EC
552
SMTPERRORCommonDelivery FailureHIGH confidence

Requested mail action aborted: exceeded storage allocation

What this means

The 552 code indicates the email was rejected because the recipient's mailbox is full or the message itself exceeds the server's size limits. This is a permanent failure unless the condition is resolved.

Why it happens
  1. 1The recipient's mailbox is over its storage quota.
  2. 2The incoming message (including attachments) is larger than the maximum size allowed by the receiving server.
  3. 3The sender's mailbox has exceeded its storage allocation for sent items on some systems.
How to reproduce

A user tries to send an email with a very large attachment to a server with a small message size limit.

trigger — this will error
trigger — this will error
DATA
354 Go ahead
[...very large email data...]
.
552 5.3.4 Message size exceeds fixed limit

expected output

552 Exceeded storage allocation

Fix

Reduce message size

WHEN The error indicates the message size is the issue

Reduce message size
// Compress attachments or host them externally
const link = uploadAttachment(largeFile);
const emailBody = "Please download the file here: " + link;

Why this works

This bypasses the server's message size limit, allowing the content to be shared.

What not to do

✕ Continuously retry sending a large message

The server's size limit is a fixed policy. Retrying will not work and wastes bandwidth.

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