Email client popularity

With the addition of email client reports for all our customers, we took a step back and analyzed 12 months of data covering more than half a billion opens. The result - a birds eye view of email client popularity and usage trends over time.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest study on email client popularity ever undertaken. We'll be updating these figures each quarter or so to give you insight into the latest in email client usage. To learn more about how we measured usage and why some results may be skewed, check out the fine print.

Most popular email clients in 2009

Below is the email client market share as of January 2010. These numbers are not exclusive - some people used more than one email client during the month, and so that will register a vote for each client used.

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27.77%
Outlook 2000, 2003, Express
16.23%
Hotmail
14.14%
Yahoo! Mail
8.94%
Outlook 2007
7.30%
iPhone 3.0
5.74%
Gmail
4.79%
Apple Mail 3
3.36%
Apple Mail 4
1.54%
Apple Mail 2
1.31%
Lotus Notes 6
Email client Popularity  
Microsoft Outlook 36.70%  
Outlook 2000, 2003, Express 27.77%  
Outlook 2007 8.94%  
Hotmail 16.23%  
Yahoo! Mail 14.14%  
Apple Mail 9.68%  
Apple Mail 3 4.79%  
Apple Mail 4 3.36%  
Apple Mail 2 1.54%  
iPhone 8.69%  
iPhone 3.0 7.30%  
iPod touch 3.0 0.88%  
iPod touch 2.0 0.24%  
iPhone 2.0 0.23%  
iPhone 1.0 0.02%  
Gmail 5.74%  
AOL 1.98%  
AOL Mail 1.03%  
AOL Desktop 9.1 0.95%  
Lotus Notes 6 1.31%  
Thunderbird 2 1.10%  
Windows Live Desktop 0.99%  
Entourage 2004 0.08%  
Mobile Me 0.06%  
Excite 0.04%  
Undetectable 11.97%  

Trends for 2009

Below is the total market share held by the 10 most popular email clients over the last 12 months. It's important to remember that email client usage is determined when an image is opened, so those clients that show images by default will be skewed slightly upwards.

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Email client Feb 09' Apr 09' Jun 09' Aug 09' Oct 09' Dec 09'
Outlook 2000, 2003, Express
 33.04% 33.09% 32.08% 29.84% 29.12% 27.77%
Hotmail
 15.99% 15.05% 15.35% 15.70% 16.40% 16.23%
Yahoo! Mail
 16.50% 16.13% 15.65% 16.27% 15.35% 14.14%
Outlook 2007
 6.12% 6.95% 7.55% 7.93% 8.49% 8.94%
iPhone 3.0
 0.00% 0.03% 1.66% 4.92% 5.85% 7.30%
Gmail
 5.11% 5.32% 5.51% 5.58% 5.55% 5.74%
Apple Mail 3
 5.50% 5.94% 6.36% 6.79% 5.15% 4.79%
Apple Mail 4
 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2.37% 3.36%
Apple Mail 2
 2.13% 2.03% 1.90% 1.80% 1.66% 1.54%
Lotus Notes 6
 1.71% 1.80% 1.72% 1.40% 1.44% 1.31%

Movers and shakers

The movers and shakers highlights those email clients whose market share is growing or shrinking the fastest. This is done by comparing the average usage from Nov-Dec 2009 to usage in Jan-Feb 09.

iPhone 3.0 6.97%
Apple Mail 4 3.13%
Outlook 2007 2.76%
iPod Touch 3.0 0.80%
Gmail 0.43%
Outlook 2000, 2003, Express -5.54%
iPhone 2.0 -3.16%
Yahoo! Mail -1.56%
Apple Mail 3 -0.72%
Apple Mail 2 -0.65%

See which email clients your subscribers are using

While this report provides a great overview of which email clients are popular, it's probably not a good representation of your own subscribers. To find out exactly what your subscribers are using, you should check out our email client reports.

The fine print

The email client a person is using can only be detected if images are displayed. This can give an inflated weighting to email clients that display images by default, such as Outlook 2000 and the iPhone. It will also provide a lesser weighting to those that block images by default such as Gmail and Outlook 2007. Those email clients that aren't capable of displaying images, such as older Blackberry models and other mobile devices cannot be included in this study.