Email Marketing Benchmarks by Platform: How MailerLite, Mailchimp, Brevo & More Actually Perform

Why Platform-Level Benchmarks Matter

You've seen the stat: average email open rate in 2026 is 40-44%. Average click rate is 2.0-2.5%. Gets quoted everywhere. Almost useless.

Here's what those averages hide — the platform you send from changes your numbers dramatically. MailerLite users average 43.46% open rates. Mailchimp users? Often lower. And it's not because MailerLite users are better writers or have some secret subject line formula. It's because each platform has a different user population, different deliverability infrastructure, different shared IP reputations, and — this is the big one — different list hygiene enforcement. MailerLite basically pre-screens you before you send anything. Mailchimp lets almost anyone through the door.

So if you're comparing your numbers against "industry averages" without factoring in your platform, you're doing it wrong. A 38% open rate on Mailchimp might mean you're crushing it. A 40% open rate on MailerLite might mean something's broken.

I spent weeks pulling benchmark data from five different sources to build this comparison. Every platform, side by side — open rates, click rates, deliverability scores, pricing. So you can see what "normal" actually looks like on the tool you're paying for.

For the cross-industry averages, see our [email marketing benchmarks 2026](/blog/email-marketing-benchmarks-2026) post. For industry-specific breakdowns, see [benchmarks by industry](/blog/email-marketing-benchmarks-by-industry).

How We Sourced This Data

Five sources, cross-referenced against each other:

Important caveat: each platform's benchmark data reflects its own users. MailerLite's averages come from MailerLite senders, who skew toward small businesses and creators. Klaviyo's data comes from ecommerce stores. These are fundamentally different populations sending fundamentally different emails. You can't directly compare a MailerLite open rate to a Klaviyo open rate and draw useful conclusions.

Deliverability is the exception. EmailToolTester runs standardized tests across platforms — same conditions, same methodology. Those numbers are actually comparable. Where I'm using deliverability data from other sources, I've flagged it.

The Apple MPP thing: Apple Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads tracking pixels, which inflates open rates on every platform. Every open rate in this post is inflated to some degree. Click rates are the only metric you can really trust. I'm still including open rates because they're useful for comparing between platforms (the inflation is roughly proportional), but don't confuse them with actual engagement.

MailerLite

MailerLite's numbers are suspiciously good — until you understand why.

They enforce a strict 5% bounce threshold on imported lists. Dirty list? MailerLite flags or terminates your account before you send a single email. That sounds annoying (and it is, if you're the one getting rejected), but the result is that their entire user base has cleaner lists than basically any other platform. The averages go up because the worst senders never make it in.

94.41% deliverability across five independent EmailToolTester rounds (ranging from 89.8% to 98.0%). That's not their own marketing — that's third-party verified. Highest of any platform tested.

The 43.46% open rate comes from their own benchmark report. High, yes. But it makes sense when you realize MailerLite's user base skews heavily toward small businesses, creators, and niche audiences. These are people sending to subscribers who actually signed up and actually care. Not blasting 200K purchased contacts with "SALE SALE SALE."

Who this matters for: Small businesses and creators under 10K subscribers where deliverability is the priority. If you're on MailerLite and seeing open rates below 35%, something's wrong on your end — you're underperforming the platform average by a wide margin.

The catch: That strict approval process cuts both ways. Legitimate businesses get rejected sometimes. And if you're in finance, health, dating, or gambling — expect worse numbers than what's shown here. MailerLite performs best in "safe" niches. Which is part of how they keep the averages so clean.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp's numbers made me do a double-take. And not in a good way.

EmailToolTester measured 89.5% deliverability in January 2024 — fine, acceptable. Then 2025 tests came back below average. Lowest deliverability score among all reviewed platforms that year. EmailDeliverabilityReport found just 82% inbox placement. The industry average across all platforms was 83.1%. Mailchimp — the most famous email platform in the world — is literally below average now.

They scored 3.0/5 for deliverability features in our analysis. Dead last. The shared IP infrastructure is the core problem — your sender reputation depends partly on what other Mailchimp senders on your IP are doing. And since Mailchimp has the largest user base, that's a lot of unknown senders dragging your reputation around. Want a dedicated IP? That's the Premium plan. $350+/month.

But here's what really got me: Mailchimp's own benchmark data — 35.63% open rate, 2.62% click rate, Non-Profits at 40.04%, Ecommerce at 29.81% — hasn't been updated since December 2023. Two years. Every other major platform has published 2025 or 2026 benchmark reports. Mailchimp just... hasn't. I'll let you speculate about why a company stops publishing performance data.

