Email Attachment Compressor
Last reviewed: May 2026
Modern phones produce 3–5 MB photos. Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo cap at 20–25 MB total per message — meaning a 10-photo album busts the limit before the email is even drafted. Sukat compresses your photos to a per-image budget you set, in your browser, so the email goes as a real attachment instead of a "click to download from Google Drive" link. Drop, set target, ZIP, attach.
Email attachment limits at a glance
| Provider | Per-message limit | Behaviour over the limit |
|---|---|---|
| Gmail | 25 MB total | Offers to upload to Google Drive + send link |
| Outlook (Outlook.com / 365) | 20 MB total | Offers OneDrive link or rejects |
| Yahoo Mail | 25 MB total | Offers Yahoo Drive link or rejects |
| iCloud Mail | 20 MB total | Offers Mail Drop (cloud link) |
| ProtonMail | 25 MB total | Hard reject above the cap |
| Most enterprise / Exchange | 10–20 MB total | Hard reject; rules set by IT |
Sizing per-image: divide the cap by the number of photos and leave 10–20% headroom for email body, signatures, and inline images. 10 photos under a 25 MB cap = 1.5–2 MB per photo. 20 photos = 1 MB per photo. 50 photos = 400 KB per photo.
How to compress images for email
- Upload your photos. Drop one or many photos onto Sukat. JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF, and GIF inputs are all accepted.
- Set a per-image budget. Type the cap into Maximum File Size and choose KB or MB. For most email galleries, 1 MB per image is the sweet spot. Choose JPEG for universal compatibility (some older Outlook installs still hiccup on WebP attachments).
- Convert and ZIP. Click Convert & Download. With multiple files, leave the Download as a single ZIP file option checked — the recipient unpacks it natively on Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android.
When email-image compression matters
- Vacation photo dumps to family who don't use shared albums — Mum gets the photos as real attachments, not a link to a service she doesn't have an account on.
- Real-estate listings emailed to clients — 30 photos at 800 KB each fit comfortably under 25 MB and load directly in any inbox preview.
- Insurance and damage claims — many insurers require photos as email attachments, not as cloud links, for record-keeping reasons.
- Legal and contract documents — scanned signatures, ID copies, and supporting documents work better as direct attachments where the audit trail stays inside the mail server.
- Job applications — recruiters open attachments, not Drive links from a stranger. Resume + portfolio + headshot fits easily under 5 MB total.
- Newsletter drafts — when you're emailing photos to a designer or editor for an upcoming issue, attaching is faster than uploading to a CMS first.
- Sensitive content — anything you wouldn't want sitting in a third-party cloud (medical, financial, identity documents). Pre-compressing locally and attaching keeps the data in the email channel only.
- Slow or metered connections — sending 10 × 800 KB attachments over hotel Wi-Fi is dramatically faster than uploading 10 × 4 MB originals to a cloud-link fallback.
Why Sukat for email attachments
Hits a target you set. Generic compressors guess; Sukat takes the constraint directly. If your email cap is 20 MB and you have eight photos, set 2 MB per image and the algorithm finds the highest quality that fits.
Batch + ZIP in one step. Drop all your photos, set the per-image target, and Sukat returns a single ZIP. No need to recompress one file at a time and re-attach. The recipient unpacks the ZIP with the OS-native unzipper on every modern platform.
HEIC support. If you're on iPhone, your camera roll is HEIC by default. Most desktop email clients render HEIC poorly or not at all for the recipient. Sukat decodes HEIC in the browser and outputs a universally readable JPG.
Privacy by default. Compression runs entirely in your browser via the Canvas API. Your photos never reach a server — particularly important when the photos themselves are the reason you're using email instead of a cloud link. Verify by switching to airplane mode after the page loads.
EXIF + GPS stripped on re-encode. If you're sending photos to anyone outside your immediate circle, dropping the embedded geolocation is usually a privacy win.
FAQ
What are the email attachment limits I should compress for?
Gmail and Yahoo cap at 25 MB total per message. Outlook (Outlook.com / Microsoft 365) caps at 20 MB. Apple iCloud Mail caps at 20 MB. Most enterprise mail servers enforce 10–20 MB. Aim per-image based on how many photos you're sending — 1 MB per photo for 10 images, or 500 KB per photo for 20 images.
What happens if I attach an image bigger than the limit?
Gmail offers to upload the file to Google Drive and send a link instead — which works, but the recipient has to click through, and many people are wary of links from outside their organisation. Outlook simply rejects the attachment. The cleanest experience is to compress before attaching so the image goes as a real attachment, not a link.
Can I compress multiple photos at once for one email?
Yes. Drop all the photos onto Sukat, set a per-image target, and check the ZIP option. You receive a single .zip ready to attach. Gmail and Outlook both unpack ZIP attachments with no extra software required for the recipient on Windows, macOS, iOS, or Android.
Will compressing strip EXIF and metadata?
Yes. Re-encoding through the Canvas API drops EXIF, GPS, and depth-map data. For an email — especially to a recipient outside your organisation — this is usually a privacy benefit, not a problem. If you specifically need to preserve metadata, use a native tool that supports lossless compression.
Does Sukat work with iPhone HEIC for email?
Yes. iPhone HEIC photos work directly. Sukat decodes HEIC in the browser and outputs a universally readable JPG, WebP, or PNG. For sending to non-Apple recipients, JPG is the safe default. See Convert HEIC to JPG for the dedicated HEIC workflow.
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. Compression runs entirely in your browser via the Canvas API. Your photos never reach a server. Verify by switching to airplane mode after the page loads — compression still works because there's no network call.
Related tools
- Compress Image to 100KB — for very tight email galleries (50+ photos)
- Reduce Image Size in KB — pick any custom KB or MB target
- Convert HEIC to JPG — for iPhone-to-email workflows
- Compress HEIC — when keeping HEIC across Apple-only recipients
- Image Size Guide — full file-size reference for every platform