How to send a newsletter from Gmail (and when not to)
Three ways to send a newsletter from Gmail, the daily limits Google sets, and when a list is too big for your own mailbox.
You can send a newsletter from Gmail. Plenty of small newsletters start that way: a founder writing to customers, a club writing to members, a writer with a few hundred readers. The mailbox you already use has a good reputation, readers recognise your name, and replies land where you read them. The trouble starts when the list grows, because Gmail is built for conversations, not for lists. This guide covers the three ways to do it, the limits Google sets, and the point where a dedicated newsletter tool is the better choice.
Option 1: BCC everyone
The simplest way is one email with every reader in the BCC field. It works for a handful of people and fails quickly after that. There is no unsubscribe link, so the only way out for a reader is to ask you or press "Report spam", and spam reports hurt every email you send afterwards, including normal ones. You also have no list to manage: new readers, bounced addresses and people who asked to leave live in your head or in a spreadsheet. And every recipient counts against Gmail's daily sending limit.
Option 2: A mail merge add-on
Mail merge add-ons send one personal email per row of a Google Sheet. Each reader gets their own copy with their name in it, which looks better than a BCC blast. But the sheet is still your subscriber list, so signups, unsubscribes and bounces are manual work. Most add-ons also count against the same Gmail daily limit, because they send through your account.
Option 3: Connect Gmail to a newsletter tool
The third way keeps Gmail as the sender but hands the list work to a newsletter tool. The tool holds the subscribers, adds the unsubscribe link, paces the sending and stops when Gmail says stop. Readers still see your own address, and replies still arrive in your inbox.
This is how Terlido Newsletter works. You connect your Gmail or Google Workspace account with a Google app password (Google requires 2-Step Verification before it shows the app password option; on Workspace an administrator can turn app passwords off). Then you write a broadcast and press Prepare send. A send checklist must pass before anything goes out: a postal address in the footer, a working mailbox, at least one recipient, and the unsubscribe link and header in the email. New readers confirm by email first, because double opt-in is on for every new brand.
Terlido Newsletter is free up to 10,000 subscribers on one brand. Free emails carry a small "Sent with Terlido Newsletter" line in the footer. If you have a list somewhere else, you can import it from a CSV file of up to 20,000 rows, for example an export from Mailchimp, beehiiv or Substack.
Gmail sending limits you need to know
Google limits how much one account can send in a day. Its help pages give 500 recipients a day for a personal Gmail account and 2,000 messages a day for Google Workspace. Go over the limit and Gmail can stop the account from sending for up to 24 hours, and that includes your normal email.
A newsletter tool cannot raise those limits; it can only respect them. Terlido sends at most 20 emails a minute from one mailbox, spaced a few seconds apart, and never lets a Gmail mailbox's daily setting go above 2,000. A broadcast only uses the part of the daily limit that is left after any outreach, warmup and a reserve for transactional email, so the "Ready to send?" window tells you how many days the send will take. If Gmail still answers that the mailbox reached its limit, Terlido pauses that mailbox for 4 hours and sends the waiting emails afterwards. Nothing is lost. If you also run outreach from the same mailbox, read how warmup and campaigns share one send budget.
Some quick maths: with a personal Gmail account and 500 sends a day, 2,000 readers take about four days. That is fine for a monthly letter and too slow for a daily one.
Keep Gmail happy
Google's email sender guidelines ask every sender to authenticate their email and keep spam reports low. Senders who reach about 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts must also set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC and offer one-click unsubscribe. Even below that line, the same habits help: only email people who asked to hear from you, make leaving easy, and remove addresses that bounce. Terlido's anti-spam policy sets out the same rules for everyone who sends with it.
When Gmail is the wrong choice
Sending from your own mailbox suits newsletters up to a few thousand readers, sent weekly or monthly, where replies matter. It is the wrong choice when the list is large and the issues are frequent: tens of thousands of readers every day will hit the daily limit long before the send is done. At that size, a dedicated sending domain and an email service built for bulk mail are the better fit. It is also worth keeping newsletters off a mailbox you need for urgent work email, so a busy send day never blocks a reply to a customer.