Email Attachment Limits

[wsuccess]

As far as I can tell, there is a limit to the maximum size of an attachment on an incoming email that HostGator will allow through. I say as far as I can tell, as I have had conflicting information from tech support, conflicting information in forum posts, and absolutely no mention of the subject that I can find in any online documentation, help, or FAQs. I had a client send a 7MB file as an attachment and it simply never showed up. No informational message to the sender or recipient, no email body stripped of the attachment, it just disappeared.

Suggestions:

1) Add a topic to the FAQ under EMAIL (or find another place if there is something more appropriate that I missed) explaining the policy so that users don't have to run around wondering if it is a temporary problem, a sender-side problem, or a "feature."

2) Send a notification to sender and/or receiver (preferably both) that the email size was too large to allow through.

3) Make sure that tech support knows what the limit is for an incoming email attachment. I heard 5MB and 2MB from Ben and Hillary. 2MB must be wrong, as I have received larger files.

4) If possible, allow the email body through without the attachment and a note to that effect.

5) Institute an extra-cost option to bump up allowed email attachment sizes for users who need them. People working with graphics files often have large file sizes. This would give HostGator extra income and allow legitimate business needs to be fulfilled.

--Ken

[hotdog]

could also be a case of timing out

[caersiddi]

I've had no problems sending large (20MB) attachments via webmail or authenticated smtp.

I don't do it that often, but a friend who I recommened hostgator to regularly sends ~10MB files. That's the main reason I suggested he had a HG account and he's had no problems either.



Ian

[amartins]

Yup no problem here I sent out and received 3 or 4 8Mb+ emails today no problems. The server I am on requires SMTP authentication so that may be the reason we dont have problems.

Antonio.

[gregw]

I've emailed 10meg+ files plenty of times, but I think the best solution is to setup a subdomain for your uploads and give your artists full access to those folders. My artists posts 100+meg files fairly often. This also allows more than one user to download/upload at their convenience.

By setting up FTP users, we can limit their access to their project folders: (artist1@mydomain.com ---> public_html/uploads/artist1)
(artist2@mydomain.com ---> public_html/uploads/artist2, etc...)

The other benefit is you can resume interrupted file transfers if your connection is lost.

[karz10]

The only problems that I'm aware of personally with emailing large attachments is when someone on the other end has problems receiving it from me due to their ISP's restrictions, which usually results in a bounce email back to me, or if they were restricted on their side of sending me something, depending on who's doing their server, it may be on their end and they don't know it.

Sometimes it may not be relevant to the attachment, their may have been some breakdown of the email delivery in general. It's always a good idea to check your DNS settings to make sure there's no reason why someone's server would discard your mail going out, and if you don't receive something from someone, they should do the same...

Karz

[nlstart]

Of course there is a maximum; at least for Squirrel Webmail this is arranged in the PHP ini settings.
If you create a new e-mail in Webmail, take a closer look at the attachment field. The maximum file size from the PHP ini file should be visible there.
With my Aluminum hosting package it is 50 Mb.

Not receiving the mail can also be because of the receiving ISP. Some just cut off any incoming attachment larger than 8 Mb.
Some ISP's have strict regulations about which file type you send, and therefore ban some file types (e.g.: .mp3, .exe).
Also the reveiving side could time out when sending huge files. In the PHP settings there are all kind of maximum time limit restrictions. So when sending large attachments it could very well be you exceed those limits.

Anyway, to my humble opinion e-mail was never invented to transport large attachments. It is better to use FTP for file transfers.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by nlstart

Of course there is a maximum; at least for Squirrel Webmail this is arranged in the PHP ini settings.
If you create a new e-mail in Webmail, take a closer look at the attachment field. The maximum file size from the PHP ini file should be visible there.
With my Aluminum hosting package it is 50 Mb.

The 50mb limit is correct. This is the same on most HG servers. The limit comes from the max post size in php.ini.


Remember that the mail box size limits some things as well. You can't get a 50mb file into a 10mb mail box.

I found this thread while looking at a similar problem and thought I'd share the solution I found - it's a great site called Courio (http://www.courio.com), which lets you send files up to 99MB in size absolutely free.

Seems pretty good - I've used it a couple of times so far.

Hope this is of some use to you all.

Maxx