Email Size & Gmail Clipping

What is the ideal size for my email?

This is a common question among email marketers looking to maximize their campaigns - and there are many differing opinions. Realistically, there is no perfect size for an email - but there are certain things to keep in mind, especially depending on your intended audience.

One of the most common reasons to be mindful of email size is Gmail clipping, which impacts any HTML file larger than 102 KB. However, some Email Sending Platforms (ESPs) implement their own HTML size limits. The size of an HTML file can also sometimes impact deliverability.

The size of images included in an email does not contribute to the size of an email. However, the file size of images included in an email does contribute to your data traffic. For full details on how this works, please see the Hosted Image Delivery article. Additionally, large image files can impact loading times, particularly on slower connections or mobile devices with limited bandwidth.

What is Gmail Clipping?

As mentioned above, Gmail "clips" designs for HTML files over 102KB. This can happen regardless of the sending method, so we recommend being mindful of the size of your exported design. Our HTML parser for emails is optimized to reduce the size of the file as much as possible, but some design elements may increase the HTML footprint. 

Sometimes, Gmail clipping results in an annoying message at the bottom of the design. In other situations, Gmail clipping can cause content to be hidden behind the View entire message link. In some cases, it can even cause HTML to break and render as plaintext inside the email client.

How can I avoid Gmail clipping?

Below we’ve listed some design elements that commonly contribute to Gmail clipping. We’ve also included some common causes and recommended best practices that we’ve found over the years to help mitigate the behavior:

• Heavily formatted text: Start with plain text and apply formatting once all text is in place. 
• Using the hide on desktop/mobile feature, Try to create a single design optimized for any type of device. Hiding content creates conditional statements and often requires duplication of content, which can result in a large HTML file. Alternatively, mobile styles are a great way to optimize content without duplicating it.
• Adding new rows for each content block: When possible, stack content blocks inside of the same row.  
• Frequent use of dividers: Use padding in place of dividers to cut down on the HTML footprint for your design. 

This is by no means a comprehensive list! If you need any more help troubleshooting why Gmail is clipping your email, feel free to let us know.

Email Height

When the content of an email is particularly long, this can also cause some issues in various email clients, even if the HTML weight is under 102 KB. We’re aware of at least two limitations surrounding email design height that we recommend being mindful of. Both behaviors are specific to different Outlook clients:

1. Desktop Outlook on Windows: If your email includes an image file with a height larger than 1728px, then you may experience image cropping or re-scaling. Note that the height limit applies to the original image file rather than the resized version included in your design. To avoid this issue, we recommend resizing images before you upload them to the file manager. Alternatively, you can slice tall images horizontally and insert them on top of each other without padding. 
2. Mobile Outlook on iOS: Similar to Gmail, Outlook on iOS devices will clip emails with a height that exceeds 5000px. However, this clipping behavior relies entirely on the height of your content. HTML weight does not seem to play a role.

If you’ve experienced any other issues with email size or weight, let us know!