Gmail statistics are everywhere in today’s digital world, particularly as the popularity of the platform continues to grow. Currently, Gmail represents one of the most commonly used solutions for email on the market. It actually launched for the first time in 2004, on April 1st, with some people believing it was an elaborate April fools joke. Since then, Gmail’s presence has skyrocketed.
Today, Gmail continues to deliver excellent storage, speed, and efficiency for those in need of email hosting technology. As of January 2020, there were more than 1.8 billion Gmail users online, and many of those use the service every day.
Today, we’re going to take a closer look at the most impressive Gmail statistics, to help you learn more about this email solution.
Key Gmail Statistics – Editor’s Choices
- Gmail has more than 1.8 billion (Active) users
- Millennials are the most common age group to use Gmail
- Gmail is the third most important app to millennials, after Facebook and Instagram
- Gmail is available in more than 105 languages
- Around 27% of all email opens happen on Gmail
- Only around 0.1% of the messages that arrive in the Gmail inbox are spam
- The average Gmail account hosts more than 17,000 emails
Gmail statistics: Gmail Usage Statistics
1. There are over 4.1 billion email users worldwide
According to Statista, there are currently around 4,147 billion email users in the world, as of the beginning of 2021. The same study also predicts that the number of email users will continue to grow, to a huge 4.594 billion in 2025.
2. Gmail has over 1.8 billion active users
Since emerging in 2004, Gmail’s user count has gone up drastically. In January 2012, the company had around 35 million users on Gmail. By 2020 (January), the number of users has accelerated to over 1.8 billion. Many of these customers access their inbox every day.
3. The average Gmail user is 31
According to Mashable’s review of the “Average Gmail user”, the standard person using a Gmail account is most likely to be around 31 years old. Additionally, the same study found that most Gmail users would ignore any messages pertaining to topics about the government, medical care and dental care, though they would read about mobile, software, and web apps.
Mashable’s full Gmail user persona indicated that the average Gmail user was a male, liberal, educated person, in their thirties.
4. G-Suite has more than 2 billion active users
Though the active users on Gmail fall at around 1.8 billion, G-Suite revealed that by the end of 2020, there were more than 2 billion users on G-Suite – the Google productivity suite designed to offer access to document sharing, cloud collaboration, and email. The Gmail service is available for free as part of G-Suite.
The number of G-Suite users accelerated quickly in 2020, with 5 million paying customers at the beginning of 2020, and 2 billion by the end.
5. Gmail is the most popular email in the United States
According to Statista and Morning Consult, Gmail is the most popular email platform in the United States. Around 44% of people use Gmail as their email solution, with Yahoo mail following behind at 26% in 2017. Google’s offering is particularly popular among those in the 20-40 age group, with around 61% of 18–29-year-olds using Gmail.
A secondary report by Gmail found a much more significant difference between Gmail and Yahoo email users. Around 83.5% of respondents in this study between the ages of 14 and 18 used Gmail, while only around 6.9% used the second most popular tool – Yahoo.
6. As of 2020, Gmail is one of the most popular personal email services
For personal email, Gmail and Microsoft Email services are among the most popular email services. According to Ofcom, around 67% of people use Gmail, with 19% of those users accessing their accounts on a daily basis. Another 59% use Microsoft services, and 19% of those customers also use the Outlook environment daily.
7. Gmail owns around 27.2% of the market share for email
According to Litmus studies, Apple iPhone’s own email service is actually the most popular email client in the world with around 38.2% of customers using the solution. However, Gmail follows behind at around 27.2% of the market.
Litmus also found that the majority of email opens are now happening on mobile. As of 2021, 43% of people now open their emails on mobile devices, compared to only 36.1% on a website browser from their desktop.
8. In 2021, Gmail accounted for 75% of all email opens
Gmail is currently the top webmail email client in the world according to Litmus. Since the pandemic, the number of emails opens in a web-mail environment hit between 70-75%. As a web-focused email client, however, Gmail cannot compete with other email solutions in the desktop environment.
9. Gmail and Facebook are the two most popular online tools
According to Ofcom, in 2020, Gmail sat alongside Facebook as the two most popular online properties in the world, each reaching around 95% of all internet users. The Google and Gmail landscape reaches up to 99% of all internet users, while Facebook reaches around 96%.
Ofcom also found that around 26% of customers use email on at least a daily basis, while 89% said they use email regularly.
10. Gmail was the 12th most popular search query in 2021
Hootsuite’s report into the state of internet usage found that the most popular Google search query in the 1st quarter of 2021 was “Google”. The 12th most popular search query was “Gmail”. Hotmail fell at around number 18, while Yahoo came in at number 20.
