The top ten email marketing platforms in 2026

During the survey period, 895 of the 1,000 online shops (89.5%) sent marketing emails. Based on this, the following ranking emerges:

Further down the list are Oracle (Responsys) and Xqueue with 1.9 % each, followed by Voyado with 1.6 %, Adobe Campaign with 1.3 %, and Selligent with 1.2 %. 3.9 % of online shops use in-house solutions. An overview of all the tools identified can be found at the end of this article.

SAP Engagement Cloud remains in the lead, albeit with a smaller market share. Its lead over the runner-up shrank from 86 shops in 2025 to 42 shops in 2026. In February 2026, SAP rebranded the solution from Emarsys — a company it had acquired in 2020 — to SAP Engagement Cloud.

Klaviyo is now in second place on its own. In 2025, the platform was neck and neck with Salesforce Marketing Cloud Engagement. Klaviyo is specifically aimed at e-commerce customers and offers integrations for many shop systems. It is worth noting that Klaviyo only started offering a data centre in Germany in autumn 2026, and it is only available to those with newly created accounts. While data sovereignty is a widely discussed topic in the industry, hosting in the USA does not appear to be a deal-breaker for the top 1,000 online shops in Germany.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud has remained quite stable compared with the previous year. The decline from 10.0% in 2025 to the current 9.8% corresponds to just two shops. Therefore, we cannot identify a downward trend. However, the growth observed in previous analyses (highest market share in 2023: 11.3%) has clearly stagnated.

Braze and Bloomreach are gaining ground. The number of Braze shops in the top 1,000 has increased from 31 to 47, while the number of Bloomreach shops has risen from 34 to 41. These platforms are gaining ground primarily by attracting customers who are already in the market.

One in six online shops has switched platforms

Of the 811 online shops that we were able to compare in 2025 and 2026, 16 % have changed their marketing tech stack. This is an increase on the previous year, when the figure was 15 %. Therefore, the vast majority of online shops have remained with their existing platform. However, these switches do indicate the direction in which the market is moving.

Together, Klaviyo, Braze and Bloomreach account for a third of the shops switching platforms. It is particularly revealing to see where they are coming from. Of the 25 shops that left SAP Engagement Cloud, 14 moved to one of these three platforms. Optimizely lost five out of six shops to Klaviyo and Braze, while Brevo lost five out of ten to Klaviyo. However, platform migration is not a one-way street. SAP Engagement Cloud itself gained eleven online shops, while Salesforce Marketing Cloud gained seven.

The switches do not reveal a clear pattern; there are cases of downsizing, upsizing, and switching between categories. With Klaviyo, however, a trend is emerging. Half of its new customers come from other lean, self-service platforms, such as CleverReach, Rapidmail and Brevo. Our hypothesis: Large platforms often map out individual data structures and processes that cannot easily be transferred to a leaner solution. However, those already using a tool with a manageable range of functions that is not deeply integrated into the system landscape face fewer changes when switching. The other half of Klaviyo’s new customers, however, come from other categories or enterprise platforms such as Optimizely, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and SAP Engagement Cloud.

Note: we count online shops, not corporate groups. Several switches involve sister shops that presumably migrated together. With small sample sizes, fluctuations should therefore not be overinterpreted.

Looking back, the market remains fragmented

Consolidation on the provider side has not yet resulted in fewer leading players amongst online shops. For example, our first market analysis in 2018 identified 64 different email service providers. By 2024, this figure had risen to 75, reaching 89 by 2025. In 2026, we counted 94 email systems, plus in-house solutions used by 35 online shops. However, this increase is likely largely due to our refined detection logic.

Furthermore, the top tier is less dominant than it used to be. In 2018, 74.5 % of shops with a recognised platform used one of the ten most widely used solutions, whereas today the figure stands at around 68 per cent. As our market analysis methods have evolved since then, the figures are only comparable in terms of trends.

Today’s rising stars are not new providers. They did not play a significant role in the German Top 1,000 ranking in 2018. Klaviyo, for example, accounted for just 0.3 %. Bloomreach acquired Exponea in 2021; it stood at 1.3 % in 2018. Braze, founded in 2011 as Appboy, appears in the email marketing platform ranking for the first time in 2022 with a 0.6 % share.

Comparing the top 10 from 2018 with the current list reveals a common thread: the platforms that lost the most market share were sold during this period, often more than once. This is most evident in the case of Optimizely. Launched by the Berlin-based provider Optivo, it was acquired by Deutsche Post in 2013, who subsequently sold it on to Episerver in 2016. After acquiring Optimizely in 2020, Episerver renamed the email marketing platform Optimizely Campaign. In our 2018 analysis, it accounted for 11%; today, that figure stands at just 3.5%.

A similar trend can be seen with Mapp, which emerged from Teradata’s marketing business in 2016 — a business that also included eCircle (2018: 5.1%; 2026: 0.4%). Mailchimp has not recorded any significant gains in the Top 1,000 since its acquisition by Intuit in 2021. In 2018, 6.6 % of the Top 1,000 online shops used Mailchimp, but by 2026 this figure had fallen to just 1.7 %.

