Email is still a very popular way to send files back and forth. Some email providers offer up to 20mb attachments while many company email servers limit attachments to 5mb or less. Find out what size attachments you can send through the 4 big name email providers.
There are alternatives to sharing large files. Uploading files to a file management service like Drop.io is one new way. Many graphic design firms are used to FTP. The old way was to burn a CD and mail it out before everyone had high speed internet. Today’s email providers are not only pumping up the attachment limits, the mailbox sizes are growing as well. Google was the first to provide 1GB (1,000mb) of space for their free email service, Gmail, in 2004. Companies like MSN Hotmail and Yahoo had much lower mailbox limits of 100mb and jumped to increase it once they realized their users would be asking about the huge differences.
These links will guide you into the major email provider’s help site. I’ve pulled a summary from each one so you can see what they say about email attachments.
Gmail - 20 mb Link to Google Help
With Gmail, you can send and receive messages up to 20 megabytes (MB) in size. However, the precise amount allowable will depend on the attachment.
Yahoo - 10 mb Link to Yahoo Help
With a Free Yahoo! Mail account, you can send and receive messages up to 10MB in size. This means that the total encoded size of the email message you are sending cannot exceed 10.0MB. Attachments sent with emails have to be encoded into a format other email programs can read. This encoding, called base64 encoding, adds about 33% to the original size of the attachment. Thus, a 1.5 megabyte attachment will turn into a 2 megabyte attachment after encoding.
AOL - 16 mb Link to AOL Postmaster Help
The largest piece of e-mail that an AOL member can accept from or send to the Internet is 16 megabytes. This includes the message text, headers and the attachment combined. This size cannot be configured by the Member, or adjusted by the Postmaster.
MSN - 10 mb Linkto MSN Hotmail Help
The amount of storage space in your account depends on the type of account you have.
- Free With a free Hotmail account:
- Most users have up to 1 gigabyte (GB) of storage space.
- You can send and receive messages up to 10 MB each, including attachments.
- Hotmail Plus With a Hotmail Plus account:
- You receive up to 2 gigabytes (GB) of storage space.
- You can send and receive messages up to 20 MB, including attachments.
- You also receive up to 30 MB of storage space on MSN Groups. For more information about MSN Groups, visit the MSN Groups website.
- MSN Personal Address With an MSN Personal Address:
- Your primary account has 250 MB of storage space.
- You can send and receive messages up to 10 MB each, including attachments.
1 comment so far ↓
Nice comparison. Thanks for putting this together!
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