Bronto Blog

The latest Ask The Expert question is about email load time:

What do you think is the optimal for image loading time in an email?

It’s hard to pin down the ‘optimum’ load time for an email; to truly define this number would require a fair amount of research into your recipient list. But that doesn’t mean you can’t go off some good rules of thumb. For a long time people went by a rule that 8 seconds was acceptable, and more recently 4 seconds has been thrown out there, but all these numbers are mired in controversy.

Faster Is Better

So let’s simplify things: faster is better. I’m going to give you some unscientific numbers that are easy to remember and just as good as much of the other data out there.

• 8 seconds or more - Too slow, you need to address this
• Around 4 seconds - Doing good, but it could be better
• Under 1 second - You are sitting pretty

If you aren’t happy with your current load times then let’s look at some easy things you can do to get that number down.
Keep reading for several easy steps…