setwave

I use Google Apps for Your Domain on a few of my sites. Mainly, to send email through Gmail from my RoR applications. (See my earlier post for help with this.)

Most recently, I discovered a nasty gotcha with using GAFYD a few days back. The basic problem for me started when my application began returning messages like, “The daily quota has been reached,” or something to the effect.

GigaOM has a nice post about the crappiness and general unhappiness his team is starting to feel since switching over to GAFYD. I actually commented on his post which was the inspiration for sharing it here with all my esteemed readers ;)

Well, I don’t share Om’s same sentiments. Partly, because I’m sure the volume of email I send through GAFYD hails in comparison to the great crew over at GigaOM. I do feel that there’s something missing from all the documentation Google provides to sell you on this service, though.

After digging around, I discovered each mail account is limited to 500 emails a days (free accounts) or 2000 a day (premium users). Now, is 500 or even 2000 emails a day fair? I think 500 a day is fair for a free service but I have a problem with a cap of 2000 if I’m a paying customer. This is ridiculous.

I’ve also read Gmail filters potential spam messages by monitoring the number of recipients for each email you send. There seems to be a general acceptance the number of recipients you can send a message to is around 50. So, make sure to avoid adding your entire address book next time compose an email.

In general, this is a good rule of thumb anyway. I can’t fault them for this, just not sharing this anywhere (I can find) in the GMail FAQ’s. One last ‘feature’ are BCC recipients could also raise a flag somewhere in its system. I haven’t confirmed this with them – just reiterating what I happened upon in a google group thread discussing this same topic.

Knowing is half the battle.