Google Workspace SMTP settings and limits for cold email (2026)

What Google Workspace is

Google Workspace is Google’s subscription for business email on your own domain, with Drive, Meet, Docs and Gemini around it, and Gmail is the mail service inside it. For cold email it is the mailbox provider most outreach runs on: a Workspace mailbox sends from Google’s infrastructure and connects to every serious sequencer over OAuth. This page covers what it costs, the SMTP settings, the sending limits and the sender rules that decide how hard a tenant can be pushed.

Google Workspace pricing for email

Every price is per user per month in US dollars, on an Annual Plan with a one-year commitment or a Flexible Plan billed monthly. Business Starter costs $7 annual or $8.40 flexible with 30 GB of pooled storage and custom email; Business Standard $14 or $16.80 with 2 TB, mail merge and meeting recording; Business Plus $22 or $26.40 with 5 TB, Vault and eDiscovery; Enterprise is quoted and has no user cap, while Business plans stop at 300 users. New customers pay 10% less for the first 12 months on up to 20 users, which is why the page leads with $6.30 and $12.60. For sending mailboxes nothing above Starter is needed. The trial is 14 days. On the Flexible Plan you add and remove users monthly and cancel without penalty; on the Annual Plan you commit for the year, can only reduce licences at renewal, and pay the remaining balance with no refund if you cancel early.

Google Workspace SMTP settings

These are the settings for sending from an app or device through a Workspace mailbox:

• Server: smtp.gmail.com
• Port: 465 with SSL, or 587 with TLS; port 25 also works
• Sign-in: the full address of the mailbox you send from
• Password: an app password if 2-Step Verification is on
• Limit: 2,000 messages a day through this route

Google’s recommended route for apps is the SMTP relay service at smtp-relay.gmail.com on port 25, 465 or 587, configured in the Admin console with IP or account authentication and allowing up to 10,000 recipients a day per user. Sequencers normally connect over OAuth instead, which avoids app passwords and is what Google recommends.

Gmail sending limits in 2026

Each user can send 2,000 messages a day, 1,500 through mail merge, and only 500 on a trial account. Converting the trial does not lift that cap at once: Google raises it only after the domain has cumulatively paid at least $100, plus the domain price if bought from Google, and says the increase can take up to 75 days after that. A day’s sending may reach 10,000 total recipients and 3,000 unique recipients, of which 2,000 may be outside your domains, or 500 on a trial. One message may carry 2,000 recipients with at most 500 external. A user who exceeds a limit cannot send new messages for up to 24 hours, and accounts that send spam can be restricted permanently. The limits are per user, so a tenant’s capacity grows with its mailboxes, but a cold mailbox should never approach them: a few dozen emails a day is the ceiling that keeps a domain healthy.

Gmail sender guidelines

Since February 2024 every sender to Gmail needs SPF or DKIM on the sending domain, valid forward and reverse DNS, TLS in transit, RFC 5322 formatting, no impersonation of Gmail From headers, and a spam rate below 0.3% in Postmaster Tools, with Google advising under 0.10%. Any domain that sends 5,000 or more messages a day to Gmail must also set up both SPF and DKIM, publish a DMARC record, even at p=none, align the From domain with SPF or DKIM, and support one-click unsubscribe on marketing mail. Cold email that stays under those volumes per domain still benefits from meeting every rule.

Cold email on Google Workspace: what works

Use your own domains with MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC records at a DNS host such as Cloudflare before the first send. Connect mailboxes to your sequencer, Instantly or Smartlead for example, over OAuth. Keep the Flexible Plan for a rotating fleet so retired mailboxes stop costing money. Warm new mailboxes for weeks, keep each to a few dozen emails a day, and watch Postmaster Tools. Microsoft 365 is the other mailbox platform, with tenant-wide caps instead of per-user ones, and Zoho Mail is the cheap option for a primary domain rather than outreach.

Buying Google Workspace inboxes ready to send

Doing all of this yourself costs $7 to $8.40 a user a month plus the hours to set up each tenant, its domains and its DNS. PureMail’s Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 inboxes cost $3.30 each for 10, $3.10 for 30 to 100 and $2.90 for 101 or more, on domains you bring, with SPF, DKIM, DMARC and MX configured and the inboxes connected to your sending tool in about four hours. The comparison below sets the two side by side: PureMail wins on price per inbox and the setup you skip, and buying direct from Google wins on admin control.