Who this matters for: If you're on Mailchimp seeing open rates below 30% or click rates below 1.5%, the platform's decline might be part of the problem. Worth testing the same campaign on a different platform before assuming your content's the issue.

The hard truth: Brand recognition is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. At $13/mo starting (and it scales steep), you're paying more for worse deliverability than MailerLite at $10/mo or Brevo at $9/mo. That math just doesn't work.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign's deliverability data is a mess. I'll be upfront about that.

EmailToolTester measured 94.2% — nearly matching MailerLite. Great, right? But EmailDeliverabilityReport, testing at much larger volume (64,940 emails), found 76.59% inbox placement in one round and 80.75% in a follow-up. Those are wildly different numbers from two credible sources. The 89.6% I'm using is a midpoint that tries to account for both methodologies. Take it with appropriate skepticism.

And here's the kicker: Gmail-specific performance sits around 74%. Most of your subscribers are probably on Gmail. So the headline number may be flattering you.

Their 2026 report (covering Jan-Dec 2025) shows 39.26% average open rate and 6.21% click rate. That click rate looks incredible — until you realize ActiveCampaign measures click-to-open rate, not click rate. Completely different metric. Also, their user base skews toward experienced marketers running targeted automations, not people blasting their whole list with a coupon code. Blogger/Author verticals hit 7.73% click rates. Ecommerce/Retail: 5.07%. Media/Publishing leads open rates at 43.16%.

But here's where ActiveCampaign earns its price tag. The automation builder is genuinely the best on this list. Not "slightly better" — a tier above. Built-in CRM, lead scoring, conditional workflow logic that actually works the way you'd expect. SPF, DKIM, DMARC support is thorough. Predictive sending optimizes delivery timing per recipient. Dedicated IPs at $750 (ouch, but effective for high-volume senders). G2 users give it 4.5/5 from over 14,000 reviews, and the automation builder is consistently the reason why.

Who this matters for: B2B companies, agencies, anyone running complex multi-step automations. The tool attracts marketers who actually know what segmentation and behavioral triggers are — which is reflected in the click rate data.

The trade-off: $19/mo at 1,000 subscribers (vs. $10 for MailerLite), and deliverability that looks mid-tier when you test at scale. You're paying for automation depth, not raw inbox placement. If you're just sending newsletters, this is the wrong tool.

Brevo

Brevo's deliverability chart looks like a heart monitor. That's the honest summary.

Look at EmailToolTester's historical data: 83.9% in August 2017, then 75.6%, up to 95.4% in February 2020, back down to 76% by September 2020, up to 96.3% in March 2021, then a catastrophic drop to 67.7% in June 2023 — the worst score any major platform has ever posted — before recovering to 88.3% in January 2024. Twenty-eight percentage points of swing in 18 months. No other platform in this comparison comes close to that kind of variance.

The current numbers are decent. 88.3% on EmailToolTester, 92/100 from EmailDeliverabilityReport. But the Brevo community forums paint a different picture. One enterprise user reported 98-99% soft bounces to Gmail and Yahoo for months on shared IPs — clean lists, proper authentication, didn't matter. Months of list cleaning helped but never fully fixed it. Their exact words: "We just wish we could get more one-on-one support to help us get back on the right track." Good luck with that on the Starter plan — phone support requires Business at $65+/month.

A separate analysis found Brevo emails are nearly twice as likely to get marked as spam compared to the industry average (27.4% spam rate vs 14.8% benchmark). Inboxing score of just 55.4%. I wouldn't trust my business revenue to that kind of variance.

So why does anyone use Brevo? The pricing. Unlimited contacts, pay by email volume. $9/mo for 5,000 emails — cheapest paid option here. If you have 20,000 contacts but only send twice a month, Brevo saves you hundreds compared to per-subscriber platforms. That's a real advantage.

Who this matters for: Budget-conscious senders with big lists who can stomach the deliverability rollercoaster. If inbox placement is your top priority, go MailerLite. If cost is the hard constraint, Brevo is hard to beat on price.

The real risk: Shared IP reputation. Your deliverability depends partly on what other Brevo senders on your IP pool are doing. You can get a dedicated IP on higher tiers, but then you're losing the whole budget advantage that made Brevo attractive in the first place.

Klaviyo

Most expensive platform on this list per subscriber. And the deliverability? Biggest question mark by far.

Here's what we know: Klaviyo is not included in EmailToolTester's independent tests. They claim "exceeding 95%" but provide zero third-party verification. Every other major platform in this comparison submits to independent testing. Klaviyo doesn't. For a platform charging premium prices, that absence says something.

