to larger email file sizes, resulting in delivery and spam trap issues. While most email providers have limits on attachments, it’s safe to stay within the 10 MB limit for smoother delivery.
Many recipients’ servers impose email file size limits and when you exceed this, your emails can be rejected or bounced.
Other signs your email might be too big are:
- Slow load times,
- Delivery issues,
- Gmail clipping,
- Bandwidth consumption,
- Error messages.
Size of Email with Popular Email Clients
Watch out for attachment sizes when using these common email providers.
| Inbox Service Providers | Attachment/Email File Size Limit |
|---|---|
| Gmail | 25 MB |
| Outlook | 20 MB |
| Yahoo | 25 MB |
| Hotmail | 10 MB |
| Zoho | 12 MB |
| AOL | 25 MB |
| ProtonMail | 25 MB |
Commonly, these numbers include the email text and attachments. Check your email provider’s size limits to maintain your sender reputation and deliverability score.
What is the Standard Email Size for Different Email Campaigns?
A transactional email template is much shorter and will look different from a marketing newsletter template. Follow the standard email size, but tailor the email content according to the type of campaign.
In the example above, transactional email templates will include critical user information, such as confirmation of receipt, shipping details, and payment details. These templates are usually simpler without many images or marketing content.
For example, a newsletter is typically longer and may contain images, videos, or GIFs, increasing the email file size.
Here’s a table containing the basic email file size limits for different campaigns.
| Email Campaign Type | Maximum Email Template Dimensions |
|---|---|
| Welcome emails | 600 px |
| Transactional emails | 600 – 1200 px |
| Marketing newsletters | 600 – 640 px |
| Promotional emails | 2,500 – 3,000 px |
| Abandoned cart emails | Can vary depending on your goals |
| Lead nurturing emails | Depends on your brand |
The email template dimensions come down to your brand goals and user behavior. Let’s review the above example in real life to help you choose the right email template dimensions.
Transactional Email Example
Transactional email templates are fairly simple with specific details and can be around 600 – 1200 px.
In the example above, Klarna’s transactional email contains payment confirmation and includes the order date, number, and amount. This makes it easy for the recipients to skim the email and identify the necessary parts.
Marketing Newsletter Example
Email newsletters are usually larger and the email template dimensions depend on the type of content. For example, in the example below, Going, a flight booking website sends a lengthy email with detailed instructions.
Newsletter and marketing email dimensions can vary between 2500 and 3000 px depending on the length and images included.
Additionally, pay attention to the specific email elements such as the header and footer, since these can add to the overall email size.
Other Important Email Template Dimensions
The email consists of three components: the header, content blocks, and the footer.
Let’s examine each component’s basic sizes below.
| Email Component | Size |
|---|---|
| Header | Up to 200 px |
| Content blocks | No minimum size |
| Footer | Up to 100 px |
The Email Header
The email header contains your company logo, menu, and details to view the message in a browser.
As we discussed, the email header can be up to 200 px and usually contains critical brand information. Remember to always put the meaningful details above the fold (in the first 350 px).
Content Blocks
“Content” refers to everything in your emails; images, text, videos, etc. There are no rules regarding the dimensions. However keep the content blocks visually appealing and include prominent call-to-action buttons to increase visual effectiveness.
When images are involved, keep the following specifics in mind:
- The minimum recommended image size is 75 Dpii and the maximum is up to you.
- Hosting images on servers and linking them in emails does not affect the email size.
- Format your images in PNG to maintain transparency of background.
- Save your images in the RGB color mode.
- Keep your image file size at 1 MB at the maximum.
- Consider including an Alt text for readers with disabilities.
Email Footer Size
The ideal email footer size is 650 px in width and 90-150 px in height. This helps your contact information, headshot, and other information to show up without distracting the readers from the main content.
Use brand-aligned fonts and colors to maintain consistency and help readers immediately recognize your emails.
Optimizing the above email elements will eventually result in improved email sending speed and delivery rates.
Email Speed: Why’s it Important?
Today’s technology is advanced enough, so, the email size does not typically affect email send times. However, larger emails can lead to slower rendering or downloading time. The weight of the message can also affect how the recipients’ server handles them.
