You have reached a limit for sending email

Sometimes, Gmail might prompts an “You have reached a limit for sending email” error after you’ve started sending emails. It means that you’ve reached Gmail’s sending limits or that your email was detected as spam.

What is your Gmail daily quota?

Gmail has two different limits for how much emails you can send per day:

Free Gmail accounts have up to 500 emails/day (that is everyone with an email address ending with @gmail.com).
Google Workspace paid account have up to 2,000 emails/day.

But, these limits are maximums. Gmail applies a moving quota based on your account’s reputation. When your email activity is considered good, your quota goes up. But when your account is brand new or you’re sending emails that land in spam, Gmail will reduce your quota down.

Mailmeteor sends emails using your own Gmail account, this means that when your account reaches the limit, you can’t send emails for a period of around 24 hours. Read on to learn more about how to fix this issue.

Why are you receiving errors “You have reached a limit for sending mail”?

You’re getting the error message “You have reached a limit for sending mail. Your message was not sent.” because Gmail has reduced your daily sending limit. Gmail is trying hard to put spam out of their service and when they detect an abuse, they reduce the daily quota from 500 (or 2000) a day, to not a lot…

Here are the most common reasons why Gmail is reducing your daily quota:

Your email has been detected as spam

This is the most common case. Google might have detected your emails as spam. In that situation, will need to review your email campaign so as to prevent your emails to fall into spam. Check our section How to avoid spam.
Your Google Workspace account is new and under trial

If you are a new Google Workspace account (formerly G Suite), your account may be under trial and limited to 400 emails per day. Usually, the trial period lasts two weeks. You can skip the G Suite trial period by making a manual payment or pay early.
Your daily sending limit has been hit

Your daily quota includes mails sent with Mailmeteor but also emails that you manually send with Gmail. You may have sent some emails previously with Gmail? If so, try again in a few hours. Read more on Gmail’s sending limits.
You are sending emails using POP/IMAP

We recommend you to remove this setting if you want to use Mailmeteor properly without limit.

How to fix “You have reached a limit for sending mail”?

When Gmail limits your account, here are a few things you should do immediately:

Pause your sending. Email reputation generally comes back pretty quickly if you stop your sending activity for a few days.
After a few days, progressively start again to send emails. Start with 25 emails a day. 50 the next day, then 75, etc.
Focus on engagement. If people don’t interact with your emails, either by replying or clicking on a link, that’s a factor you’re sending spam.

Once you’ve gained your email reputation back, use Mailmeteor’s Autopilot to maximize your deliverability and stay under Gmail’s limit.

Going further

Here are two other articles to help you improve your deliverability and avoid this error: