This guide shows you how to set (and scale) safe email sending limits in lemlist for Gmail/Google Workspace and custom SMTP accounts—so you can protect deliverability while still hitting your volume goals.

Learning Objective

By the end of this tutorial, you’ll know how to configure your daily sending limits in lemlist, choose a safe starting quota, and scale volume without harming your domain reputation.

Why This Matters

Sending limits help you control daily volume and reduce the risk of provider restrictions, spam placement, or account issues. A steady, gradual ramp-up typically performs better than sending large volumes too quickly.

You can explore the theoretical provider limits here and here, but our own guidance is considerably more conservative than the provider maximums. Three caps apply, checked in this order:

Domain under one month old? Keep the whole domain under 100 emails/day, every mailbox on it combined, then increase gradually.
Mailbox not through 14 days of stabilization? 0 cold emails. lemwarm only, at target. No campaign starts under a warm-up score of 90.
Stabilized new mailbox, campaigns live? 30–40/day through lemlist, per provider. Open at 30.

Above all of those sits one absolute ceiling: total output — lemlist sends + lemwarm + manual replies — stays under 70/day per provider in every case.

Note that lemlist tracks sending limits on a rolling 24-hour basis rather than by calendar day. For instance, if you send 25 emails between 1 PM on Tuesday and 1 PM on Wednesday, those emails count toward your limit for that period.

Prerequisites

You have at least one sending email address connected to lemlist (Gmail/Google Workspace or SMTP).
You know which address (or team address) you want to apply limits to.
The mailbox has completed warm-up: score 90+ and 14 days of stabilization with an inbox rate above 90%.

Core Lesson — Step-by-Step Workflow

Phase 1: Choose a safe daily sending limit

If you use Gmail/Google Workspace: for consistent cold outreach performance, be more conservative than the provider maximums:
- New mailbox, just out of warm-up: 30–40 emails/day per inbox through lemlist. Open at 30 and move to 40 only once a month of clean sending is behind the mailbox. 30–40 is the maximum, not a starting point to grow from in week one.
- Plus lemwarm at 10/day if you are not running inbox placement tests, which puts the mailbox at roughly 40–50/day total.
- Absolute ceiling: under 70/day per provider, counting lemlist + lemwarm + manual replies. A customer answering 15 prospects by hand is using 15 of that budget.
If you use a custom SMTP inbox: follow your provider’s recommendation. If you don’t have a clear guideline, start conservatively and scale gradually based on performance and deliverability signals (bounces, replies, spam complaints). An SMTP-heavy pool (over 70% SMTP) is a reason to hold at 30 rather than move toward 40.

Where inside 30–40 you land is a judgement call driven by five things and nothing else:

Domain age — under 3 months, or bought for this campaign, holds at 30. Over a year with real traffic history has room for 40.
Provider mix — SMTP-heavy holds at 30. Google/Microsoft majority has room for 40.
Reputation signal — score 80–85 or trending down, or placement under 90%, holds at 30. Stable 90+ with placement above 90% on the last two tests has room for 40.
List quality — bounce above 3%, risky emails, role addresses holds at 30. Verified lists with bounce under 2% have room for 40.
Recovery status — post-incident, restart at about 15/day with a ramp increment of 3. No incident in the last 90 days has room for 40.

If two of those point low, go low. Being 10 emails/day too conservative slows a pipeline; being 10 too aggressive burns a domain and costs six weeks.

Phase 2: Set (or adjust) sending limits in lemlist

Open your avatar/profile menu, then go to Settings.
In the left sidebar, click Sending limits, choose the sending email address you want to edit, then set your preferred daily email limit.

Important

Changes are saved automatically—so double-check your final number before leaving the page.
Even with correct limits in lemlist, providers (like Google) can still restrict sending based on their own reputation and policy signals.

Phase 3: Scale volume safely

Monitor performance proactively. lemlist can pause sending when it detects you may exceed your quota, but it’s not foolproof—keep an eye on total daily volume and campaign settings. Keep one reputation signal running at all times: inbox placement tests 1–2 per month, or lemwarm at 10/day as the fallback. Never neither.
If you need higher volume, scale horizontally — but across providers, not mailboxes. The ceiling is per provider, not per mailbox in isolation: six Google mailboxes share one Google-side reputation, not six independent budgets. Stacking mailboxes on one provider does not multiply your safe volume.
Every new mailbox starts from zero. Each one goes through the full ramp-up and 14-day stabilization before it sends anything cold.

Practical Application / Real-Life Example

Example scaling plan (per inbox):

During warm-up: 0 from lemlist. lemwarm ramps to target at +1/day for about 40 days, then holds at target for 14 days.
Month 1–2 after launch: lemlist at 30/day + lemwarm at 10/day — about 40/day total.
Settled, clean signals: lemlist at 40/day + lemwarm at 10/day — about 50/day total, still under the 70/day ceiling with room for manual replies.
After an incident: restart at about 15/day lemlist + 15/day lemwarm (~30/day) with a ramp increment of 3, keeping both reputation signals on until stable.

Need a lot more volume? Adding inboxes on the same provider will not get you there safely, because the reputation budget is shared per provider. Spread across providers, spread across warmed domains, and plan the ramp — every additional mailbox needs its own 40 days plus 14.

Troubleshooting & Pitfalls

Issue: My emails still get blocked/throttled even with a low limit

Root cause: Provider reputation algorithms can restrict sending based on your inbox/domain history, content, bounces, or engagement.
Fix: Reduce volume further, improve targeting to reduce bounces, and scale more gradually. Run an inbox placement test on the real campaign to tell a content problem from an infrastructure one.

Issue: I’m sending more than expected

Root cause: Multiple campaigns/inboxes or an alias setup can make volume harder to track, and manual replies are easy to forget.
Fix: Audit which inboxes are active, confirm the correct sending address is selected in Sending limits, verify any alias provider restrictions, and add manual replies into your total.

Issue: Sending pauses unexpectedly

Root cause: lemlist may pause sending when it detects you might exceed your quota, or your provider may be enforcing additional restrictions.
Fix: Lower the daily limit and resume with a slower ramp-up.

Issue: My mailbox was paused for a while and I want to resume

Root cause: A mailbox paused for more than 7 days has lost some of its trust and cannot resume at its previous volume.
Fix: Put it back through a short ramp before resuming cold sends. In recovery the ramp increment is 3, not 1 — a mailbox rebuilding trust is not a new mailbox.

Understand sending limits in lemlist