The speed at which messages are delivered and opened directly affects its open and click-through rates. Email service providers also prioritize faster loading emails, impacting your deliverability rates.
In this context, larger emails can take more time to download, impacting the overall user experience.
But many factors can contribute to email speed, including:
- Email clients: Different email clients perceive HTML and CSS differently. This could affect the load times.
- Devices: The devices your emails are viewed in may have different processing power. This means a desktop might render the same email quicker than a mobile device.
- Recipient’s internet connection: Users could have varied data plans, which could affect email load times.
Optimizing loading speed is critical to ensuring the proper display of emails.
Campaign Refinery and Email Speed Limit
Campaign Refinery’s sending engine can handle millions of emails every second.
First, our automatic email list cleaning tool removes harmful and inactive email addresses. And then our team continually monitors your account for spam threats and email deliverability issues.
After the green signal, our sending system batches emails and sends them together, improving efficiency and workflow. This is why, using a reliable email service provider is key to maintaining your email deliverability scores.
If you’re doing it by yourself, use the following best practices to fix the large email size and speed up slow loading times.
Fixing Large Email Sizes: Best Practices to Remember
The larger the email size, the more complex it becomes for you and your users.
That’s why we recommend using the following best practices:
- Compress media before attaching: Compressing larger files reduces the overall file size and helps recipients easily access them in one place. Using tools like Winzip or using your system’s built-in compression can help.
- Use cloud storage: Whether it’s a large video or an animation, adding a link in the email is the best strategy. Links do not affect the email size and users can access them anytime.
- Be mindful of file types: Common file types such as PDF can increase email size. Instead, consider lighter formats such as JPEG for photos and converting PDFs to a more manageable size.
- Optimize images: Even though you use high-quality images, optimizing them for emails can decrease the load times.
- Keep codes clean: When working with HTML, remove unnecessary codes and optimize for faster load times.
- Stick to the standard template size: When in doubt, always use the standard (600px) template to send emails.
- Balance text and media: Include a healthy amount of text instead of showcasing images and media. This promotes two-way communication and increases the likelihood of higher engagement.
- Preview your emails: Regularly test your emails for errors and optimize them for better user experience and engagement.
While emails with images and videos can be visually appealing, they often lead to user frustration due to slower download times. This is why simple emails perform much better than HTML emails.
Text emails are the best approach, especially while sending email blasts.
Why are Simple Emails Better?
Most people are busy and don’t have a lot of time to sift through emails. A text-heavy email with better readability is more likely to get attention than the one filled with multimedia.
Here are more reasons why considering simple emails works for the good:
- Improves readability: An email with consise language and short paragraphs is more likely to be read through fully.
- Maintains clarity: Having one main message per email will help recipients stay on track and follow through till the CTA.
- Decreases loading time: Emails with fewer images and attachments often load faster, improving overall user experience.
- Offers better accessibility: Plain text emails have fewer distractions and are better to understand than HTML emails.
- Higher engagement rates: Concise and engaging email content can encourage people to take the desired action.
- Increases personalization: Simple text emails resemble personal messages from family and friends. In a professional context, this can increase the likelihood of familiarity and personalization.
It’s true — not all emails are text-heavy. Certain campaigns such as promotional emails or marketing newsletters require you to engage recipients with images and long text. Try to keep them minimalistic for better email deliverability.
Enjoy the Highest Deliverability Rate With Campaign Refinery
Campaign Refinery believes in sharing compelling messages through simple emails. Our tried-and-tested methods, including our email newsletter, have consistently performed better.
As a mass email sender, simple text emails take less time to write and read, increasing engagement. More importantly, it boosts the chances of inbox placement. This is how we consistently offer the highest email deliverability rate on the market.
But what if you want to send media-rich emails?
Well, sending those email types through our platform still gives the highest email deliverability performance — our sophisticated email deliverability tools and work together with our sending engine to provide you with the best email marketing experience available.
As our client, you will enjoy the highest deliverability rate regardless of email size.
Ready to enjoy premium tools and the best inbox placement rates?
