Gmail Delivery Delays - Will a Reply from Google Ever Arrive?
Significant delays in the delivery of email messages to Gmail users are being widely reported with no apparent response from Google. As an increasing number of people choose to forward their email to and from Gmail, these delays present a real problem - enough business decisions are made based on email threads that delays of 9 to 12 hours for delivery could be a deal breaker for some users.
Google announced two weeks ago the availability of an official Gmail Help Discussion Group. A search through that group shows repeated reports of delays and no one from Google appears to be engaged in these discussions.
It does take two to tango and it's possible that these problems are always on the other end of the email transaction instead of being Gmail's problem. Though that seems unlikely, a little communication would likely go a long way.
Though the service's spam-filtering, search, storage and IM integration are just a few of the remarkably positive qualities it has to offer - if the performance of the core service is is lacking then you have to wonder how long people will put up with it.
Perhaps the lesson of Twitter applies here: no matter how much a service's performance sucks eggs, if the user experience is compelling enough when it is up, then people will suffer through the repeated bad times. Twitter is one thing, though and email is another. Have you got Gmail delivery delay stories to tell? I sure do and all it would take is one delayed email costing my a pile of money and I'd have to consider switching to another service provider. Perhaps it's foolish to wait that long. Perhaps it's foolish to have put as much of our collective lives in the hands of a free web app. That said, I don't want to change.
Here's a little exercise. Watch the following Gmail video and instead of adding "in bed" to the end of every sentence like you do with fortune cookie messages, add "when it arrives" to these happy testimonials.
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I believe Gmail is the best e-mail I've ever used. It's weird about these delivery delays as I have yet to experience any.
There are other problems too with IMAP delivery.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1364123
We've been noticing delays over the past several weeks and it is very worrisome. Perhaps they are hoping businesses using Gmail will move to the paid version? I've considered it.
Thanks for the above comments. Frank, we'll have to consider that next time we have back end issues here at RWW - "well if you're willing to pay for our premium service..." ha, kidding. ugh.
I have not seen delivery delays but have often seen messages telling me the server is not responding do I want basic HTML view. On 2nd try its usually OK.
I personally haven't seen any major delays using Gmail, and I've experienced them in the past on other providers. I have a few mailing lists that regularly send me messages, and I haven't noticed any recent changes in those patterns.
Maybe you should be using an "enterprise-level" email system instead of GMail.
Marcelo, maybe so - but in theory the world's getting more complicated than that. Lines are blurring, etc. But maybe those theories are bunk and I should use an enterprise level email system!
It is not the end of the world, how long have you been using Gmail? How many delays have you faced so far? If there is a problem they will fix it.
I have been experiencing delays for at least the last 24 hours.
As this is my primary email solution nowadays I am finding this extremely annoying.
Reply to the post by Frank Sinton:
I think that's just dumb. If google, which has enough cash to back up anything, can't keep up a service as simple (easily partitioned across a cluster) as e-mail, then my opinion would be to NOT pay for the service.
I do believe in you get what you pay for. But we pay by looking at their ads. Throwing money at a multi billion company will NEVER fix a broken service.
BTW I'm very happy with my gmail, but I don't think paying would fix a thing
Gmail has been much more reliable than the enterprise-level systems used at my last two workplaces. Have any RWW readers been on an e-mail system that never ever had downtime? I haven't.
Google Reader sometimes is slow or fails to load, though.
The only significant delays, up to 10 hours, were in receiving messages from my WSJ.com subscribed services a few months back. After numerous emails to them, Google did ask me to provide them with header details but I didn't get any definitive feedback. The issue was only resolved, when I decided to change my subscription email address to the one of my ISP.
I haven't noticed any delays, but then again...how would I know, if the email hasn't arrived? :P
I already hate their support services (or lack of). A few months ago, the time on all of my messages became an hour off--although my timezone settings in gmail were correct, and so was the time on my computer. They still haven't responded to my support emails.
I run most of my email in parallel and gmail.com is one of the destinations. I can't say that I've seen delays beyond a couple minutes. And sometimes, Gmail is faster than my other service. It could be the items I only send to Gmail are delayed, but since they are newsletters, I'm not overly concerned about the delivery time.
