What To Do If You Run Out Of Free Gmail Storage?

Launched in 2004, Gmail originally came with unlimited storage. With this and its easy-to-use features, Gmail emerged as the most popular free email service in the world. Later on, as users started uploading massive amounts of data, Google was forced to put a limit on its free storage facility. The free Gmail storage space is now 15 GB, which includes data in your Google Drive and Google Photos. This is often not enough for folks who frequently exchange large files and/or have been using Gmail for several years.

Beyond the free 15GB, Google asks you to pay for additional storage. There is 100 GB plan for $1.99 per month, 200 GB for $2.99 per month and 2,000 GB for $9.99 per month. While the 100 GB plan seems quite doable, what if users can’t even afford that? Or what if they just don’t want to pay for an email service? In such cases, here’s what you can do if you run out of free Gmail storage.

Delete Social and Promotions messages – This is probably the most cost-effective technique to keep your Gmail running free. You may have a busy lifestyle, but freeing up space on Gmail takes a few seconds. It becomes even easier, as Google automatically separates your important mails from Social and Promotions mails.

All you need to do is select all Social and Promotions mails and delete them. Make sure you empty the Bin also afterwards. For most users, Social and Promotions mails could number into thousands. These could be occupying several GBs of storage.

Download all Gmail on your device – Google provides you the option to download all your data linked to your Google account. It includes Gmail, Drive, Photos, and various other Google services. To download, you have to go to your Google Account, click on Data and Privacy and choose ‘Download your data’ option. Once here, you can choose all the data you want to download.

This will create a backup of your Gmail and other data on your laptop or PC. Once you have this data, you can access your mails using any other email client such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.  After this, you can delete all your Gmail data online.

Use free cloud storage – For data that you don’t access regularly or may not be important in your Google Drive or Photos, these can be shifted to another Gmail account. Or you can use free cloud storage services offered by various providers. This will help clean up your primary Gmail account.

Delete large mails – You can easily find large sized mails in Gmail using advanced search options. You can then delete the ones that are no longer needed. This may take some time, as you may have to decide which mails to keep and which ones to delete. You can do this exercise annually to clean your Gmail.