Force.com Email Services Size Limitations

Apex Email Services – What are the different size limits for Email Services

There are a number of limits on what data and data sizes can be used for Email Services. This post will explain how some of these limits work.

The max email message size for a complete email message including attachments is 10MB
Emails which are below 10MB will be accepted by our mail server
Email which are above 10MB will be rejected and an email response sent back to the sender

There are two separate parts of an email body

Text Body of the email can max be 100KB
HTML body of the email can max be 100KB

There are 2 types of attachments which can be retrieved via Email Services, they are exposed as an array of text attachments and an array of binary attachments.

Text attachments can be 100KB each
Binary attachments can be up to 5MB per attachment

Attachments are presented to the Apex code of an Email Service in two different forms:

Attachments that are labeled as "text" are presented as an Apex String and can be a maximum of 100KB each. A "text" attachment is any attachment whose Mime type is "text/*". For example "text/plain", "text/html", etc.
Attachments that are not labeled as "text" are presented as an Apex Blob and can be up to 5MB per attachment.

When all the elements, text body, HTML body, text attachments and binary attachments are added together the total size of the email message has to be below 10MB

Attachments that are themselves an email are presented to the Apex code of an Email Service in two different forms:

The "raw" text of the entire embedded email, including all headers, Mime delimiters, Mime encoded attachments, etc. is presented to your Apex code in the binary attachments list as a Blob. This attachment has a Mime type of "message/rfc822". Often attachments of this Mime type can be discarded by the Email Service.
Attachments to the embedded email are "pulled out" and stored in the text and binary attachment lists of the main email as if they had been directly attached.

If the message size limit is reached, a bounced notification email will be sent back to the sender, showing that the message size is above the acceptable limit we have in place.