Everyone has heard of Mailchimp, it is the most popular email marketing platform on the market.
But I guess if you’ve found your way here, you want to know just how popular.
We’ve been keeping a close eye on Mailchimp over the years, reviewing new features such as landing pages, changes in pricing and the product as a whole in our Mailchimp review – it’s certainly an interesting company to watch evolve.
Read on to find out all the juicy statistics on the world’s (but mainly America’s) most used email marketing platform.
How Much of The Email Provider Market Does Mailchimp Own?
According to Datanyze, Mailchimp owns 67.54% of the email market share. That's about 5% less compared to our January 2022 update.
But why are they losing market share? The most likely explanation is that, after having reduced the allowances of their famous free plan several times now, people are switching to other free email marketing services.
Another factor can be their steady price increases, making them one of the more expensive entry-level email service providers in the market.
Source: Datanyze
The biggest winner, compared to our last update, is the new number 2 Klaviyo, increasing their share from 9.12% to 11.86%. The main reason for this is likely their deep integration with the Shopify ecosystem (and the enormous popularity Shopify enjoys).
Email marketing veteran, Constant Contact (founded in 1995!), now just owns 5.89%, around 3% less than it did it 2020.
As we see time and time again, it’s very easy to get stuck in your ways as a company. So what did Mailchimp do that Constant Contact didn’t? Well, as you can see in this Mailchimp vs Constant Contact comparison, quite a lot. Jump ahead to find out how Mailchimp got so big.
Taken from a smaller sample than the Datanyze data, BuiltWith shows Mailchimp's growth, which peaked in 2020. Since 2022, Mailchimp has been on a clear downward trajectory:
Who Are Mailchimp’s Competitors?
As I’ve mentioned above, Mailchimp’s biggest competitor is Constant Contact, which owns 5.08% of the email market (according to Datanzye) – a fraction of what Mailchimp owns. In fact, the top 5 Mailchimp competitors only amount to 16.85% of the email marketing market share. So, yeah, I think it’s fair to say that Mailchimp is in a league of its own.
| EMAIL MARKETING PLATFORM | MARKET SHARE (March 2020) |
MARKET SHARE (Jan 2022) |
MARKET SHARE (Mar 2023) |
MARKET SHARE (May 2024) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | 62.23% | 72.68% | 66.67% | 67.54% |
| Klaviyo | 1.43% (data from June 2020) |
4.79% | 9.12% | 11.86% |
| Constant Contact | 8.69% | 5.08% | 5.73% | 5.89% |
| MailerLite | – | – | – | 2.65% |
| Campaign Monitor | 3.30% | 1.62% | 1.78% | 1.62% |
| AWeber | 2.55% | 2.37% | 1.41% | 1.36% |
| Mailjet | 2.54% | 2.99% | 3.98% | 1.12% |
As an alternative to the data provided by Datanyze, we've created our own survey of the ESP market share (based on their self-reported user numbers).
>> Find out which big brands use Mailchimp as their email marketing service in our ecommerce email marketing statistics study.
How Many Global Searches Does it Get a Month?
What you see here is the estimated search volume Mailchimp gets on Google. These figures are taken from Ahrefs. You can see the evolution since March 2020.
Search Volume for March 2020
- Global 4.1 M
- US 1.2 M
Search Volume for Jan 2022
- Global 1.9 M
- US 405 K
Search Volume for Mar 2023
- Global 2.2 M
- US 535 K
Search Volume for May 2024
- Global 1.9 M
- US 563 K
Important note about the drop in searches: If you recall (and I’m sure you do), March 2020 marks the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result, the great majority of businesses had to notify their customers about changes regarding store closures, deliveries, new store policies, online services, etc., and the best way to do so was via email. This massive uptake in email marketing is clearly shown in the data from March 2020.
