A slow email experience can be very frustrating — waiting for messages to load, emails taking a long time to send, or the whole program feeling sluggish and unresponsive. The good news is that slow email is almost always fixable, and you do not need to be technical to solve it.
This is always the first thing to try, and it fixes the problem more often than you might expect. Over time, your computer or tablet builds up a lot of small temporary processes running in the background — think of it like a desk that slowly gets cluttered with papers. Restarting your device clears all of that away and gives it a fresh start.
To restart:
Save anything you are working on first.
Click the Start button (on Windows) or the Apple logo (on a Mac) and select "Restart" — not just "Shut Down," as a full restart clears more temporary data.
Wait for your device to fully start up again, then try your email.
A slow email is very often caused by a slow internet connection rather than anything wrong with your email itself. Your email is constantly sending and receiving data in the background, so if your internet speed is low, your email will feel slow too.
To check your connection:
Open your browser and try loading a website you use regularly.
If the website loads slowly or not at all, your internet may be the issue.
Try moving closer to your router (the box that provides your Wi-Fi) if you are using wireless internet, or contact your internet provider if the problem persists.
A very full mailbox can cause email to slow down considerably. When your mailbox is nearly full, your email program has to work much harder to load, search, and display everything — like trying to find a single page in a filing cabinet that is crammed completely full. Clearing out old emails and emptying your Trash can make a noticeable difference to speed.
Please see the article: "How to Delete Old Emails to Free Up Space" for guidance on doing this safely.
If you have many programs open at once, or many tabs open in your internet browser, your device may be struggling to handle all of them at the same time. This can cause everything, including your email, to slow down.
Try closing any programs or browser tabs you are not currently using, then check if your email feels faster.
If you access your email through a web browser (such as Chrome, Firefox, or Edge), your browser stores lots of temporary data over time to help pages load faster — but eventually this stored data can become outdated and actually slow things down instead. Clearing it can help.
This process is slightly different depending on which browser you use, so if you are unsure how to do it, please contact our support team and we will walk you through it step by step.
If your email is still slow after trying everything above, please get in touch with our support team. There may be something specific to your account or device that needs a closer look.