There are two ways to send a video through email: attach the file if it’s small enough, or — for anything longer than a few seconds — upload the video somewhere and email a link. Attachment limits are the deciding factor, and video crosses them almost immediately.
Why attachments fail for video
Email providers cap attachments hard, and video is the heaviest thing most people ever try to attach:
Provider | Attachment limit |
|---|---|
Gmail | 25 MB |
Outlook / Microsoft 365 | 20 MB |
Yahoo Mail | 25 MB |
iCloud Mail | 20 MB |
Need to send a video that’s too big for email? Record it in the browser and email the share link instead of fighting attachment limits. Record and share
A minute of 1080p phone video is typically 60–130 MB — several times over every limit in the table. That’s why providers quietly reroute big attachments: Gmail swaps in a Google Drive link, iCloud offers Mail Drop. They’re already telling you the answer: video travels as a link, not a file.
Limits checked against the providers’ public help pages on August 5, 2026.
The link workflow (works for any size)
- Upload the video to a host — or record it directly in Chairkick, which skips the file step entirely.
- Copy the share link. Chairkick links are unlisted: only people with the link can watch.
- Paste it into your email. Add a sentence about what the video shows and how long it is — that’s what gets it clicked.
- The recipient clicks and watches in the browser. No download, no account, no “which app opens this?”
- You see that it was watched. With Chairkick, each recording shows its views — useful when the video is a product demo or a proposal walkthrough and the follow-up depends on whether they’ve seen it.
The link also fixes everything else attachments break: the recipient’s inbox isn’t clogged, you can update the video without re-sending, and one link works for one person or forty.
When it really must be an attachment
Sometimes the recipient needs the file itself — an editor, a printer, a system that ingests uploads. Then compress:
- Trim first. Cutting dead seconds beats any codec trick.
- Export at 720p if the content survives it — screen text usually does not, talking heads do.
- Use a modern format (H.264/H.265 MP4). Phone-recorded HEVC is already close to optimal; re-encoding gains little.
- If it still doesn’t fit, you’re back to a link — now you know why.
Bottom line
Under ~20 MB, attach it. Over that — which is nearly every real video — upload and send a link. If the video doesn’t exist yet, record it with Chairkick and the shareable link is what you get by default: browser playback for the recipient, view counts for you, and no attachment limit anywhere in the loop.