How to reduce Gmail rate limiting your emails

Modified on Tue, 4 Jun at 3:37 PM

Be mindful of your sending patterns, as they may result in Gmail rate limiting.

Before you get started

Make sure you have authenticated and verified your domain sending addresses

How to reduce Gmail rate limiting

Gmail rate limiting is based on the sender's sending practices, which are linked to your domain.

This resource from Gmail gives some tips on strategies to use and what to avoid to reduce rate limiting.

Increase sending volume slowly

When increasing sending volume, keep in mind:

Increasing the sending volume too quickly can result in delivery problems. As you gradually increase your sending mail volume, use Postmaster Tools to monitor email delivery.

If you send large amounts of email, we recommend you:

Send an email at a consistent rate. Avoid sending emails in bursts.
Start with a low sending volume to engaged users, and slowly increase the volume over time.
As you increase the sending volume, regularly monitor server responses, spam rate, and the sending domain's reputation. Regular monitoring will allow you to quickly adapt if your sending is rate-limited, if the spam rate is increased, or when the sending domain's reputation drops.
Avoid introducing sudden volume spikes if you do not have a history of sending large volumes. For example, immediately doubling previously sent volumes suddenly could result in rate limiting or reputation drops.
If you change the format of your bulk emails, gradually increase the sending volume of messages with the new format.
After making any significant changes to your sending infrastructure or email header structure, increase the modified segment of traffic separately.
If messages start bouncing or start being deferred, reduce the sending volume until the SMTP error rate decreases. Then, increase slowly again. If bounces and deferrals continue at a low volume, review individual messages to identify problems. For example, you can try sending a blank test message and see if it experiences issues.

Stay within the IP limits for sending:

Monitor responses so you can change sending rates as needed to stay within these limits.

These factors affect how quickly you can increase sending volume:

Amount of email sent: The more email that you send, the more slowly you should increase sending volume.
Frequency of sending emails: You can increase the sending volume more quickly when you send daily instead of weekly.
Recipient feedback about your messages: Make sure you send only to people who subscribe to your emails, and give recipients an option to unsubscribe.

In the event of a recent spike in email activity, we recommend following the requirements and guidelines on this page to resolve deliverability issues automatically during the following sends.

Unfortunately, Gmail does not provide numbers to accompany the guidelines, making it difficult to determine how many emails you should send and how quickly you can increase, etc. The best advice is to use Postmaster Tools to monitor your sending domain reputation and adjust email volume based on that feedback. For instance, if the reputation of the domain declines, stop sending as many emails as possible until it rises again, and then gradually resume sending more.

As a result, if your team does not follow these guidelines, your emails may not reach as many people.

Resources

Gmail: email sender guidelines

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