We're proud to present the 11th round of our email deliverability tests! It's been four years since we started putting our top email marketing platforms to the test. Applying our email deliverability best practices in our tests, we find out which providers have the best email deliverability (and, of course, which ones have the worst).
Believe me, there have been some real surprises along the way. And it's for this reason that we express just how crucial it is to keep a close eye on the email deliverability rates of the top email marketing services.
For example – imagine spending considerable amounts of time and effort crafting the best email newsletter only to find out it ended up in your user's spam folder, never to be seen… that would be devastating, right?
And for those of you who are completely new to our email deliverability tests, let me fill you in. Since August 2017, we've been meticulously monitoring the email deliverability rates of popular email marketing services like Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and AWeber.
It all started with ten email service providers (ESPs), and now we've expanded our scope to include fifteen of them.
Email Deliverability Test Methodology
Using the email delivery checker Glockapps, we conduct five separate tests over the course of five weeks.
This tool provides us with a seedlist (contact list) made up of a variety of popular internet service providers (ISPs).
Glockapps then reports the deliverability rates obtained by each of the email service providers, calculating what percentage of the emails landed in the following folders:
- Main inbox
- Promotions folder
- Spam
- or if they went missing altogether.
We make sure to authenticate all sender subdomains using SPF (sender policy framework) and DKIM, where available, and of course, follow our best practices.
To find out more about our methodology, you can check out our email deliverability test page. You'll also be able to see how these email providers have performed over the years.
What is The Definition of Email Deliverability?
To avoid any confusion, let’s answer the question ‘What is email deliverability?’ before we analyze the results.
Deliverability definition:
Email delivery is when an email is successfully delivered to the receiving server (how to calculate email delivery rate).
Email deliverability is when an email successfully arrives in the person’s inbox.
Just because your email was delivered, does not mean that it made it to the right place: the reader’s main inbox. There are, in fact, a number of places your email can end up:
- the spam/junk folder;
- in the case of Gmail, the Promotions tab;
- or, worst of all, it goes missing (undelivered)
The term ‘email deliverability’ covers all the above scenarios, and that’s what we’ve been testing.
If an email ends up in the spam/junk folder or goes missing, it is classed as ‘undelivered’.
Note: In our tests, deliverability was calculated based on the percentage of emails that successfully reached recipients’ mailboxes – regardless of whether they landed in the main inbox or a secondary tab (e.g. Gmail Promotions). If you’re interested in the breakdown between Gmail’s main inbox and the Promotions tab, we cover this in the second table.
What is a good Email Deliverability Rate?
Our tests show that the average deliverability rate of all providers tends to be between 83 and 89%. I would consider anything over 89% as a good email deliverability rate. And anything above 93% is excellent. Rates below 80% imply there are some delivery issues that need to be addressed.
Learn more about what a good email deliverability rate is and compare it to other deliverability stats.
There are a few email service providers that consistently score in the early-to-mid nineties, making them our top choices when recommending email marketing platforms to small businesses.
So, without further delay, let’s dive into the results of our latest email deliverability test. And if you are looking to compare this round of our deliverability tests with the previous one, you can check out the results from January 2023.
Email deliverability infographic for June 2023
Email Deliverability Rates: Takeaways
- MailerLite moved up and reclaimed the #1 spot with 96.5%, with an increase of 4.8% since the last round.
- Mailchimp was not too far behind with 95.5%, claiming the #2 spot once again with an increase of 2.85% in their overall deliverability rate
- Aweber moved up to third place with 93.2%, their results have been pretty consistent over the last few rounds.
- Drip saw the most significant increase scoring 86.7% overall, up 24.7% since our last round. Their highest deliverability was round 3 with 95.3% – onwards and upwards!
- CleverReach has been one of the most consistent providers in our previous tests, however, their deliverability rate dropped to 79.3% this round – which is their lowest score since our 4th round back in 2019. The main issues were a lot of undelivered emails to AOL and Yahoo.
- GetResponse achieved its best result ever (91.28%). We are curious to see if this level can be maintained next time.
- Sendinblue's rebranding as Brevo did not help it to achieve better deliverability. With a measly 67.7%, it is only good enough for second-to-last place.
Where Did The Emails End up?
The table below shows the averages for where emails ended up for each provider: the main inbox, another tab, the spam folder, or if they went missing.
| EMAIL MARKETING TOOL | MAIN INBOX % | TABS % | SPAM % | MISSING % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | 83.8 | 9.4 | 3.8 | 3.1 |
| AWeber | 88.6 | 4.6 | 0.9 | 5.9 |
| Benchmark | 44.9 | 7.0 | 14.8 | 22.3 |
| Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) | 54.2 | 13.4 | 27.4 | 5.0 |
| CleverReach | 75.6 | 3.7 | 7.5 | 13.2 |
| ConstantContact | 79.8 | 12.2 | 1.5 | 6.5 |
| ConvertKit | 85.2 | 6.0 | 5.3 | 3.5 |
| Drip | 70.3 | 16.4 | 2.9 | 10.4 |
| GetResponse | 79.4 | 11.8 | 2.2 | 6.6 |
| HubSpot | 75.6 | 4.7 | 9.4 | 10.3 |
| Mailchimp | 84.9 | 10.7 | 2.5 | 1.9 |
| Mailerlite | 77.9 | 18.6 | 0.3 | 3.1 |
| Mailjet | 66.4 | 14.1 | 9.5 | 10.0 |
| Moosend | 65.6 | 22.5 | 3.7 | 8.3 |
| Omnisend | 72.2 | 15.7 | 1.9 | 10.2 |
- Benchmark (22.3%), CleverReach (13.2%), and Drip (10.4%) saw the highest number of emails go missing overall.
