Maximum Length of an Email Address is…
A question posted on About.com, “Is the Length of an Email Adresses Limited? If Yes, What is the Maximum” (yes, I know it’s not proper grammar, but it’s a quote).
The official result, 320 characters.
It is made up by:
- 64 characters for the email name
- 255 characters for the domain
- 1 character for the “@”
How many people now have to change that email field in the database from varchar(255)?
It’s been making the rounds on the internet lately, thought I’d publish it as I didn’t know this either.
UPDATE: 2009.06.24
According to a recent, and informative, article at www.eph.co.uk, Email Address Length FAQ — email addresses are actually limited to 254 characters.
While you can technically have a 254 character email address, this information is mostly only useful to developers implementing email addresses. It is very likely that your email will not work if it is longer than, say, 50 characters. Even if officially your email address is supported, think of how annoying it will be to notify everywhere you want to set up your email, that they don’t implement email addresses properly.
This sounds like good news, as 254 characters is perfect for varchar(255) fields.
Here’s a blog that posted a graph of all email addresses in their system: What’s the average length of an email address?
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3 Comments to Maximum Length of an Email Address is…
hi there sean, thanks for this. I never thought it was 320 char. Why did they changed it? Who changed it?
January 27, 2009
Actually, it has always been 320 characters (as far as I know). I meant that I know a lot of databases had email address listed as varchar(255), and with this information, we’d have to change our database definitions.
It’s something I had never taken the time to think about. I’m sure neither have many other web developers.
January 28, 2009
well, that much is said. Thanks for sharing this valuable info. It will come handy someday.
cheers!
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January 27, 2009