How long should email take to be delivered?

Gratefully, you've answered a burning question.

I enjoy your e-mails.

I sent an e-mail to a friend - he said he did not get it.

A couple of weeks later I resent it.
The friend said he got my new message and then a few hours later got the original message.
Just like you said - It CAN take some time for e-mail to be delivered.

First of all, this is my first time writing on Ask-Leo... (i'm pretty excited XD)

A question and a comment:

1.- Is more common for an email to be late due to the crossing from one free e-mail service to another, i mean, is normal or more common, for an e-mail from a GMail user to a Hotmail user to be late or considered as Spam, than if it comes from a user of the same free service?

I ask this because i've heard lots of people saying things like "Hotmail don't like ro receive mails from GMail accounts" or "This two companies have issues..." And i would like to hear some more technical opinion...

2.- I've Used free Hotmail for more than 10 years, Yahoo! for like 5 years and GMail since it started, E-mail is sometimes a little late, but it's way better than telephone or SMS services in my country. And it can be free.

I recently had a very important (time-sensitive) message go astray (to me from someone else), and from viewing headers when it finally arrived it seems it lingered in my email server's queue for several days before being delivered even though other messages got through. A mystery, but it happens. And these were not "public" email servers in the sense of hotmail etc.

The moral is, if you are dealing with time-sensitive or otherwise important emails, either request a "read receipt" or specifically ask in the message that receipt be acknowledged, otherwise (short of a reply) you will never know if it went through or not.

And, if you are on the receiving end, be courteous and respond to the "read receipt" request (if it is legitimate mail) or reply so the sender knows it got to you.

Occasionally things are lost forever, I have had this happen as well...

Hi Leo, Great website! I'm having an issue with Hotmail. The recipients on my contact list do not always receive my e-mails. These are people I regularly e-mail so my e-mail address is not on their blocked sender list. Today, for example, I e-mailed one person, they e-mailed me back, and then I replied to their e-mail and it never reached the recipient. I then forwarded my previous e-mail I had sent them from my "sent" messages folder and even copied myself on it, and neither of us received it. Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. Since I'm having problems with Hotmail, I've entered my Yahoo e-mail address. Thank you!

I understand that there are occasional delays, but my niece recently received an e-mail from me dated from 4 years ago. How is that possible?

Wow. No idea. Lots of wild speculation (crashed server restored from a 4 year old backup? Random things like that), but nothing really sensible. I'd look at the headers and see if possible where the delay was: Why is some email to me delayed by days?

03-Jan-2011

Does it take any longer for an e-mail to be delivered from one country to another?

Not usually, no.

01-May-2011

Ted: International email does not usually take significantly more time , but in some cases it can take longer.

Eric asked:

"My niece recently received an e-mail from me dated from 4 years ago. How is that possible?"

As a small business, we recently signed up for Google GMail for business. While it costs $50 a year per account, it sends and receives immediately (and internationally), is really stable and has great spam capture.
Note: Check your Spam folder occasionally to make sure it has not captured an email that is not spam!
One more thing: GMail uploads your attachments before you send the email, so when you hit "Send", it goes immediately.