How Many Emails Can You Send Before They're Considered Spam?

When your SDRs conduct cold email outreach, they’ll want to send at a high frequency right away to generate as many leads as possible, as quickly as possible. 

What you might not realize is that sending too many cold emails can harm your outreach strategy. Making it hard to get any future engagement because accounts your emails get filtered into spam. 

In this article, we'll tell you how many emails you can send before they start to end up in spam. We'll also highlight the email sending limits of inbox providers and why you should pay attention to them. 

Finally, we'll list the ideal sending limits for outreach emails and show you how to reduce your spam rate.

In This Article:

• How Many Emails Can You Send Before They're Considered Spam?
• Why Should You Pay Attention to Email Sending Limits?
• What Are The Sending Limits of Popular Email Providers?
• Why Are Your Emails Being Marked Spam?
• Ideal Sending Limits for Outreach Emails
• 3 Ways To Reduce Your Spam Rate

Let's get started.

How Many Emails Can You Send Before They're Considered Spam?

The number of emails you can send before being considered spam can vary.

A common misconception is that there is a specific number of “safe” emails a business can send without them going to spam. 

In reality, whether your messages end up in email spam folders or not depends on factors like:

• Email content 
• Sender reputation (affected by both your domain and IP address)
• Recipient engagement
• Mailbox age
• Domain age
• Size of company you're prospecting (number of employees)

When we refer to email content, we mean the actual content of your email and how you present it. That is, whether you just send multiple emails in plain text or carefully design HTML email templates for outreach. 

For example, a newer mailbox and domain can't send nearly as many emails as a warmed-up domain and mailbox. 

For a detailed breakdown, skip to the section on ideal sending limits for outreach emails.

Now, let's consider why you should pay more attention to email sending limits. 

Understand what inbox placement is, how it works, and why you need to be aware of it.

Why Should You Pay Attention to Email Sending Limits?

There's no such thing as an email account without sending limits. 

Regardless of how old your mailbox is and the type of email content you send — every email account (like your Gmail account) is subject to sending limits imposed by your email service provider (ESP). 

If you surpass these limits, your account will be at risk of getting blocked for a specified period (usually 24 hours). During this blocked-out period, you won't be able to send or receive any email message. 

However, if your messages are consistently marked as email spam — your account could be blocked even before the sending limit is reached. 

In fact, some email provider apps like Gmail use user behavior as an indicator of spam. This can mean that each time your mailbox is reported for a spam complaint by another email recipient, your overall limit gets lowered. 

What Are The Sending Limits of Popular Email Providers?

Every email provider offers various email sending limits based on their capacity, subscription plans and other features.  

It's important to note many email provider software will consider any contact being CC'd or BCC'd on an email as a separate message and recipient. 

Here's a look at some sending limits of the most popular inbox providers:

1. Google Workspace

Messages - 2,000 per day

Total recipients - 10,000 per day

External recipients -  3,000 per day

Google also imposes a maximum limit of 2,000 recipients per email (but, this limits moves down to 500 recipients per email for external recipients).

2. Gmail 

Messages - 500 per day

Total recipients - 500 per day

Google doesn't define hourly email limits. However, it's best to limit your emails to less than 20 per hour. 

3. Microsoft O365

Messages - 30 messages every minute

Total recipients - 10,000 per day

It should also be noted that the maximum number of recipients that can receive a single message is 500.

4. Exchange Server

Messages - No limit

Total recipients - No limit

5. Exchange Online

Messages - 30 messages every minute

Total recipients - 10,000 per day

6. Outlook

Messages - 30 messages every minute

Total recipients - 5,000 per day

The above figures are for Microsoft 365 subscribers. Actual limits can be lower based on the age of the email account, how often the account is used and subscription status. 

7. Yahoo Mail

Messages - 500 per day

Total recipients - Each email message can be sent to a maximum of 100 recipients

8. Rackspace 

Messages - No limit

Total recipients - 10,000 per day

Rackspace limits automated emails to a much lower amount.

9. GoDaddy 

Messages - 200 per minute and 300 per hour

Total recipients - 500 per day

10. Bluehost

Messages - 150 per hour

Total recipients -  No limit

You might notice your emails going to spam even after you've followed the sending limits of your email client. 

Let's dig a bit deeper into why that happens. 

Why Are Your Emails Being Marked Spam?

A surge in your email activity can cause your outgoing emails to be marked spam by any internet service provider through spam filters. It's also crucial to be consider increased email activity if you are onboarding a new sales rep, or are reactivating a previously suspended account.

This is because a spike in activity or reports is a risky signal for inbox providers and increases the likelihood multiple contacts will react badly (and report) your outreach email message within a short period. 

There can also be specific tactical errors on your sequnces which lead to manual spam reports, which will also reduce your sending limits and even suspend your account in some cases. 

Many people believe there's an ideal time to send cold outreach and marketing emails, usually when contacts are just about to start their workday and check email. 

The problem with this thinking is that — when people try to schedule all of their commercial email messages within a short interval, it will look suspicious to an email client. 

This could make spam filters send all your outreach and marketing emails to the spam folder — especially if you use a mailbox that otherwise has no regular email activity. 

To prevent this, schedule your bulk email at regular intervals from your email sending platform, and within the stipulated sending limits we've mentioned below —  and look to ensure your daily increase in email activity does not exceed 100% in a cold outreach campaign. 

This way, your spam email rate will decrease, and your inbox placement rate will continue to increase to healthy levels. 

In the case that you need to increase email volume and frequency, and you don't want to trigger spam filters, you also need to consider sending emails in batches, also referred to as email throttling.