Once acquired, a platform becomes part of a larger portfolio, and its roadmap is often guided more by the acquirer’s strategy than by the needs of existing customers. Integration projects, rebranding and new licensing models tie up resources. In our view, the further development of the software itself often falls short of customers’ and the market’s expectations.

However, other examples show that things can be done differently. For example, Salesforce acquired ExactTarget in 2013 and developed the platform to form the core of the Marketing Cloud Engagement system. Its market share increased from 5.3 % in 2018 to 11.8 % in 2023, but has since stagnated. Newsletter2Go became part of Sendinblue (now Brevo) and benefited from international expansion, rising from 3.6 % in 2018 to 5.6 % in 2026. Therefore, it seems that the decisive factor is not so much the acquisition itself, but rather the role the platform plays for the acquirer.

This question is currently being raised in relation to SAP Engagement Cloud (formerly Emarsys). SAP acquired Emarsys in 2020 and is now aligning its development more closely with the SAP customer base. The rebranding in February 2026 and its integration into SAP’s enterprise engagement strategy highlight this. The platform remains the clear market leader, but its share has fallen to 17.4 %. Prior to the acquisition in 2020, its market share was 22.8 %.

Inxmail is taking a different path. Without being sold, the platform has evolved organically, transitioning from a Java client to a browser-based interface. In the ranking, Inxmail has lost market share (2018: 6.8%; 2026: 3.2%). However, Inxmail is also used as a delivery backend for campaign management platforms such as DYMATRIX CXP and the ai.suite from the AIC Group. In day-to-day use, users manage aspects such as recipient selection and personalisation with other tools while Inxmail handles the delivery. In such cases, we attribute the shop to the front-end tool rather than to Inxmail (see methodology).

Only time will tell how Braze fares following its acquisition by Salesforce. Whether the platform will follow in the footsteps of ExactTarget or Optivo depends on the role that Salesforce assigns to it alongside Marketing Cloud Next. You can read our thoughts on what the acquisition of Braze means for the market and for users of the tools here.

CSA certification: It is becoming less important as a selection criterion

Our market data also sheds new light on the Certified Senders Alliance (CSA). Klaviyo, Braze, and Bloomreach are attracting the largest number of new customers switching providers in 2026, yet they are not listed as CSA participants. Behind the scenes, they use sending services: Klaviyo relies on Twilio SendGrid, Braze relies on either Amazon SES, SparkPost or SendGrid, and Bloomreach relies on Mailgun or Mailjet. Mailgun is the only CSA-certified sending service mentioned. For many shops switching providers, the lack of a CSA certificate is clearly not a barrier.

The reach of the key German CSA partners is also shrinking. In our analysis of email addresses in 2026, GMX and Web.de together accounted for 29.8 % of all addresses examined. However, for accounts created since 2024, this figure fell to just 20.5 %. Gmail accounts for 52.6 per cent of these accounts and is not on the CSA participant list.

This does not mean the CSA is insignificant. SAP Engagement Cloud, Brevo, CleverReach, Optimizely and Inxmail are certified, and Microsoft and Yahoo are participating alongside GMX and Web.de as email providers. Therefore, when selecting an email marketing or customer experience platform, companies should continue to check what proportion of their mailing list these providers represent.

Conclusion: What does this data mean for your choice of platform?

The market remains varied and in flux. A high market share or strong growth does not necessarily indicate whether a platform is a good fit for your business. Four questions can help you assess this:

• Requirements: Which use cases do you need to implement over the next few years?
• Data: Does the platform’s data model align with your data sources and segmentation?
• Total cost: Do the benefits justify the costs of licences, implementation, consultancy, and in-house expertise?
  Contract: What is the length of the commitment, and what commitments regarding the roadmap and pricing are set out in writing?
• Team: Can your team operate the platform independently and make full use of its capabilities?

Would you like to know how your platform compares, or whether switching would be worthwhile? As a technology-independent consultancy with over 25 years' practical experience, we will work with you to assess use cases, data architecture, and your team's situation. Contact us to discuss your platform review.

The marketing technologies that German online shops will be relying on in 2026.

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How we conducted the analysis

Population: The 1,000 most relevant B2C e-commerce players in Germany, as determined by the EHI Retail Institute and Grips Intelligence on the basis of Gross Merchandise Volume for the 2025 financial year.
Survey: Publicare identified the mailing systems based on marketing emails received and their technical characteristics.
B Basis for market shares: 895 shops (89.5 per cent) sent marketing emails during the survey period. 105 shops (10.5 per cent) did not offer a subscription service, did not send emails, or could not be categorised technically. Market share is calculated based on the number of shops per system, not email volume or turnover.
Classification: Where we identify a front-end tool — i.e. the solution that users employ to plan and manage their campaigns — we attribute the shop to that tool rather than to the sending service operating in the background. Therefore, sending services such as Amazon SES, Mailjet or Twilio SendGrid only appear in the ranking if no campaign management tool could be identified.
Data status: The figures reflect the study period from 1 January to 31 October 2026, and may therefore differ from figures previously published in the EHI study.