Mailchimp Annual Report Statistics
Unfortunately, Mailchimp stopped publishing its annual reports (and they have also taken down any previously published ones). The last data we were able to gather was in their 2020 annual report, where it stated the following statistics for that year:
- The total number of active users was 14M
- Almost 14K people signed up for a Mailchimp account every day
- 333,635,013,935 emails were sent out
- 55 different languages were used in emails sent through Mailchimp
- Some of the biggest companies that use Mailchimp include Vimeo, TED, The North Face and New Belgium Brewing.
Mailchimp Statistics 2019 vs 2020
| Dec 2019 | Dec 2020 | |
|---|---|---|
| Total number of active users | 12.3M | 14M |
| People signing up for a Mailchimp account every day | 11K | 14K |
| Ecommerce orders generated by Mailchimp users | 839.5M | 515.3M |
How Much Money Are Mailchimp Users Making?
According to Mailchimp's report, in 2020, their customers had over 515.3M ecommerce orders, which resulted in $61 billion in revenue.
They also note that over $314.6 million was generated from customers’ abandoned cart automations.
In light of these figures, it’s worth noting the power of email marketing and why it really needs to be made good use of by marketers and business owners, especially small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Mailchimp Revenue Over The Years
These are estimates, taken from various sources, but it gives you an idea.
| Year | Revenue |
|---|---|
| 2023 | $700 million |
| 2022 | $762 million |
| 2021 | Undisclosed |
| 2020 | $800 million |
| 2019 | $700 million |
| 2018 | $600 million |
| 2017 | $525 million |
| 2016 | $400 million |
| 2015 | $280 million |
Sources: AdAge, TechCrunch, Forbes, Inc.com, NYTimes, Zippia
Who Owns Mailchimp?
Mailchimp was set up by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong in 2001 – yep, that’s right, Mailchimp is 23 years old.
It currently has a total of 1,200 employees and offices in Atlanta, Brooklyn, Oakland and Vancouver.
In 2021, Mailchimp was bought for the sum of $12 billion in cash and stocks by financial software company Intuit.
How Did Mailchimp Get so Big?
If you’re interested in business, email marketing, marketing in general, or software development, you might be asking yourself, “How did Mailchimp get so massive?| I’ve certainly asked myself the same question.
We can find part of the answer in founder Ben Chestnut’s comments to the New York Times where he explains that Mailchimp’s success stems from the fact that it had “a proximity to its customers that its competitors lacked.”
He says that as Mailchimp “was itself a small business, it understood what those businesses wanted out of their marketing tools. Its offerings were cheaper, it added features more quickly, and it allowed greater customizations to fit customers’ needs.”
Combine that with a lovable brand (namely Freddie the chimp), very generous freemium accounts and a great email marketing strategy that delighted customers, and you’ve got yourself 68% of the email market share! (To put it simply.)
With its informal tone and easy-to-use software, Mailchimp turned email marketing on its head. With Mailchimp, something that was reserved for techies and large corporations was now:
- Simple
- Friendly
- Free (in many cases)
- And even fun!
Heck, it even gives you hi-fives for sending out a campaign and has been known to send you (weird) Mailchimp ‘swag’ like crocheted hats for your pet. Check out Mailchimp’s cat hats below:
Source: https://amplifier.com/case-studies/mailchimp
Mailchimp Market Share: Final Thoughts & Look to The Future
So there you have it, everything you need to know about Mailchimp’s market share.
If there were any doubts about who owns email, it is most certainly Mailchimp. The question is whether they'll stay at the top long-term. Within two years, they lost about 5% of their market share, so it'll be interesting to see if their revenue is going to decline too.
So what’s next for the email marketing titan?
What new features will it be bringing out in 2024 and the coming years?
Will it throw another curveball at us as it did in May 2019 with its new pricing model?
Keep an eye on our Mailchimp review where we’ll be covering all of the above.
If you're in need of an email marketing service, you might like to check out these excellent Mailchimp alternatives.
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17 Mar 2023 - Update for 2023
18 Jan 2022 - General update with figures for 2022
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This article has been written and researched following our EmailTooltester methodology.
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