Newsletter plugins overlap with email marketing and subscription tools
Newsletter plugins often sit alongside broader email marketing and subscriber tools, so their stated focus can differ.
The strongest overlaps are email-marketing (117 plugins) and email (113). Other related tags include WooCommerce (46), marketing (35), Mailchimp and popup (34 each), and subscribe (32). Use these labels as context when comparing whether a plugin presents itself around newsletters, marketing, a particular service or sign-up tools.
A small group leads the category in active installs
Install counts are concentrated among a small number of widely adopted options.
- Category size: There are 394 plugins; 23 have at least 10,000 active installs, and 7 reach 100,000 or more.
- Highest counts: MC4WP: Mailchimp for WordPress and Hostinger Reach each have 1 million active installs. MailPoet has 500,000, while Newsletter has 200,000.
- 100,000 installs: Brevo, MailerLite and Newsletters, Email Marketing, SMS and Popups by Om each have 100,000 active installs.
- Lower counts among the listed leaders: Hustle and FluentCRM have 80,000 each; Email Marketing for WooCommerce by Omnisend has 40,000.
Ratings and update dates vary among leading plugins
Ratings, review volumes and update recency differ even among plugins with substantial install counts.
- MC4WP: Mailchimp for WordPress: excellent (many reviews); updated this month.
- Hostinger Reach: excellent (few reviews); updated this month.
- MailPoet: good (many reviews); updated this month.
- Newsletter: excellent (many reviews); updated this month.
- Brevo: good (a moderate number of reviews); updated four months ago.
- MailerLite: poor (few reviews); updated this month.
- Newsletters, Email Marketing, SMS and Popups by Om: excellent (few reviews); updated one month ago.
- Hustle: good (many reviews); updated this month.
- FluentCRM: excellent (a moderate number of reviews); updated this month.
- Mailchimp List Subscribe Form: poor (a moderate number of reviews); updated five months ago.
- Email Subscribers & Newsletters by Icegram Express: excellent (many reviews); updated this month.
- Email Marketing for WooCommerce by Omnisend: excellent (a moderate number of reviews); updated this month.
Category breadth and update activity shape the shortlist
The category offers broad choice, but adoption is concentrated among a smaller set of plugins.
With 394 plugins in the category, the fact that 23 reach 10,000 installs and only 7 reach 100,000 shows that install counts vary widely. Meanwhile, 64% were updated in the last year. When comparing candidates, consider both the plugin’s stated focus and its individual install history and update date rather than assuming category size means all options have similar adoption or maintenance activity.