Most marketers are still grading email on a number Apple broke five years ago. If your dashboard says 43% of people opened your last send, a big share of those “opens” were a phone preloading images, not a person reading. My position for 2026: stop reporting opens, start reporting clicks and revenue, and treat deliverability as your job rather than your vendor’s.
This report uses dated third-party data only: MailerLite’s 2025 benchmarks, GetResponse’s benchmark report, Google’s sender guidelines and Radicati’s user forecast. We publish 30 reviews (26 editorial, 4 unscored research previews); 19 of them are email marketing platforms, the same set our ranking hub and comparison chart cover.
Key takeaways
- Judge email on clicks, not opens: the 2025 average click rate was 2.09% against a 43.46% open rate inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MailerLite).
- Gmail's bulk-sender rules (in force since February 1, 2024) make authentication and one-click unsubscribe the price of reaching the inbox.
- Free plans shrank at Mailchimp and MailerLite (250 contacts) and stayed big at Kit (10,000).
- Most "AI" in email platforms writes subject lines and drafts. Useful, and nowhere near a strategy.
Four numbers that matter
Average open rate across industries, Dec 2024 to Nov 2025, inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection
Source: MailerLite 2025 benchmarks
Average click rate on the same 3.6 million+ campaigns, the number that tells you whether email worked
Source: MailerLite 2025 benchmarks
Spam complaint rate Gmail tells bulk senders never to reach (aim for under 0.1%)
Source: Google email sender guidelines
Email users worldwide in 2025, projected to reach about 4.97B by 2028
Source: Radicati Group, via Statista
Email benchmarks: two vendors, two datasets
Benchmarks come from ESPs measuring their own customers, so they describe each vendor’s user base rather than the whole market. Read them side by side and the lesson is the gap between opens and clicks, not the exact percentages.
| Metric | MailerLite 2025 (Dec 2024 to Nov 2025, 3.6M+ campaigns, 181K accounts) | GetResponse (2023 sends, 4.4B+ messages) |
|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 43.46% | 39.64% |
| Click rate | 2.09% | 3.25% |
| Click-to-open rate | 6.81% | 8.62% |
| Unsubscribe rate | 0.22% | 0.15% |
Both reports checked October 19, 2026. MailerLite’s highest-opening industry was religion (55.71%) and its lowest travel and transportation (30.10%). GetResponse’s figures cover active senders with at least 500 contacts. (Disclosure: I was GetResponse’s U.S. Brand Evangelist from 2024 to 2025.)
The Gmail rules every bulk sender now lives under
Since February 1, 2024, anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts must meet these requirements, per Google’s sender guidelines (checked October 19, 2026). Your platform can set up the records; only you can keep the complaint rate down.
- SPF and DKIM on your sending domain, plus a DMARC record (a policy of "none" is allowed).
- A DKIM key of 1,024 bits or longer for personal Gmail accounts; Google recommends 2,048.
- One-click unsubscribe on marketing mail, through the List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post headers, plus a visible unsubscribe link.
- A spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.30%, with 0.10% as the target.
- Valid forward and reverse DNS, TLS, and messages formatted to RFC 5322.
How hard are Gmail and Yahoo enforcing the rules in 2026?
Harder every year. The rules arrived in February 2024, but enforcement came in stages, and the stage that matters for 2026 started in November 2025. Here’s the timeline as Google’s sender guidelines FAQ and Yahoo’s Sender Hub document it (both checked October 19, 2026):
- December 2023: Google adds TLS to its sender requirements.
- February 1, 2024: Gmail requirements take effect for all senders, with extra rules for bulk senders (5,000+ messages a day to Gmail accounts). Yahoo begins enforcing its bulk-sender standards the same month and rolls them out gradually through the first half of 2024.
- June 1, 2024: deadline Google gave senders with existing unsubscribe links to add one-click unsubscribe to all commercial and promotional mail. From June 2024, bulk senders above a 0.3% user-reported spam rate are ineligible for Google mitigation.
- November 2025: Gmail ramps up enforcement on non-compliant traffic, including temporary and permanent rejections.
- Recovery: Google says bulk senders become eligible for mitigation again once their spam rate stays below 0.3% for 7 consecutive days.
Two details in Google’s FAQ catch growing brands off guard. First, bulk-sender status is permanent: hit 5,000 messages to personal Gmail accounts in a day once and you’re a bulk sender from then on, with no expiration date. Second, the 5,000 count is per primary domain, so mail from a marketing subdomain and mail from your main domain add up together. Splitting sends across subdomains won’t keep you under the line.
Yahoo’s version lines up closely. Its Sender Hub requires bulk senders to publish a DMARC policy of at least p=none that passes, support one-click unsubscribe, honor unsubscribes within 2 days and keep the spam rate below 0.3%, which Yahoo calculates from mail delivered to the inbox. Google, for its part, recommends processing unsubscribes within 48 hours and says transactional messages such as password resets are excluded from the one-click requirement. If you send both kinds of mail, keep them on separate streams so a promotional complaint spike doesn’t drag your receipts down with it.
What changed in the 2025 benchmarks?
MailerLite published its 2025 report on December 3, 2025. Its method note: median values from more than 3.6 million campaigns sent by 181,000 approved accounts between December 2024 and November 2025, split across 46 industries and 7 regions. It doesn’t report bounce or spam complaint rates, so it can’t tell you anything about deliverability. Against its own 2024 figures, every headline number moved up:
- Open rate: 43.46% in 2025, up from 42.35% in 2024.
