Gmail Raises Attachment Limit to 25 Megabyte
Update: The attachment limit is still 25 Megabyte on Gmail but Google has added an option to the email client to use its cloud hosting service Google Drive for larger attachments.
Instead of attaching files to the email itself, it is uploaded to Google Drive by the sender and added as a link to the email instead.
Users who receive the email can click on the link to download the attached files. Since it is cloud storage, it is possible to attach links to files that are larger than 25 Megabyte. Update End
Sending large attachments via email is a big no-no unless the recipient is aware of the email's size and has given you the ok to go ahead.
There are other means than email to send large files to recipients which are often the better solution considering that it can take significant time to download large email attachments.
Examples of solutions that you can use instead include file hosts, both free or paid, that offer Gigabytes of storage space that you can use for that.
Gmail, Google's popular email service, has recently raised the attachment limit from 20 Megabytes to 25. This could be interesting for users who regularly send emails with large attachments but also for Gmail users who like to backup files by sending them to their Gmail account.
The attachment limit is obviously working in both ways which means that it is possible to send emails with a size of up to 25 Megabytes but also to receive emails that stay below that limit.
The new Gmail attachment limit seems to be enabled on all Gmail accounts already unlike other changes to the email service that usually get rolled out over time. It should also be noted that users need to make sure that the recipients can retrieve emails of that size. It can happen that the email provider refuses these emails as they might be over the size limit of that email service.
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The default attachment size is 20MB but if you use their Email Notifier add-on, you can go to 50MB.
But the problem is that most email accounts only support 1-5MB, particularly corporate accounts. Send an email too large and it will get bounced. I’d rather someone upload their attachment to an FTP server and provide me a link to download it.
I wish Gmail would add an option to sent an email at some point in the future, like Outlook can do.