Email Attachment Size Limits

attachmentemailmaximumquota

Given I have plenty of disk space to work with, what are some technical considerations that I need to consider when configuring email attachment size limits?

Best Answer

Some of the considerations:

  • Mail limits on other email systems, not everyone likes receiving 150MB attachments. Bounces will annoy YOUR users (and consume their quota, if any), and generate calls.
  • Any mailbox size quotas you have in place. Large attachments make hitting them a LOT easier.
  • Large-attachment virus scanning overhead.
  • If your mailer is database backed (Exchange, others) how large of a database you're willing to put up with.
  • How long it takes to recover from disaster. A large mail-store can take a lot longer than smaller ones.
  • How many users you have and however long it takes to hit whatever mail-quotas you have in place.
  • Mail client mail-download times(1). If a user has a 15GB mailbox, even in IMAP some clients will pull down all the mail.
  • Mail client mail-download times(2). 75MB attachments can take a really long time to pull from your mail-server. This may annoy users.
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