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Why Gmail clips your email, and how to stay under 102KB

Gmail hides anything past 102KB of HTML behind a "View entire message" link. Here's what counts towards the limit and how to cut your email down.

· 2 min read

If your email's HTML is bigger than about 102KB, Gmail cuts it off. Readers see the top part, then a line saying [Message clipped] and a link to view the entire message. Most never click it.

That's a problem for three reasons:

  • Your unsubscribe link is usually at the bottom, so it disappears. That annoys readers and can push them to report the email as spam instead.
  • Open tracking often breaks. Many email platforms put their tracking pixel at the end of the email, so a clipped email may never count as opened.
  • Anything you put at the bottom, like a footer offer or legal text, simply isn't seen.

What counts towards the limit

The limit is about the size of the HTML code, not the images:

  • Counts: every character of HTML and CSS, including comments, spaces, inline styles and tracking links your email platform adds.
  • Doesn't count: images hosted on a server and loaded with a normal <img src="https://...">. They're fetched separately.
  • Does count: images embedded straight into the HTML as data: code. Avoid those.

A common surprise is that an email which is 85KB when you export it becomes 105KB after your email platform rewrites every link for click tracking. Leave yourself headroom: we warn from 90KB.

How to get under it

  1. Minify the HTML. Remove line breaks, indentation and comments. This alone often saves 10 to 20 percent.
  2. Remove unused CSS. Templates built in a hurry often carry styles for components that aren't in this email.
  3. Stop repeating inline styles. If every table cell carries the same 200 characters of style="", put the shared parts in a <style> block in the <head>. Most modern clients support it, including Gmail.
  4. Simplify nested tables. Each extra layer of <table><tr><td> adds weight. Many layouts need fewer than you'd think.
  5. Split long emails. If a newsletter is genuinely huge, link to the full version on the web.

Check it before you send

EmailTestr measures every email you test and flags anything over 102KB as an error, with a warning from 90KB. The check is free, and it runs on every test alongside checks for broken links, images and alt text.