If you're working with a sending platform like Outreach, you can integrate Allegrow's email throttling capabilities, while simultaneously using the specific features and settings that are designed for bulk sending emails. Combined this will help you stay within the daily email sending limits, stay compliant with Google and Yahoo's sender guidelines, and ultimately stay out of the spam folder.

However, you should also be aware of other issues that may cause your emails to end up in spam. These can include email authentication issues related to the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DKIM, and sending emails to a spam trap — resulting in low domain reputation and IP reputation scores. 

Ideal Sending Limits For Outreach Emails

As mentioned earlier, almost every email client has daily email limits that range in the thousands. 

However, if you send out tons of cold emails or email marketing campaigns daily, you risk the majority of your messages being intercepted by spam filters.

To avoid this, set a sending limit for each mailbox you use to conduct cold email outreach. 

Our guidance for sending limits can vary based on your situation. 

For example, if you have an existing domain and mailbox (which is warmed up and throttled for cold email outreach), 50 cold emails a day would be considered safe. 

However, if you have a new mailbox on an existing domain, you can safely send only 30 emails. For a new mailbox on a new domain, that number drops further to 20. 

You can stop considering a domain as new once it's been used over email for 3-6 months with real prospects. (this is not related to the age of the domain from a registration perspective). 

Here are our full email outreach guidelines:

A good practice in cold email outreach and even general email marketing is not to start with a mass email campaign that fills up your mailbox sending limit. 

Ideally, you should start sending a very low number of emails and slowly reach your mailbox limit. 

This approach is known as throttle sending - and it's a process of gradually increasing the number of outreach emails sent out to avoid high spam complaint rates. 

Read our guide to know more about inbox placement and how how you should monitor it.

3 Ways To Reduce Your Spam Rate

Three ways to decrease the number of emails ending up in spam are:

1. Segment Your Email List

Always segment your email list and focus your mass email outreach into smaller, more targeted groups of prospects based on triggers.

This way of sending personalized emails is a great way to increase your inbox placement and really engage any email recipient. 

Why?

Hyper relevance.

Hyper relevance involves going beyond the usual segmentation criteria for personalized emails like:

• Industry
• Job roles
• Age
• Location

Instead, you'll want to establish the right time to reach out. You can do this by using  data sources like:

• What the prospect engages with on social media.
• Changes to tech stacks within companies.
• Product reviews left by prospects on platforms like G2.

Gathering and understanding this data can help you extensively segment your email list and send personalized emails. 

Your emails will be sent to contacts from your mailing list who are fundamentally more likely to need your product or service — reducing your spam complaint rate as well. 

Additionally, you could use account-based marketing (ABM) tactics to ensure you land in the inboxes of companies that other departments (like marketing/sales) are also focused on targeting and engaging. 

While conducting cold outreach on an ABM basis, you'll want to explore creating additional limits to avoid saturating those accounts with cold emails:

• Minimum Spacing: The minimum time gap between sending an email to another contact at the same account. 

• Active Contacts: Number of contacts who can be emailed within 30 days. 

• Unenrollment Trigger: The trigger to remove a contact from your email cadence due to their unresponsiveness.

Here are some guidelines to follow based on business sizes:

2. Avoid Third-Party SMTPs and Alias Emails

Many people use alias emails to centralize their incoming emails. It's a great way to receive messages from multiple email addresses in a single inbox. 

The issue arises when businesses use alias email addresses to send outbound emails. 

When you send outbound messages from alias email addresses, the account that sends the email and the account mentioned in the From field are different. 

Because of this, spam email senders often use an alias email addresses to distribute spam email campaigns several times under various names, using one email license. 

This can put the email service provider on ‘high alert’ and makes it more likely for your messages to ending up in spam email folders. 

Third-party SMTPs can also reduce your cold email inbox placement rates. They use services like SendGrid and AWS, designed for an opt-in mailing list and bulk email marketing campaigns to subscribers. 

Since these third-party SMTPs have a capabilities to send far larger volumes of emails within short time-frame, every email service provider tends to scrutinize them thoroughly.

This can, in turn, affects your campaigns — making them end up in a spam folder more often. 

3. Use Allegrow 

While trying out the tips we've covered can help you reduce your spam rate to a certain degree — pairing them up with an email deliverability tool will give you the best results. 

Allegrow uses a B2B inbox network that interacts with your emails and increases your sender reputation. 

Here's what Allegrow does:

• Sends emails from your mailbox to inboxes within the Allegrow network. 
• Gets the email recipient inboxes to engage with your emails. Including by repling and marking your emails as important — raising your sender reputation.
• Monitors your inbox placement rate to measure the effectiveness of your outreach strategy. 
• Integrates with your mailbox provider, as well as your analytics and automation apps. 
• Helps you compare the sender reputations of the mailboxes of various team members.

Here are some of Allegrow's key features:

• Provides insight into sender reputations and spam rates of different mailboxes on your domain.

• Provides a record of email sending and reply patterns from the network. 

• Provides suggestions with a ‘deliverability coach’ to optimize your email performance.

• Helps you A/B test email content to determine which variants perform better against spam filtering. 

• A leaderboard shows you which individual mailboxes are performing well and which have to be optimized further.

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Minimize Spam Rates With Allegrow

Sending too many emails not only raises your spam rate but can also hurt your sender reputation. 

Unfortunately, there's no universal “safe” sending limit — it depends on various factors. 

However, you can follow the tactics we've mentioned and pair them up with an email deliverability platform like Allegrow to minimize your spam rate. 

Book a demo with one of our email deliverability experts to review your email sending strategy and ensure your emails don't get considered spam.

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