SMTP Server Google Workspace

A Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server for Google Workspace is the outbound mail gateway, typically smtp.gmail.com, used to send emails from a Google account. For outbound operations, teams often configure their sequencing tools or applications to use this server to send emails through their existing Google Workspace inboxes. This leverages Google's infrastructure for sending, but it comes with significant limitations designed for personal and business communication, not high-volume cold email.

While using Google's SMTP server seems convenient, it becomes a critical bottleneck for any serious outbound operation sending over 300k emails per month. Understanding its limitations is an infrastructure problem, not a content problem.

1. Hard Sending Limits: Google Workspace imposes a strict limit of 2,000 emails per 24-hour period for paid accounts. For any company trying to send millions of emails, this limit makes it impossible to achieve volume without managing hundreds or thousands of individual inboxes, creating an operational nightmare.
2. Shared Reputation Risk: When you send through smtp.gmail.com, your domain's sending reputation is tied to Google's perception of your activity on their shared infrastructure. A single campaign with high bounce or complaint rates can get your account—and potentially your entire domain—flagged, throttling or blocking all future sends.
3. Lack of Infrastructure Control: You have zero control over the underlying IP addresses, sending configurations, or detailed deliverability logs. You cannot isolate your sending reputation or diagnose deliverability issues at an infrastructure level because you are a tenant on Google's platform, not an owner of the infrastructure.

Using Google's SMTP server is only viable at very low volumes. As soon as you intend to scale, you need a different infrastructure strategy.

Phase 1: Low-Volume Testing (Under 10k emails/month)
At this stage, using a few dozen Google Workspace accounts to send 30-50 emails per day each is manageable. The primary focus is on manual warmup and staying well below the 2,000-email daily limit to avoid account suspension.

Why This Breaks at Scale
This model collapses when you need to send hundreds of thousands or millions of emails. The cost and complexity of purchasing, warming up, and rotating hundreds of Google Workspace seats, plus managing the associated domains, becomes a full-time job. The risk of one account suspension impacting others is high, and there is no centralized way to manage deliverability.

When Teams Outgrow This Setup
Teams outgrow this setup the moment their primary challenge shifts from writing copy to managing infrastructure. When you spend more time dealing with locked accounts and daily sending limits than analyzing campaign results, you need dedicated infrastructure. For companies sending 1M+ emails/month, the only viable solution is to move off shared consumer-grade SMTP servers and onto a private email infrastructure platform like SuperSend Relay, which is built for high-volume cold outbound.

1. Centralizing Sends Through One Account: Attempting to use a single Google Workspace account as a centralized relay for a high-volume application. This will trigger rate limits and get the account suspended within hours.
2. Ignoring Per-User Limits: Assuming the 2,000-email limit is per domain rather than per user account. This fundamental misunderstanding leads to constant account lockouts and campaign failures as individual inboxes hit their caps.
3. Treating It Like a Dedicated Relay: Funneling server notifications, application emails, and cold outbound through the same Google SMTP connection. This mixes sending reputations and provides no ability to troubleshoot deliverability for your critical outbound campaigns.

For companies sending 1M+ emails/month, understanding the limitations of shared SMTP servers like those from Google Workspace is critical. Success at scale depends on treating email as an infrastructure challenge, not a software configuration, to maintain domain reputation, ensure deliverability, and scale operations safely. This requires moving beyond consumer-grade tools to dedicated outbound infrastructure.