A frustrated developer's weekend PHP script became a $3+ million email marketing platform without a single dollar of venture capital. Here's how EmailOctopus beat a $12 billion competitor.

The $200/Month Problem That Started Everything

In 2014, Jonathan Bull had a problem every growing startup knows: pay Mailchimp's high fees or stop emailing his users. With 2,000 subscribers, his monthly bill was reaching $200. His side project couldn't afford that.

So he did what developers do when pricing doesn't make sense: he built his own solution. A simple PHP script that sent emails through Amazon SES for under $5 per month.

That weekend project would eventually beat Mailchimp for nearly 100,000 organizations.

But first, it had to survive losing 99% of its customers.

The Market Mailchimp Left Behind

By 2014, Mailchimp ruled email marketing with 12+ million users. But their success created a problem: they focused on big enterprise customers, not small startups.

Their pricing got more expensive as you grew. This hurt exactly when small businesses needed to save money. Meanwhile, Amazon SES offered the same quality email delivery for much cheaper. The opportunity was huge, but required technical skills most small businesses didn't have.

Jonathan's brother Gareth ran a marketing agency and had the same problem. Together, they saw the gap: build a simple bridge between Amazon's cheap service and what small businesses needed.

The 99% Customer Loss Lesson

EmailOctopus launched in November 2014 with a bold plan: completely free email marketing. No limits, no costs, no catch.

The growth looked great:

• 2,000 users in 6 months
• Featured on Reddit and Hacker News
• People signed up for beta access

Then July 2015 happened.

The day they started charging money, 99% of users left.

"We'd spent almost a year testing our product with free users," Jonathan said later. "Free users want different things than paying customers do."

Losing almost everyone was devastating but taught them something important. The 1% who stayed and paid showed them the real market: businesses that cared about price but needed serious email tools, not people just looking for free stuff.

How They Built It (2015-2025)

Phase 1: Testing While Working Day Jobs (2015-2017)

The Numbers:

• 300-400 new signups each month
• 10% became paying customers
• ~$500 monthly revenue by end of 2015
• $13K monthly revenue by March 2017

The Plan: Build nights and weekends while keeping their day jobs. Brexit actually helped them make 20% more money when the British pound crashed against their US dollar pricing.

Phase 2: Going Full-Time (2017-2019)

The Big Move: Both brothers quit their jobs when they hit $13K monthly revenue. That was barely enough to survive in London. They hired Tom Evans to handle operations while they focused on product and marketing.

The Smart Marketing Move: In 2016, they gave away email templates for free on GitHub and Product Hunt. This got them:

• 36,000 downloads
• 650+ Product Hunt upvotes
• Hundreds of new paying customers from developers who found EmailOctopus

By November 2019: £1M total revenue and 10,000 customers.

Phase 3: Growing Steady (2020-2025)

The Results:

• 2021: $1.6M yearly revenue
• 2023: $3M+ yearly revenue (As per official source)
• 2025: 98,000+ organizations across 50+ countries

The Business Health:

• Average customer value grew from $137 (2016) to $883 (2023)
• 20%+ of customers come from referrals
• Profitable the whole time

How They Protected Their Business

1. The Amazon Price Advantage

While competitors built their own expensive email systems, EmailOctopus used Amazon SES. This gave them enterprise-quality email delivery at 80% lower cost. Setting up Amazon was technical enough that it kept competitors away.

2. The Developer Strategy

Their free templates created a pipeline: developers found the templates, tried the product, then told their marketing teams about it. This word-of-mouth growth cost them almost nothing.

3. Focus on Ignored Markets

They won in areas Mailchimp didn't care about:

• Self-published authors (big email lists, not much money per email)
• Musicians and creators (cared more about engagement than sales)
• Nonprofits (tight budgets, lots of emails to send)
• International startups (US dollar pricing was cheaper for them)

4. Smart Money Management

No venture capital meant no pressure to grow too fast. They kept 12+ months of expenses in the bank and only spent profits on growth, not borrowed money.

What They Did Differently

EmailOctopus succeeded by ignoring common startup advice:

"Don't compete on price" → They made low price their main advantage and won customers who valued savings

"Free users will eventually pay" → They learned free users and paying customers want completely different things

"Move fast and grow big" → They moved carefully and built a stronger business

"Raise money to grow faster" → Bootstrap limits forced them to focus on profitable customers

"Build better features" → They built simpler tools that solved the main problem cheaper

What This Means for Other Founders

EmailOctopus proves that timing the market beats inventing new things. They didn't create email marketing or make it better. They just noticed when the market leader's success left other customers behind.

This opportunity exists in every established market: find where the big player focuses on one type of customer (enterprise) and leaves other customers (price-sensitive small businesses) underserved, then build a simple bridge between existing cheap technology and what those customers need.

The plan:

• Find price gaps where the technology costs much less than what customers pay
• Start as a technical bridge between complex solutions and simple needs
• Test with paying customers right away because free users want different things
• Use technical users as marketers who can recommend you to their teams
• Focus on ignored customers instead of fighting for mainstream ones
• Bootstrap discipline gives you freedom to grow sustainably without outside pressure

Playing the Long Game

EmailOctopus keeps growing 30%+ each year while Mailchimp struggles with enterprise complexity and competition from Klaviyo, ConvertKit, and others.

Their steady approach means they can take their time improving slowly while competitors chase venture capital returns or deal with acquisition problems.

For founders choosing between venture scaling and bootstrap growth, EmailOctopus shows that the slow and steady approach can work even in competitive markets.

Sometimes the best way to beat a giant isn't to out-innovate them. It's to serve the customers they've stopped caring about.

---

Revenue data from public statements by EmailOctopus founders and industry reports. Analysis current as of 2025.