What we do have is user reports — and they're concerning. A Trustpilot reviewer documented 22.5% to 60% bounce rates during Black Friday. Black Friday. The single most important sending day for ecommerce brands. The issue was shared IP bans hitting multiple Klaviyo senders simultaneously. This isn't a one-off; shared IP vulnerability is baked into the architecture.

Klaviyo's own published metrics show their top-performing brands hitting 65.34% open rates and $28.89 revenue per recipient on abandoned cart flows. Those are genuinely impressive numbers. But they're the top performers, not the average. Quoting your best users' numbers as benchmarks is a choice.

Who this matters for: Shopify and ecommerce stores that need deep behavioral automation, product feeds, and revenue attribution. Nothing else matches Klaviyo's ecommerce feature set. That's not hype — it's true. The question is whether you can afford the deliverability risk and the pricing premium.

The honest take: If deliverability data matters to your decision (and it should), Klaviyo's refusal to submit to independent testing is a red flag. Doesn't mean their deliverability is bad. Means you can't verify it. Budget for a dedicated IP if you go this route — don't leave your Black Friday revenue on a shared IP.

GetResponse

GetResponse is a weird one. Kills it in one test, mediocre in another.

EmailDeliverabilityReport ranked them #1 among all platforms tested — 91/100 overall score from 64,855 emails. Largest sample size of any test I found, and GetResponse won it. Then EmailToolTester, using a completely different methodology, measured 82.1%. Decent but unremarkable. Same platform, two very different stories.

The Gmail problem is real though: 78.34% inbox placement on Gmail. That means roughly one in five emails to Gmail users hits spam or promotions. And most subscriber lists are majority Gmail. So that 89.4% headline number might be overstating what you'll actually experience.

GetResponse bundles more features per dollar than anything else here — email, webinars, courses, landing pages, conversion funnels. All at $19/mo. No competitor matches that combination. The trade-off is predictable: none of those features are best-in-class individually. Jack of all trades, master of none. But if you'd otherwise be paying for three or four separate tools, the math can work.

Who this matters for: Small businesses that want one dashboard instead of five logins. Deliverability is solid enough. Feature breadth is the pitch.

The warning: 27% of GetResponse Trustpilot reviews are one-star. Most are about billing disputes — auto-renewal, cancellation friction, that kind of thing. Read the billing terms before you commit. Seriously.

Omnisend

Lowest deliverability in this entire comparison. And the Microsoft numbers are brutal.

75.1% overall from EmailToolTester — bottom third of all tested providers. Gmail's fine at 94%. Yahoo and AOL both 100%. But Microsoft (Outlook, Hotmail)? 38.7%. Six out of ten emails to Outlook addresses going to spam or getting blocked. That's not a "deliverability issue" — that's a broken channel.

If your customers are mostly on Gmail — and a lot of DTC ecommerce audiences are — this might not matter to you. But if 15-20%+ of your list is on Microsoft domains, no subject line trick or send-time optimization is going to fix a 38.7% inbox rate. You need a different platform.

That said, Omnisend is genuinely clever for ecommerce. It separates "Abandoned Cart" from "Abandoned Checkout" — a distinction that matters more than most platforms realize. It tracks abandoners through browser cookies, not just email form submissions. Combined email + SMS workflows. The free plan includes cart recovery automation, which is rare. And the numbers back it up: Omnisend's own data shows automated emails generating $2.87 revenue per email vs. $0.18 for campaigns. That's 16x. Their automated flows drive 37% of email-generated sales from just 2% of send volume.

Who this matters for: Ecommerce stores where the customer base is predominantly Gmail. Check your email domain distribution before committing — seriously, go export it and look. If Microsoft is a significant chunk, look at Klaviyo or Drip instead.

The value proposition: $16/mo vs. Klaviyo's $20/mo (and Klaviyo scales faster). If your audience is on Gmail and you need ecommerce automation on a budget, the math works. Just go in with your eyes open about that Microsoft gap.

Smaller Platforms: Kit, beehiiv, AWeber, Drip

Less data available on these four, but here's what I found.

