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Gmail limits a single message to roughly 25 MB of attachments, counted together as of November 2026. When you go over, Gmail offers to put the file in Google Drive and add a link, which then depends on sharing permissions and the recipient having a compatible account setup. Other providers and company mail servers often set lower limits, and a base64 encoding step inflates every attachment by about a third on the way.
A short video can easily reach a few hundred megabytes, and anything captured in 4K is bigger still. Attachments are simply the wrong container for video.
A watch link, a one-line description and, if necessary, a note about duration or file size. The recipient clicks and the video streams. If they want a copy, the watch page provides a download, and the file is the one you uploaded, not a recompressed version.
| Part | Example | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Subject | Project walkthrough video, 14 minutes | Tells the reader what to expect |
| First line | Here is the recording from Tuesday. | Context before the link |
| Link | Watch the walkthrough | Descriptive text beats a long URL |
| Extras | Chapters at 02:10 and 09:40 | Helps people jump to what matters |
| Close | Tell me if the link does not open. | Invites feedback on access problems |
Corporate mail filters sometimes flag unfamiliar links. Use a recognisable sender name, say plainly what the link is, and mention that the file is hosted on FileHost.net. For legal or regulated material, check your organisation policy before using any external host, because a link is only as private as the people who receive it.
If a client must keep a permanent copy, tell them to download the file from the watch page rather than relying on the link long-term, since a free account removes inactive files after a long period.
You can often cut the size dramatically before uploading. Shrink screen recordings and phone clips with the browser-based video compressor, or extract a soundtrack with the video to MP3 tool if the video adds nothing. Sending a six-megabyte audio file is a lot kinder than a six-hundred-megabyte video.
Upload the file, paste the link and send the email. No bounce messages, no waiting for a slow attachment.
