Maximum email attachment size
WebGee accepts messages up to 50 MB in total, and what to use instead when you need to send something larger.
WebGee accepts email messages up to 50 MB. Applies to all WebGee mailboxes.
That figure is the size of the entire message, not the attachment alone. Message headers and encoding count towards it, so an attachment close to 50 MB will be rejected even though the file itself is under the limit.
The recipient's provider has its own limit, and it is often lower — many block anything over 20 MB. A message can leave WebGee successfully and still be refused at the other end. The limit that matters is the smaller of the two.
Attachments are larger than the file
Email cannot carry binary data directly, so attachments are re-encoded as text before sending. That encoding adds roughly a third to the size. A 40 MB file becomes around 54 MB on the wire and will not send.
As a rule of thumb, keep individual attachments under 35 MB to stay inside a 50 MB limit.
Send large files another way
Email was never designed to transfer large files, and using it that way is slow and unreliable regardless of the limit. For anything substantial, send a link instead of a file:
- A cloud storage service such as Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive.
- A one-off transfer service such as WeTransfer.
- Your own hosting account, if the recipient can be given a direct URL.
Links also avoid filling both mailboxes with a copy of the same file, which is what pushes accounts towards their storage limit.