- Click rate: 2.09%, up from 2%.
- Click-to-open rate: 6.81%, up from 5.63%.
- Unsubscribe rate: 0.22%, up from 0.08%, which MailerLite describes as over double.
The unsubscribe jump is the number I’d pay attention to. MailerLite attributes it mainly to Gmail making unsubscribing easier, which is the one-click rule above showing up in the data. That’s a healthy trade: a reader who leaves through a button can’t report you as spam.
The spread inside the averages is wider than the averages themselves. In the same report, click rates ran from 0.83% in politics to 4.90% in legal, and open rates by region from 31.97% in Latin America to 47.69% in Australia. Compare yourself against your industry row, or better, against your own last 12 months.
Why do opens keep rising while clicks barely move? Apple’s own Mail Privacy Protection page (dated December 12, 2025) says the feature downloads remote content in the background by default, regardless of whether the reader engages with the email, and routes it through two relays so senders can’t use the reader’s IP address to track them. A background download looks like an open to most tracking pixels. That’s the whole case for grading campaigns on clicks.
Four findings from our 2026 review cycle
Open rates stopped being a scoreboard in 2021
Apple shipped Mail Privacy Protection in 2021, and it preloads images for Apple Mail users, which inflates opens. Marketers who still optimize against open rate are optimizing a noisy number. Clicks, replies, conversions and revenue per recipient tell you far more about whether an email worked.
Free plans got smaller, except where they stayed big
Free plans got smaller in 2025–2026: Mailchimp and MailerLite now stop at 250 contacts or subscribers, and AWeber lists only a 14-day trial for new sign-ups. Kit (10,000 subscribers), Sender and beehiiv (2,500 each) still offer large free tiers. The market has split in two: older ESPs pushing small lists to pay early, and challengers using a big free tier to win you before you grow.
Deliverability is where platforms still differ, and almost nobody can prove it
Every platform we review can build a drag-and-drop email, an automation and a signup form. Where they still differ is what happens after you hit send, and that's the part almost no vendor lets you check. Since February 1, 2024, Gmail has required bulk senders to authenticate, offer one-click unsubscribe and stay under a 0.3% spam rate, and those rules apply on every platform. So the deciding factor is usually you: your authentication, your list hygiene, your complaint rate. Treat any vendor's inbox-placement claim as marketing until someone independent publishes the data.
AI in email is mostly a subject-line generator with a new badge
Every ESP shipped “AI” in 2024 and 2025, and most of it writes subject lines and first drafts. That's useful when it saves you an hour on a busy week, and it still won't tell you who to email or what to offer them. Judge each AI feature on three questions: is the output good enough to send with light edits, can you control tone and brand, and what happens to your subscriber data? If a vendor can't answer the third one in writing, skip the feature.
Social platforms can turn your reach off overnight. Your list only goes quiet if you stop earning the click.
State of email marketing 2026: FAQ
Is email marketing still worth it in 2026?
Yes. There were about 4.55 billion email users in 2025 (Radicati Group, via Statista), and MailerLite's 2025 benchmarks show a 2.09% average click rate across 3.6 million campaigns. Litmus puts the return at $36 per $1 spent, but its ROI page doesn't date the research behind that figure, so treat it as directional. The stronger argument is ownership: no algorithm decides whether your subscribers see you.
What is a good email open rate in 2026?
MailerLite's 2025 benchmarks put the cross-industry average at 43.46% (December 2024 to November 2025); GetResponse's report, built on 2023 sends, puts it at 39.64%. Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens, so judge campaigns on clicks, replies and revenue instead.
What spam complaint rate is too high?
Google's sender guidelines ask bulk senders to keep their spam rate below 0.1% and never reach 0.3%. The rules took effect on February 1, 2024 for anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail. Authenticate your domain, mail people who opted in, and make unsubscribing one click.
Did free email marketing plans get smaller?
Mostly. As of October 2026, Mailchimp and MailerLite free plans stop at 250 contacts or subscribers, and AWeber offers new sign-ups a 14-day trial instead of a free plan. Kit (10,000 subscribers), Sender and beehiiv (2,500 each) still offer large free tiers.
How many platforms does BestSends review?
30 published reviews: 26 editorial reviews and 4 unscored research previews. 19 of them are email marketing platforms, which is the set our ranking hub and comparison chart cover; the rest are deliverability, cold outreach, inbox and CRM tools.
Sources
- MailerLite: Email marketing benchmarks 2025, Dec 2024 to Nov 2025, 3.6M+ campaigns (checked Oct 19, 2026)
- GetResponse: Email marketing benchmarks, 2023 sends, 4.4B+ messages (checked Oct 19, 2026)
- Google: Email sender guidelines, in force since Feb 1, 2024 (checked Oct 19, 2026)
- Radicati Group email user forecast, via Statista
- Litmus: Email marketing ROI (undated page, checked Oct 19, 2026)
- Google: Email sender guidelines FAQ, enforcement timeline incl. November 2025 (checked Oct 19, 2026)
- Yahoo Sender Hub: best practices and bulk-sender requirements (checked Oct 19, 2026)
- Apple: Mail Privacy Protection and privacy, dated Dec 12, 2025 (checked Oct 19, 2026)