How do some mail merge add-ons offer message quota over 500/day?

[Tony Henrich]

I read conflicting information about how many messages a free Gmail account can send out each day. It's 100 according to Google and 500 mentioned in some websites including some of the mail merge add-ons.

Let's say it's 500, the bigger number.

Then there's a mail merge like MailMeteor offering an upgrade plan where the user can send 2000/day for $8.99/month. I know that a Google Workspace user can send 2000.

My question is how do some mail merge add-ons offer plans where the user can send 2000/day?  If the mail-add on is using their own third party mail gateway like SendGrid, doesn't this mean the add-on is using a SendGrid account to send out all those users' emails? Maybe more than a single SendGrid account. So what if a paid user sends out a lot of spam and SendGrid blocks the account, wouldn't that block all the mail add-on's users from being able to send mail through that account? Unless the add-on switches to another SendGrid account. I understand that the add-on user doesn't know anything about SendGrid  and all the mail delivery is done behind the scenes.

I am trying to understand how these add-ons offer the capability of sending that many emails above Google's quota. 

[Alan Wells]

The only way that any add-on can send more emails than the Gmail recipient quota of that account, is to use some external mail sending service.

And the add-on would need to make a UrlFetchApp.fetch(url) request to some external place.

It's not apparent what mail sending service Mailmeteor uses.

Maybe someone else knows.

I did install it and took a look at it, but didn't sign up for a plan.

I looks like the free Mailmeteor plan just uses the Gmail quota of the account that installed the add-on.

I'm assuming that once you pay for a plan, that the add-on makes an external request with UrlFetchApp.fetch(url) to the external mail sending service.

Mailmeteor does ask for permission to send emails from your account, and to make external requests.

It's possible that Mailmeteor has it's own mail sending service, and uses the Google add-on as a way to reach customers.

But I'm just guessing.  Send Grids lowest plan is $15 a month, and Mailmeteor's cheapest plan is 8.99 a month.

So Mailmeteor would be loosing money unless they had a plan that cost them on average less than 8.99 a month for the same number of emails sent.

It's an interesting question.

I don't have the real answer, but those are my thoughts.

[Tony Henrich]

I don't know what mailMeteor's uses for sending 2000 a day per paid customer. SendGrid was just an example I used. There are cheaper options like Amazon SES which is 20 cents for every 1000 emails but that adds up to $6/month which means MailMeteor is making just $8.99 - $6 = $2.99. 

Technically I can send out tens or hundreds of thousands of emails every day if I install a mail server software on my home computer and send emails out as fast as my machine can pump them out. Would Comcast my provider allow this? I don't know. Plus if Google decides to block my ip address because of spam issues then my machine can't send anymore to any @gmail.com account. That's a big problem.

[Tony Henrich]

I read the information further and turns out the 2000 emails/day is if the account is a workspace account which Google offers and it's 500 for the free gmail accounts. The 2000 number in bold threw me off. This means they're sending within Google's quota and no third party mail services are involved.
However GMass which is a gmail Chrome extension does use SendGrid to send overflow emails.

[Joshua Snyder]

The limits are 1500 for general email recipients and only 2000 for recipients within the same domain, which won't be the case for most of the mail merge addons.

You can find the Apps Script quotas here: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/services/quotas

[Joshua Snyder]

Apologies, that was confusing. It's 1500 for senders with a Google Workspace account.

[Romain Vialard]

You can also use the raw Gmail API instead of GmailApp.

In that case, you won't be restricted by Apps Script specific quotas but by the standard sending limits in Google Workspace.

Standard sending limits allow 2000 emails / day and up to 3000 external recipients per day (if you include multiple recipients per email).