What is email clipping? Causes, limits, and how to fix it
Email clipping is when Gmail cuts off your email midway and shows a “View entire message” link instead of the full content.
It happens because your HTML file is too large for Gmail to render completely, and everything below the cutoff disappears.
Suppose an email marketer at a midsize eCommerce brand, “abc commerce,” sends a monthly newsletter containing six sections. It includes product highlights, a coupon block at the bottom, and an unsubscribe link in the footer.
Everything looks perfect in their Email Service Provider (ESP). They emailed 40,000 subscribers. Two hours later, they open the email in their own Gmail and see the coupon block is gone. So is the unsubscribe link.
The email ends after the fourth section.
That’s email clipping.
What causes email clipping?
Your HTML file is too heavy. Gmail has a size limit on how much code it will render, and once your email crosses that line, it gets cut off at exactly that point.
The limit applies just to the HTML source code, which includes text, markup, inline CSS, and tracking pixels. Images don’t count because they load from an external server.
That’s why a newsletter with 20 product photos may work fine while a text-heavy promo with minimal images gets clipped.
Gmail's clipping limit
Gmail clips emails above 102KB of HTML on desktop. On iOS, it can happen as low as 20KB, which is aggressively tight.
We suggest aiming for 80KB, not 102KB.
Why? Because the difference covers the tracking code, footer text, and link rewrites your ESP injects at send time. Although none of that shows up in your editor export, it all counts when the email is sent.
Suppose you export an email template and it shows 98KB. You think it’s fine. But after Klaviyo or any other ESP adds its tracking pixel, open-rate monitoring code, and rewrites all 12 links with redirect URLs, the sent version would be 127KB.
That’s a 29KB difference you never see coming.
Do other email clients clip emails?
Yes, Yahoo Mail and Outlook users have also faced email clipping problems. But no official clipping threshold is specified by these email clients.
What makes emails too heavy?
Four things are responsible for the vast majority of clipping problems:
1. ESP-injected code
Your ESP adds tracking pixels, link redirects, and compliance footers at send time. This can add more KBs to your exported file without you seeing it.
2. Repeated inline CSS
Email requires CSS inlined on every element. Drag-n-drop builders rarely deduplicate, so the same style rules get written onto every single table cell.
To find this, open your exported HTML and press Ctrl+F. Search for the name of your font. If you see it highlighted nearly 100 times down the page, that’s the problem. Each repeat looks small, but 100 of them in a single template adds a lot of weight to your file.
3. Nested tables
Builders wrap each content block in its own table for layout. If you send a six-section newsletter, it becomes 16 nested tables in the actual HTML, each carrying its own width, cellpadding, cellspacing, and border attributes.
You’d never write this by hand, but the email builder generates it automatically.
4. Long tracked URLs
Suppose you have 12 links in a newsletter. After your ESP rewrites them for click tracking, you add UTM parameters for monthly reporting, and each link goes from around 45 characters to over 350.
Multiply that across every link in your newsletter, and you’re carrying a lot of extra characters in your HTML. It doesn’t sound like much until you realize that’s just from the href attributes.
How to fix email clipping
Work through these steps in order. The first two fix email clipping most of the time.
1. Replace base64 images with hosted ones
Base64 images are embedded directly in the HTML. One Base64 image can add 33% to 40% more KBs by itself.
To prevent this, upload images to your ESP and reference them with a normal image tag instead. Hosted images don’t count toward the size limit.
If you or anyone on your team ever pasted an image directly from a desktop into the email editor rather than uploading it first, there’s a good chance it got embedded as base64.
If one image adds 33%–40% to your HTML size, and your email template is 130KB, that image alone is adding roughly 43–52KB. Remove it, and you’d drop to somewhere between 78KB and 87KB before touching anything else.
2. Minify your HTML
Minifying removes unnecessary line breaks (any other whitespaces too) and comments, none of which do anything in a rendered email, from the code.
To do so, use any HTMLMinifier. Most of them are free. Paste your exported HTML in, copy what comes out, and paste it back. This could reduce your email size by anywhere between 10% and 50%.
3. Delete unused CSS
Open the HTML in a code editor and look through the style block. Any CSS class that doesn’t appear in the body is dead weight. So, check for old styles from a previous template version, unused media queries, and leftover Outlook conditional comments from years ago.
Delete all of them. We know this is tedious, but it can remove a lot of KBs. The Gov.UK website removed unnecessary CSS from its homepage and noticed a 40% reduction in its page size.
4. Shorten your links
Use Bitly or Rebrandly to shorten long destination URLs. In addition, cut UTM parameters you don’t actually pull in your reports.
If multiple buttons in the same email go to the same page, use one shortened URL for all of them instead of having your ESP generate a separate tracked version for each.
Let’s say you have three buttons in your newsletter:
- “Shop Now”;
- “See All Deals”;
- “View Collection.”
Even if they all go to the same sale page, your ESP will create three separate tracked URLs for them. What you can do instead is shorten that destination URL once with Bitly and use that same link for all three buttons.
You still know people clicked, you just stop carrying three bloated redirect chains when one does the same job.
5. Use a modular email builder
Most email builders duplicate wrapper code for every content block. Wrapper code is the outer HTML (tables and inline styles) that controls how each section appears on the page.
So if your newsletter has six sections, your builder generates six separate copies of that structure. The same thing, repeated six times in the HTML.
Modular builders like Postcards by Designmodo or Stripo write that wrapper once and reuse it across every block. You get the same visual output, but the HTML is smaller because you're not carrying multiple copies of code that only needs to be written once.
6. Send a shorter email and link to the full version
If the email genuinely has to be long, send a short version like a teaser email with a hook, a main point, and one CTA. Then link to the full piece on a landing page or blog post. This way, the inbox version stays small.
How to test for clipping before you send
Export your HTML and check the file size.
On Mac:
- Right-click the exported HTML file.
- Select “Get Info,” and the size will be visible.
On Windows:
- Right-click the file.
- Select “Properties,” and you will see the file size.
If it’s over 80KB before your ESP adds anything, fix it before sending. Then send it to a Gmail address you own.
Use a unique subject line so it’s easy to find. Scroll all the way to the bottom. If you see “[Message clipped] View entire message,” you still have a problem.
Go back and work through the fixes above, starting from step one, and your problem will likely be eliminated.
Wrapping up
Run through this email clipping checklist before emailing:
- HTML export is under 80KB on disk;
- no base64 images in the code;
- HTML has been minified;
- unused CSS removed from the style block;
- links shortened, unnecessary UTMs removed;
- the unsubscribe link appears near the email header (only 14% of emails had one in 2025);
- the tracking pixel is placed near the top, so it fires even if something gets cut;
- the send-to-self test in Gmail confirmed that no “View entire message” link appears.
FAQ
1. What does a clipped email look like to the recipient?
The email shows the top portion normally. Everything below the cutoff is hidden behind a small gray “[Message clipped] View entire message” link. Most people see that and assume the email is short, so they don’t go looking for the rest.
2. How do you view a clipped email in Gmail?
Click the “[Message clipped] View entire message” link at the bottom. Gmail opens the full email in a new browser tab.
3. Can you fix clipping after the email has already been sent?
No. Once it’s out, that’s what your subscribers received. The only option is to reduce the HTML size and resend, ideally with a note explaining why they’re getting it again.
4. Is the paperclip icon in Gmail related to clipping?
No. The paperclip icon means the email has an attachment. It has nothing to do with HTML clipping.
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