How Many Email Accounts Are There Globally?

Many people have a love-hate relationship with e-mails. However, this nifty online tool is more than just a means to send passive-aggressive responses to coworkers or get newsletters from your favorite online store.

Since its invention, 4 billion individuals now use emails daily. This helpful online tool is an economical and effective way to communicate with others online for work, school, and business transactions. 

If you want to know how many email accounts exist worldwide, this article is for you. 

How Many Emails Accounts Exist? 

In 2023, email users are expected to grow to 4.37 billion globally. This represents more than half of the world's population, a rise of 2.7% from the previous year. 

This number will increase over the next few years, climbing 2.5% to 4.48 billion in 2024 and another 2.5% to 4.59 billion the following year. Unfortunately, 

This section will discuss how many subscribers Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail have. Read on to learn more.

Total Number of Email Accounts Worldwide

There are 5.59 billion active email accounts, roughly 1.5 times the number of users. Some of them are the same users with separate accounts for different purposes, such as:

• School
• Work
• Business
• Banking
• Cryptocurrency

Separating e-mail accounts by purpose provides an added layer of protection for one’s online identity and business transactions from personal ones.

Being the three giant email platforms in the world, Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail comprise the most significant portion of email accounts, with billions of users daily. Here are the statistics of email accounts around the world.

1. There are more than 1.8 billion GMail users worldwide.

(Rightinbox)

With over 1.8 billion users, GMail continues to be the world's most widely used email service. Google’s e-mail service also held 43% of the market share for email service providers at the end of 2020 and into 2021. 

An estimated 75% of Gmail users use mobile devices to access their emails, 61% of those aged 18 to 29, and 54% aged 30 to 44. 

Gmail provides an efficient way to send e-mails over the Internet. It also has the bonus of being in the Google ecosystem, making files from Google Drive or Google Docs easy to edit and send on the go. Google’s e-mail service also protects against spam e-mails by filtering out 100 million spam emails daily.

Unfortunately, the service has limited storage, and sometimes ads on the platform can be overwhelming.

2. Yahoo! estimates the platform has over 227.8 million active users.

(Earthweb, Statista)

Yahoo! introduced Yahoo! Mail in 1997, the second-most popular email service globally and used for personal and professional purposes. Its early success after the dot-com frenzy also made it one of the most popular search engines of the early 2000s.

The business estimates 227.8 million active users and 26 billion emails sent daily. Gmail dominates the e-mail market by a wide mile, but the numbers show that Yahoo! remains the most popular age group for people 65+.

While Yahoo! is no longer the tech giant it once was in the early heydays of the internet, it still has several advantages over GMail, such as:

• Much higher storage capacity
• Intuitive UI
• Allows large file attachments

However, just like Google, Yahoo! makes money out of advertising. It may also deactivate your account after 6 months without activity.

3. Since its rebranding in 2012, Hotmail has had 400 million users worldwide.

(Webopedia) 

Microsoft phased out Hotmail in 2011 and rebranded the service as Outlook.com in 2012. However, customers can still use @hotmail.com when setting up a new email account. 

Outlook.com is a free web-based mail account that offers webmail, calendaring, contacts, and task services. Still, this platform differs from Outlook, the Microsoft Office suite's mail client application. 

4. NetEase is China’s most popular e-mail service, with 940 million users.

(WCCF Tech Inc., Microsoft)

E-mail isn’t as popular in China as in the US. Many messaging services are often integrated within all-in-one apps like WeChat. In fact, 90% of users in China prefer WeChat for work purposes, compared to e-mail.

While many people are already familiar with WeChat, most people outside China are unfamiliar with NetEase.  On the other hand, NetEase is more well-known for publishing games and other content. This Chinese giant also boasts 940 million users. Another popular all-in-one platform providing e-mail services is Tencent’s QQ Mail.

While it’s unknown how many e-mails are sent through the platform daily, QQ boasts 597 million active users.

China’s e-mail market is one of the hardest to penetrate in the world. Due to strict censorship regulations and its penchant for blocking thousands of websites via the Great Firewall, e-mails are often delayed. In some cases, e-mails can be flat-out non-deliverable.

Conclusion

E-mailing is one of the most important services the Internet provides. From education to business purposes, e-mails are handy tools for reaching your desired audience, signing up for social network accounts, making purchases, and doing many other online activities.

There are more and more people signing up for e-mails every day. Despite being dominated by GMail, several key players remain in the e-mail market.