Email attachment limits

Email remains the dominant way businesses communicate. It is easy, it is everywhere, and it delivers messages and attachments in near real time. But with rich digital content such as graphics, video, audio and large presentations, email is often the wrong way to get files from one place to another.

Email isn't designed for large files

Email gateways are usually set to restrict attachments, typically to around 10 MB. Even if your gateway allowed larger files, the recipient's gateway probably wouldn't accept them. Sending files over SMTP is inefficient and uses a lot of bandwidth.

Attachments also drive the growth of email storage, which raises costs and creates business continuity risk: backing up and restoring a large mail server can take more than 24 hours. Attachments make up 80 to 90 percent of the average corporate email store.

You can't get work done if you can't send files

Because of attachment limits, many people simply can't send the files they need to share with colleagues, customers and partners. To get work done, they fall back on more expensive, less secure options:

• Overnight couriers such as FedEx or DHL, which are slow and expensive compared with email
• FTP servers and clients, which are complex to use and costly to manage
• Consumer file-sharing services, which aren't secure enough for company data

Because of IT restrictions on the size of file attachments, many business users cannot send files and collaborate with their customers, partners and colleagues.