- The providers most likely to be flagged as spam were Brevo (27.4%), Benchmark (14.8%), and Mailjet (9.5%)
- The providers least likely to have emails go missing were Mailchimp (1.9%), MailerLite (3.1%), and ActiveCampaign (3.1%)
Deliverability to Most Popular Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
There are a huge amount of mailbox providers out there, and while our tests were sent to over 30 different ISPs internationally, we couldn’t record them all. Instead, they were weighted according to importance. The following table summarizes the average deliverability rates to Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft (Hotmail + Outlook), and AOL. For Gmail, we’ve differentiated between the emails delivered to the main inbox and the Promotions tab.
| TOOL | GMAIL INBOX | GMAIL PROMOTIONS | YAHOO | AOL | MICROSOFT |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ActiveCampaign | 74 | 21.5 | 100 | 100 | 97.4 |
| AWeber | 95 | 0.0 | 100 | 100 | 98.7 |
| Benchmark | 23 | 76.7 | 0 | 0 | 94.5 |
| Brevo | 58 | 20.0 | 20 | 0 | 40 |
| CleverReach | 94 | 1.5 | 47 | 40 | 96.0 |
| ConstantContact | 58 | 41.5 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| ConvertKit | 78 | 16.9 | 100 | 100 | 96.0 |
| Drip | 37 | 58.5 | 58 | 57 | 94.7 |
| GetResponse | 60 | 40 | 100 | 100 | 97.1 |
| Hubspot | 75 | 20 | 100 | 97 | 89.2 |
| Mailchimp | 75 | 23.3 | 100 | 100 | 98.7 |
| Mailerlite | 40 | 55.4 | 100 | 100 | 97.4 |
| Mailjet | 60 | 35.4 | 95 | 46 | 70.3 |
| Moosend | 0 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Omnisend | 40 | 55.4 | 100 | 100 | 100 |
- The providers most likely to end up in Gmail’s main inbox were Aweber (95%), CleverReach (94%) and Convertkit (78%).
- The providers most likely to end up in Gmail’s Promotions tab were Moosend (100%), Benchmark (76.7%), and Drip (58.5%)
- Constant Contact, Moosend, and Omnisend landed 100% of emails in Yahoo, Outlook, Hotmail, and AOL inboxes.
The Best Email Deliverability Over Time
We’ve seen that deliverability rates tend to fluctuate over time. Just because a tool hasn’t performed quite so well this round, doesn’t mean it doesn't have a good deliverability track record. We’ve assigned a star rating to each provider based on its overall performance over the last 3 rounds of testing. You can also see whether it performed better or worse than the last round.
| TOOL | STAR RATING | CHANGE SINCE LAST ROUND |
|---|---|---|
| MailerLite |  |
↑ |
| ActiveCampaign |  |
↑ |
| Constant Contact |  |
↓ |
| Mailchimp |  |
↑ |
| CleverReach |  |
↓ |
| GetResponse | |
↑ |
| ConvertKit | |
↑ |
| AWeber | |
↑ |
| Moosend |  |
↑ |
| MailJet | |
↓ |
| Brevo | |
↓ |
| Hubspot |  |
↓ |
| Omnisend | |
↑ |
| Drip | |
↑ |
| Benchmark |  |
↑ |
With a 95.4% average over the last 3 rounds, MailerLite takes the number one spot and our ‘Best email deliverability’ award.
With an average deliverability rate of 95.85%, MailerLite also wins our ‘Best of 5’ award for the last five rounds of testing.
How Does This Affect my Email Marketing Strategy?
In terms of your email marketing strategy, when you’re choosing a provider, make sure that it has good delivery rates. We’d recommend referring to the historical data from all our deliverability tests to see the upward or downward trends of each tool. You can also do your own email delivery testing with email delivery checker, Glockapps.
We have put together a complete guide on email deliverability best practices, where you can find more detailed information on how to improve your email deliverability.
Or if you prefer to learn by watching, check out our Email Deliverability Best Practices video:
Email Deliverability Test: Conclusion
Like every round, the results of our email deliverability test highlight the importance of careful monitoring and evaluating the email deliverability rates of email service providers.
Among the 15 email service providers tested under identical conditions, some have demonstrated better capabilities in bypassing spam filters than others. However, it is MailerLite's deliverability that truly stands out in our findings. With an outstanding average deliverability rate of 95.4% over the last three rounds, they claim the highest deliverability rate in this round, earning the prestigious title of ‘Best email deliverability.'
Moreover, their remarkable consistency has also secured them our ‘Best of 5' award for the past five rounds of testing, boasting an average deliverability rate of 95.85%.
It's also clear that our winner from the previous round, ActiveCampaign, is one of the strongest email marketing services when it comes to deliverability. Although they moved down to fourth place this time, they still finished with a top-notch deliverability rate and actually increased their rate slightly.
With both Gmail and Yahoo Mail announcing stricter sending requirements for 2024, it's more important than ever to prioritize deliverability. If you're considering a change in service or just starting out with email marketing, our findings can serve as a valuable guide in selecting the right provider for your needs. However, we encourage you to conduct your own research, perform tests, and make use of free plans and trial periods to assess the deliverability of various platforms.
Stay tuned for the results of our next round of testing, which will be available towards the end of the year. And don't forget to sign up below to stay informed about the ever-evolving landscape of email deliverability and to be one of the first to receive our results in your inbox.
Noticed any deliverability issues with your email marketing service? Or have any questions about our tests? Let us know in the comments below!
*Drip unsubscribed 9 contacts from the seedlist, which led to a slightly elevated number of undelivered emails. Unfortunately, we were not able to manually re-subscribe to these contacts.
P.S. We also did some recent deliverability tests for various transactional email services.
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22 August 2023 - Added YouTube Video
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This article has been written and researched following our EmailTooltester methodology.
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