Gmail is an undeniably useful free service, which is why many of us have been using it for years. But if you're like me and have been using the service for decades, you've likely run into the issue of needing to free up space.

As more services vie for your limited Google Account storage quota, you might be wondering how to get more space without needing to sign up for a Google One subscription. Here's what you need to know.

What contributes to your Gmail storage quota?

Multiple services use your account limit

Your Gmail address, which is part of your Google Account, gets 15GB of free storage. However, this quota is shared across your entire account and includes Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. It can also include items such as your WhatsApp backup, Meet call recordings, and device backups of Android smartphones and tablets.

Once you reach your free storage allocation, you can't upload new files to Google Drive and Photos. You may also have trouble receiving and sending emails with Gmail. Google warns that if you exceed the 15GB limit for more than 2 years without upgrading to a paid Google One plan, the company may remove all of your account data from Gmail, Photos, and Drive.

While Google One's cheapest plans are affordable, many people are reluctant to upgrade to a storage subscription. This is especially true if you signed up to Google Photos based on Google's promise of unlimited high-quality backups, only to have this changed in 2021.

So, are there ways to get more space without subscribing to Google One? The most convenient way is to free up space on your Google Account.

How to free up space for Gmail

Use Google's storage management tools

Google provides tools to help you manage your account's storage quota. The company will also start prompting you to upgrade or free up space before your account is full. For example, I started receiving emails from Google about my secondary account at 49% of my quota, even though it took years to reach that level.

If you want to start clearing up your storage before your account is full, go to your Google Account storage page. This page gives you an overview of how much storage you've used and how much each service is taking up. To start freeing up storage, select Clean up space. You can also select the checkbox next to each service to view more details about the files taking up space.

On the Google One storage manager page, you'll see suggested actions to take. This includes actions such as cleaning up emails with large attachments, large Drive files, and spam emails. You can select Review to select which items you would like to remove. For me, this was helpful because I occasionally receive press releases in my email account that include large attachments.

Once you've selected items to delete, select the Delete button and confirm your choice in the pop-up by selecting Permanently delete.

You can also switch between tabs and select items, such as spam emails, to free up space. The more files you have saved across your account, the more suggested actions you will get. However, I'd avoid removing your WhatsApp backup or any important large files and photos. I would also only remove device backups for devices you no longer use.

If you decide to remove large files, make sure you have backups elsewhere. I try to follow the 3-2-1 backup rule as closely as possible.

Last resort: Get more space with another account

A quick workaround for getting more storage

The biggest culprit contributing to a full Google Account quota is Google Photos. For example, on my primary account, Photos takes up just under 49GB. Drive and Gmail, however, only take up 10GB together.

But Photos is also often the hardest service to free up storage on, since it involves sorting through duplicate photos and possibly parting with images and videos you hold dear.

You can use the Photos quota management tool to free up space and compress existing backups. However, it does not detect duplicates or near-duplicates, which means that there's a lot of manual sorting still involved.

So how do you get more space quickly if you're close to your free quota and can't free up additional storage? The simplest solution is to create a secondary Google account.

This will allow you to move your backups to a new account instead, letting you free up storage on your primary account. Some people also just start using the new Gmail address.

However, this mostly only works if you don't receive important emails on your old account, or you're willing to change the email address for your linked accounts. You still have to be careful when switching, though, so that you don't lose access to existing accounts.

I wouldn't suggest endlessly creating new Google Accounts to get more storage for free, however. This will segment your cloud storage significantly and remove a lot of the convenience of cloud backups.

If you really don't want a Google One subscription, but still want to back up your images, you will probably have to look at investing in a NAS-based solution or self-hosted services. There are other hosted services that offer image backups, but they all have a free storage quota that will require upgrading to a subscription once you exceed it.

If you just want a free email provider with unlimited storage, then you may want to look at a service like Atomic Mail. But this would require creating a completely new email address.

Google's cloud ecosystem is built around subscriptions

If you use your Google Account mostly for email and the occasional document, you can get by on a free account for years before needing to clear up space. However, if you use services like Photos and manage large files and plenty of collaborative documents, you'll eventually run into limits on the free plan.

Many of Google's cloud storage services are built with subscriptions in mind, so you will likely require a paid plan if you heavily rely on the company's ecosystem. If you don't want to subscribe to Google One or want to keep your plan on a lower tier, it's worth branching out and using Google alternatives for some of your cloud storage needs.