Gmail Statistics: Account Statistics
11. The average email account is worth over $3.5k
To help highlight the value of your digital data, Backupify conducted a study to discover the value of the average email account. According to the Gmail value calculator, the average email account on Gmail is worth around $3,588.85. The same study also found that the average Gmail account is worth about five times more than a laptop and contains around 17,640 messages.
12. Gmail is popular across 25 countries
In the Sendgrid Email benchmark report, the company found that Gmail is the most popular provider of email inbox technology in 25 countries. Russia was the only country in which Gmail came second to another local email provider.
Interestingly, among the 25 countries surveyed for the report, Gmail had the highest overall market share in Indonesia, with 82.6% of customers using the service. Gmail is also extremely popular in the US, among around 41.9% of email users.
13. Gmail users have around 1.7 accounts on average
During an email usage study, the Radicati group found the average email user has multiple accounts to keep track of different conversations (i.e. personal and work emails). On Gmail, the average number of email accounts is around 1.7.
14. Four in five internet users use a webmail service every month
The latest data for 2021 found that around four in five internet users use a webmail service like Gmail on a monthly basis. Only China and Japan had lower usage rates than 75%. Notably, usage remains consistent across all demographic groups. More than three quarters of all internet users, including all genders and ages, said they had used a webmail service within the last 30 days.
15. Gmail is the most used email service in the UK
In a report into email and internet usage trends, Ofcom revealed that around 67% of all the adults in the UK used Gmail in the 12 months leading to February 2020. According to Ofcom, customers have a wide range of ways to access Gmail in the UK, including an automatic installation of Gmail on all Android phones.
16. Mobile is the most popular email reading environment
Litmus found that when it comes to choosing where to read emails, a web client (namely Gmail) is the choice for 27% of customers, while an Apple iPhone is the top choice for 29% of respondents. Gmail open rates have been climbing steadily over the last year, particularly on smartphones. Around 46% of emails were opened on mobile by June 2021.
Gmail also found that around 75% of all their users access their email on mobile devices.
Gmail Statistics: Inbox Content
17. “Promotions” in Gmail have a high inbox placement rate of 84.5%
According to Marketing Charts, emails tagged as “Promotions” usually have a high placement rate in the inbox of around 84.5%. The report found that among over 6 billion messages sent to Gmail users 1 week of October during 2016, Promotions were placed the highest in the email inbox, followed by messages tagged as “Social” (87.2%) and “Updates” (86.8%).
In this study, emails without a distinct classification had a placement rate of around 55.5%. Additionally, the report found that promotions had the lowest engagement rate, at only 19.2%
18. Gmail users send around 5.3 messages a day
A Backupify infographic discovered that the average Gmail account sends around 5.3 messages per day and receives around 10.8 emails in the same day. Additionally, Gmail users access up to 1.4MB of storage per day. In most cases, it takes the average Gmail user around 20 years to use up the full 10GB of storage available.
Backupify also found that most people hold onto their Gmail accounts for a decent amount of time. The average Gmail account is 3 years old.
19. Less than 0.1% of the email in a Gmail inbox is Spam
Google promises that the majority of the email in your inbox will be messages you want to read. In 2015, the company announced that less than 0.1% of the email in your inbox will be spam, thanks to the Gmail machine learning algorithms that help to sort through emails. Since then, the technology in the Gmail ecosystem has only improved, helping to manage messages even better.
As well as stopping you from seeing too much spam, Gmail can also help to ensure you receive the messages important to you. The amount of real emails landing in your spam folder will usually be around 0.05%
20. Google Blocks 10 million malicious emails per minute
According to CSO online, there are around 10 million malicious and spam emails sent around the web every minute, and these are all blocked by the automated machine learning system used by Gmail. This helps to reduce your exposure to dangerous messages. Blocking spam and dangerous messages can save companies millions.
21. Gmail’s longest outage lasted for 2.5 hours
The longest outage Gmail has had to date was in 2009, when the service stopped working for around 2.5 hours. The outage showed the terms “Gmail”, “Gfail” and “IMAP” trending around the web during the event.
Interesting Gmail Statistics
Gmail is one of the most popular email services in the world, whether you use it as part of the G-Suite environment, or on its own. Today, Gmail users exist all over the globe, and many of them access their email accounts through either their smartphone, or web app.
Though countless other email solutions exist, Gmail remains the top choice for all kinds of internet users. Hopefully, these Gmail statistics have given you a better insight into Gmail, the kind of people who use it, and it’s growth in the last few years.
Want to Learn More?
- The Ultimate List of Email Marketing Statistics
- Best Email Hosting Providers
- Best Email Marketing Software
