Email is a widely used means of communication both by home users as well as companies and organizations. It is very useful because it is easy to use, free and fast. Now, how long does it take for an email to arrive ? In this article we are going to talk about it. We will also explain what can cause it to take more or less time to reach the recipient and what you could do.
Time to arrive an e-mail
On some occasion you may have wondered how long it takes for an email to arrive or why it takes so long . You may even be waiting to enter a list and need to send an e-mail after a certain time and be one of the first to avoid running out of space. The time may vary, although we already anticipate that it is very little.
Typically, an email takes anywhere from a few seconds to just over a minute to arrive. That, as long as there are no problems. Basically two parties will come into play here: our email provider, which is the one that sends that email, and the recipient’s provider. But it will also influence the speed of the Internet, possible saturation of the network or the content of the message.
Therefore, it is normal that an e-mail that you send at a given moment reaches the recipient just a few seconds later. Sometimes this can take more or less and even become a bit frustrating if we see that a minute or more has passed and it still hasn’t arrived. We may have doubts as to whether it could have been blocked and has come as spam, etc.
Same provider, faster
If you need an email to arrive very quickly, for example what we mentioned that it had to arrive at an exact time to be able to enter a list, the ideal is that you send it from the same mail provider as the recipient. This will speed up the process and it will be practically immediate, since it will only take a few seconds.
For this reason, if, for example, you are going to send an email to a Gmail email, the ideal is that yours is also from the Google provider. That will make it arrive sooner and fewer problems will appear. Everything will go smoother and faster.
Content size
But the size of that email you are going to send will also influence. And here you can have an important difference, since it can go from taking just a few seconds to a minute or more. If, for example, you are going to attach photos or documents, you should know that it will take longer than if you send only text.
Normally mail providers allow you to send up to 25 MB attachments. That is going to need to be processed, sent and then downloaded. Therefore, it will be a time that will lengthen the sending of an e-mail a little more.
Network problems
Another issue that can lengthen the time until an email arrives is having a problem with the network. It can be on our part, if for example we are connected to a very limited network and we are going to send an attached file, but also a problem in the server network of one of the providers.
Therefore, the network will also have an influence so that an email may take more or less time to arrive. However, once again the difference is not going to be very big and unless something happens it should not take more than a minute.
In short, as you have seen, sending an e-mail can take a few seconds until it reaches the recipient. Depending on the circumstances, it could take a little over a minute. If you see that after that time it has not arrived, it is possible that there was a problem sending an email.
