Why are images intermittently failing to load in Gmail?

Email marketer from HubSpot mentions that Gmail often caches images, so if there are problems with Google's cache servers, images may not load correctly or consistently.

Email marketer from Super User mentions that ad blockers or browser extensions might interfere with image loading in Gmail. They suggest disabling such extensions to see if the issue resolves.

Email marketer from Sendinblue shares that Gmail could block images if the sending domain has a poor reputation or is blacklisted. Improving sender reputation by authenticating emails (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is important.

Email marketer from Campaign Monitor shares that using large image files can sometimes cause loading issues. Optimizing images for the web by compressing them without significantly reducing quality is recommended.

Email marketer from Email Geeks suggests testing the issue across different browsers and devices and it could be a network issue with the users or Google

Email marketer from Reddit speculates that Gmail's image loading problems can be due to the aggressive caching mechanisms employed by Gmail. This can lead to inconsistencies, especially when images are updated on the server but the cached version is still being served.

Email marketer from Email on Acid explains that broken images in Gmail could stem from incorrect image paths in the HTML, the images being blocked by a firewall or proxy server, or the image server being temporarily unavailable.

Email marketer from Quora suggests that intermittent image loading can be caused by a user's internet connection, Gmail's server issues, or the sender's server problems. They advise checking the internet connection first and then contacting Gmail support if the problem persists.

Email marketer from Mailjet explains that if images are linked incorrectly (e.g., using relative paths instead of absolute URLs), Gmail might fail to load them consistently. Using absolute URLs is generally recommended.

Email marketer from Litmus suggests that issues may arise if the Content-ID is not unique for embedded images, and duplicate Content-IDs are used in a single email. They advise to make the content IDs unique.

Expert from Spam Resource explains that Gmail uses image proxying, which can sometimes lead to issues if the proxy encounters problems fetching the image or if the image server has intermittent downtime. It could be a transient issue on either side.

Expert from Word to the Wise suggests that while less likely, Gmail may intermittently fail to load images if it detects suspicious behavior or reputation issues associated with the domain hosting the images. This is a less common reason, but still a possibility to consider.

Expert from Email Geeks states he wouldn’t expect rep issues to break image loads and that random failure seems more likely than anything else.

Expert from Email Geeks shares that Blogger is intermittently failing to load images and believes Gmail is/was having CDN issues.

Documentation from RFC describes the MIME format as being complex. It's possible that a malformed MIME structure could cause image loading problems within Gmail.

Documentation from Stack Overflow User says it could be related to Content Security Policy (CSP) headers being set incorrectly on the server hosting the images. Gmail might block images if the CSP doesn't allow loading from the specific domain.

Documentation from AWS explains that if images are hosted on Amazon S3, incorrect bucket policies or access control lists (ACLs) might prevent Gmail from accessing the images. Ensuring that the bucket and images are publicly accessible or properly authenticated is necessary.

Documentation from Google Workspace Admin Help explains that Gmail protects users by loading images through Google's proxy servers. This can sometimes cause images to load intermittently if there are temporary issues with the proxy or the original image server.