Why Gmail Clips Your Newsletter (and How to Stay Under 102KB)
If a reader has ever asked where the rest of your newsletter went, Gmail probably clipped it. When an email’s HTML is bigger than about 102KB, Gmail shows the first part and replaces the rest with “[Message clipped] View entire message.”
The reader can click through. Most don’t.
What gets hidden
Everything below the cut: your last stories, any sponsor placed near the bottom, the footer and the unsubscribe link. A reader who wants out and can’t find the unsubscribe link has one easy option left, the spam button.
The open-tracking pixel often sits near the bottom of an email too. When it’s below the cut, the open isn’t counted, so a clipped send can look worse in your reports than it did in inboxes.
What counts toward the limit
Gmail measures the HTML of the message, not the images it links to. A large photo hosted on a server adds a line of code, not megabytes. What adds weight:
- Inline styles, repeated on every paragraph, link and table cell. Templates and editors add a lot of them.
- Tracking links. Every link rewritten for click tracking gets longer, and a newsletter can have dozens.
- Pasted-in code: comments, empty tags and leftover styling copied from a document or another tool.
- Embedded images, when an image is placed in the HTML itself as data instead of being linked.
Gmail doesn’t document the exact number. Senders have measured it at about 102KB, so aim to stay well under it.
How to check yours
Weigh the HTML before you send. You want two answers: how many KB it is, and what’s making it heavy.
To see the cut for yourself, run the same HTML through Inbox preview, which photographs it in a real Gmail inbox and marks whether it was clipped.
How to slim it down
- Cut repeated styling. Many templates set the same font, color and size on every element. Remove styles that repeat or do nothing.
- Shorten links. Fewer links per story, and no tracked links in places nobody clicks.
- Clean pasted content. Paste copy in as plain text and format it in your editor instead.
- Trim the issue. If it’s still over, the issue is probably too long. Move the last section to the web and link to it.
In Letterhead
Letterhead’s composer shows Email Weight on every issue while you write, with what’s making it heavy. It also strips redundant styling from what it sends, so the email goes out lighter than you wrote it.
Frequently asked questions
Does clipping hurt deliverability? Not directly. But a hidden unsubscribe link leads to more spam complaints, and complaints do hurt.
Do images count toward Gmail’s limit? Linked images don’t. Gmail measures the HTML. Images embedded as data inside the code do count.
How do I know if my last issue was clipped? Open it in Gmail and look for “[Message clipped]” at the bottom, or paste the HTML into the Gmail clipping checker to see its weight.