Kit (ConvertKit) — $33/mo at 1,000 subscribers. EmailToolTester measured 88.2% deliverability. Kit self-reports 99.8% delivery rate, which sounds amazing until you realize that measures server acceptance, not inbox placement. Very different things. They also claim 40% average open rates, but their analytics don't filter out bot clicks — so those numbers might be inflated. Kit is for creators who want dead-simple email tools and don't mind paying a premium for the simplicity. Rating: 7.2/10.

beehiiv — $43/mo for the Scale plan. Here's the thing: no independent deliverability data exists. Not tested by EmailToolTester. Not tested by EmailDeliverabilityReport. They self-report 98.9% delivery rate. Can't verify it. beehiiv is genuinely great for newsletter operators — the ad network monetization and referral programs are features nobody else offers. But you're flying completely blind on deliverability. For a $43/mo platform, that bothers me. Rating: 7.0/10.

AWeber — $15/mo starting. EmailToolTester measured 83.1% deliverability (11th out of 15 platforms). EmailDeliverabilityReport gave 85.61% inbox placement across 84,387 emails. The historical range — 71.8% to 93.2%, a 21-point swing — tells me this is inconsistent infrastructure, not a stable platform having a bad day. AWeber built its reputation over two decades. The current data doesn't support that reputation anymore. Rating: 6.2/10.

Drip — $39/mo at 2,500 subscribers. 88.2% deliverability from EmailToolTester. Gmail performance is excellent at 97%, but Yahoo sits at 60%. That's bad. Drip is purpose-built for ecommerce — strong Shopify integration, visual workflow builder, pre-built cart abandonment templates. If your audience is on Gmail, it works. But $39/mo for 2,500 subscribers? Omnisend starts at $16/mo. Klaviyo at $20/mo. That pricing is hard to justify unless Drip's specific workflow builder is exactly what you need. Rating: 6.8/10.

Platform Comparison Table

All platforms side by side. Deliverability scores are from the most recent independent tests. Open and click rates are from platform benchmark reports and cross-platform data.

Stare at this table long enough and a few things become obvious.

MailerLite wins on deliverability AND price. 94.41% at $10/mo. That combination is hard to argue with unless you specifically need advanced automation or ecommerce features. For newsletters, creators, small businesses — it's the default recommendation.

Brevo is the budget pick, if you can live with the variance. $9/mo, 88.3% deliverability, unlimited contacts. Outperforms platforms costing 2-4x more. But that deliverability history makes me nervous. You're betting on their current trajectory holding.

Mailchimp's position makes no sense on the data. Declining deliverability, mid-range open rates, steep pricing. I keep looking at this table trying to find the argument for choosing Mailchimp in 2026, and I keep landing on "brand recognition." That's it. That's the argument.

Two platforms won't submit to independent testing. Klaviyo and beehiiv both claim strong numbers but don't let third parties verify them. That's not a data gap — it's a decision those companies made. Factor it in accordingly.

What These Numbers Actually Mean for You

Two reasons to care about platform benchmarks: figuring out if you're underperforming on your current tool, and deciding if switching could actually move your numbers.

Clicks matter more than opens. I'll keep saying it. Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflates every open rate on every platform. A 43% open rate on MailerLite and a 36% on Mailchimp might reflect identical real-world engagement — the deliverability difference just changes how many tracking pixels get pre-loaded. Click rate is the only metric you can actually trust. Everything else has an asterisk.

Deliverability is the floor, not the ceiling. If your platform delivers 75% of emails to the inbox (Omnisend on Microsoft) vs. 94% (MailerLite), that's a 19-point gap before you write a single word of copy. No subject line hack closes that. No A/B test fixes it. If your emails aren't reaching the inbox, nothing else you do matters.

But deliverability isn't the whole story either. Klaviyo's top performers generate $28.89 revenue per recipient on cart recovery flows. That kind of ecommerce-specific automation can easily outweigh a deliverability advantage on a simpler platform. The best email program is one where emails reach the inbox AND the automation actually drives revenue.

What to do with this:

1. Look up your platform's deliverability score in the table above. Below 85%? Run a seed test — the aggregate number might be hiding a Gmail or Microsoft problem. 2. Compare your rates to your platform's benchmarks. Not "industry averages" — your platform's numbers. Below your platform's average? The problem is your content, segmentation, or list hygiene. Not the tool. 3. Beating your platform's benchmarks but still frustrated? The platform might be the bottleneck. Switching to better deliverability could lift everything. 4. Before you switch: migration hurts. Rebuilding automations, re-authenticating domains, warming up sender reputation. Budget 2-4 weeks of worse performance. Don't do it in Q4.

If I had to pick one platform for a new email program today — no ecommerce requirements, just reliable email that reaches inboxes — it'd be MailerLite. Best deliverability, reasonable price, strict list hygiene that protects you from yourself. If I needed ecommerce automation, Klaviyo, but with a dedicated IP from day one. And if budget were the hard constraint, Brevo — knowing I'm trading consistency for savings.