Can you send a newsletter from Gmail or Outlook? The limits and where they stop

A first newsletter often goes out from the same place as all other mail: Gmail or Outlook, with the recipients in the BCC field. For a small list that works. The limit arrives from two directions: the provider cuts off sending after a certain number of recipients, and the law requires things of a marketing email that an email client does not do on its own. This page collects both from Google’s and Microsoft’s own help pages and from EU law.

Short answer

You can send a newsletter from Gmail or Outlook if you have fewer than 500 recipients and send rarely. Above that, sending has to be split across several days, and every unsubscribe has to be removed from the list by hand. Free email tools cover 2,000 to 2,500 recipients, with an unsubscribe link and bounce handling built in.

• When you hit Gmail’s limit

  EmailOctopus

  2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month on the free plan, with an unsubscribe link in every email.

  Start free — 2,500 subscribers (ad)

• When you send often

  Systeme.io

  2,000 contacts with no sending limit on the free plan.

  Start free — 2,000 contacts (ad)

• When the list is large but you send rarely

  Brevo

  The free plan does not limit the number of contacts; it allows 300 emails a day.

  Start free — 300 emails/day

Gmail and Outlook sending limits side by side

All four services limit both the recipients of one message and the daily total. According to Google’s Workspace help and Microsoft’s Exchange description, the per-message limit covers the To, Cc and Bcc fields together, so BCC does not get around it.

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Read from the providers’ own pages on 23 October 2026: Gmail, Limits for sending and getting mail, Gmail sending limits in Google Workspace, Sending limits in Outlook.com and Exchange Online limits. “New” means recipients the account has never emailed before.

Two things follow from the table. Personal Gmail has the same limit of 500 per message and per day, so recipient number 501 moves the send to the next day. And Microsoft says outright that its service is not built for newsletters: the Exchange Online service description states that “Exchange Online customers who need to send legitimate bulk commercial email (for example, customer newsletters) should use third-party providers that specialize in these services”.

What the law requires, whatever sends the email

The law does not ask which program sends the email. It sets what the email must contain, and those requirements are the same in Gmail and in an email tool. Under Article 13 of the ePrivacy Directive:

• Prior consent before the first email. Email may be used for direct marketing only to recipients who have given their prior consent. The exception is an existing customer, who may be sent marketing for the sender’s own similar products.
• A free and easy way to object, offered in every message to an existing customer.
• No disguised sender, and a valid address to which the recipient can send a request that the emails stop.

In an email client each of these is manual work. There is no unsubscribe link, so the way to object has to be written into the email, and every “please stop” reply has to be removed from the list before the next newsletter. Proving consent afterwards is close to impossible from a Gmail address book, because it does not record when and how an address was obtained. National rules add their own details on top of the directive. The rules with sources: email marketing and GDPR and double opt-in by country.

What an email client lacks for a newsletter

The sending limit is the most visible difference, but not the only one. Four things make an email client heavy going for a newsletter well below the limit.

• Forgetting BCC. In the To or Cc field, every recipient sees everyone else’s address. Microsoft’s Outlook help says it directly: “Other people who receive the message don’t see whose address is on the Bcc line.” An email tool sends each recipient a separate email, so the mistake cannot happen.
• Bouncing addresses. According to Google’s help page, a large number of bounced emails can block sending for 24 hours, and Google’s sender guidelines tell senders to unsubscribe repeatedly bouncing recipients automatically. Email tools do this themselves: Mailchimp marks a repeatedly bouncing address as cleaned, and MailerLite treats three soft bounces in a row as a hard bounce. In Gmail you clean the addresses by hand. How to do it: email list cleaning.
• One-click unsubscribe. Under Google’s sender guidelines, anyone sending more than 5,000 emails a day to Gmail addresses must have DMARC and one-click unsubscribe. You cannot build that into an email client; in email tools it is built in. Moving to a tool requires your own domain, because according to MailerLite’s help page an address at a free email provider cannot be authenticated as the sender. Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook sender requirements.
• Open and click tracking. An email client does not tell you how many people opened the newsletter. What the open rate does and does not tell you: newsletter open rate.

Free plans that cover the same list

Leaving Gmail does not need a budget. Five of the seven tools we compare have a free plan, and three of them allow several times personal Gmail’s 500 recipients. EmailOctopus fits 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month on its free plan. Systeme.io allows 2,000 contacts with no sending limit. Brevo does not limit the number of contacts at all but allows 300 emails a day, so the same 500-person newsletter is split across two days, as in Gmail. The free plans of MailerLite and Mailchimp are 250 contacts, below Gmail’s own limit.

Below are the cheapest paid plans at three list sizes, in case the free plan is too small. Prices were read from the providers’ pricing pages, excluding VAT.

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Prices exclude VAT, billed monthly unless stated otherwise.(ad) = ad link

• The price is the monthly price of the cheapest paid plan at that list size. The Free plan column shows when you do not have to pay.
• EmailOctopus: the price list only shows the monthly price on annual billing. Monthly billing costs more.

The real limits of all five free plans, and where they stop: free email marketing. If the list is already in a Gmail address book, it exports as a CSV file to any of these. Before importing, check that you have consent for every address: the terms or help pages of all five forbid sending to addresses that have not given it.

Which suits whom

• Under 2,500 recipients, one newsletter a month → EmailOctopus: the free plan covers both the list and a month of sending. Try it free (ad)
• Under 2,000 recipients, a newsletter every week → Systeme.io: the free plan has no sending limit. Try it free (ad)
• A large address book, newsletters rarely → Brevo: the number of contacts is not limited, only the emails per day. Try it free
• The list must not leave the EU → MailerLite: the contracting party for EEA customers is the Irish MailerLite Limited, and the data centre is in the EU. Try it free

Who a free plan does not suit: if the newsletter goes to more than 2,500 recipients or needs automation such as a welcome series, the free plans fall short. Then start the comparison from price: the cheapest email tool by list size.

What we have not checked

The sending limits were read from Google’s and Microsoft’s own help pages, not measured by sending. Microsoft says Outlook.com limits vary with usage history and start lower on a new account; it gives no exact figure for a new account. Nor do we assess how well newsletters sent from Gmail or from the tools reach the inbox: that would be a measurement result, and there is no measurement. How we compare.