I do think it's unfortunate that Google doesn't response in the discussion group you mentioned. I would expect them to be more proactive.
Support is Google's Achilles Heel.
Yes the services are free, and I'm grateful. But if you need support with any of Google's application offerings, you are basically shunted to a Google Group, which is basically forum-like support from the community of interested users. Google's own people are rarely evident here.
Google would be doing themselves a huge reputational favor to detail a few dozen people to patrol their own support forums regularly, update FAQ's, post service status reports, etc. They could also use the feedback from those forums to keep a prioritized list of feature requests.
Marshall, Google has already responded... but they sent it via Gmail :-)
Between Gmail & today's Blackberry brown out, what's left to trust when it comes to e-mail. Yikes!
I had delay-problems twice, from what I observed back then, the problem was that these e-mail-addresses hadn't received e-mails from Gmail before. After that, Gmail was fast again Could it be possible that Gmail delays e-mails to addresses that Gmail hasn't sent e-mails before, so that they have time to check the e-mail-addresses? (For whatever they want to check - if it's SPAM, probably? But why would that take so long?)
Google is too powerful... support the underdog wherever Google dominates.
mail is there, you can see it using web mail, but it fails to get received - IMAP.
3 to 6 hours delay with some burst of no delay
looks a big issue
let's /.
Glad you wrote this up Marshall. I've been experiencing the problem for about a week across all of my clients: mobile, Mac, XP and Vista. I've been considering the closure of my hosted Exchange account in favor of Gmail's IMAP service for a few months and was about to pull the trigger on it, but these few hour to few day mail dalays have me reconsidering. Like others, I've reported the issue with details and a screenshot to Google's Gmail support. No response yet... or maybe they did reply? I simply don't know. ;)
As per http://www.monashreport.com/2008/01/04/early-thoughts-on-outsourcing-to-google-mail/ , I've been beating the drum for outsourcing to GoogleMail for a little while now. But over the past few days, a Hotmail-using friend has gotten a number of bounces. It's not as bad as my inabilities to send to Yahoo Mail accounts at all, however, that is causing multiple people to switch away from Yahoo so that they can communicate with me.
CAM
I have noticed delays only with Facebook notifications, so I had been attributing that issue with Facebook. The most recent is where I just received a notification for a wall posting that occurred 4 days ago.
Maybe it is Gmail, but I do still get my regular daily news so not sure.
Doesn't this just have to do with the growing problem of not having enough bandwidth on the net? It could be each and every solution is having problems now but because Gmail is free and used by só many people it strikes a lot more.
boys and girls, there is just too much stuff trying to fit through the pipes ... i think it is the future
#3 @ Frank -- I am using the paid service and still experiencing delayed mail. I haven't received anything today, including test messages sent from multiple accounts.
#21 @ penas -- I am unable to find my test messages on the webmail version of Gmail. They have not been received by the system.
This is a major problem for people who use email as a primary communication mechanism.
I love gmail. I've had some delay problems in the past, but nothing that was costly... yet.
But, kind of like Curt (#23), an issue I'm having is sending emails to my hotmail contacts. More often than not hotmail junks them - but that's not really surprising given who owns it.
"Maybe you should be using an "enterprise-level" email system instead of GMail."
Uh yeah! You get what you pay for.
this is true. I also had problems with my gmail recently.
It started in January and it continues more often in feb.
There is much hype about this, e.g. gmail delivery delays
Problems for me too - -starting about January. My sister JUST got an email I sent 5 days ago.
one company i'm working with does have the pay service and I'm experiencing the delay. It has already caused a disruption in my business activities. I will have to change. I can't put up with this crap. I'm using IMAP with Apple Mail. Maybe that is the cause?
I've been experiencing this issue using IMAP. I'm getting whacked in these business conversations, since I don't get replies for hours.. WTF. G-mail, figure this out before I..I.. uhh.. any other reliable service?
My coworkers and I have been experiencing numerous delays receiving e-mails from gmail on our company's outlook. Messages sent on a Wednesday arrive in the middle of the night on a Saturday. Especially when they are confirming meeting times, this is a problem. Google support told us to look at spam filters or the slowness of our domain. Our network admin has looked at all of this. We are only having issues from Gmail! What is going on!