Automattic Acquires MailPoet

One of the biggest players in the world of WordPress, Automattic, has acquired MailPoet.

If you’re unfamiliar with Automattic, they’re the brains behind the likes of WordPress, WooCommerce, Buddypress, Jetpack, Tumblr, Akismet, Gravatar and a long list of solutions powering millions of websites around the globe.

Joining the list is MailPoet, a popular email marketing solution for WordPress, which gives WooCommerce store owners integrated email management capabilities in the admin. The plugin is used by more than 300,000 websites for everything from building a mailing list to managing transaction and abandoned cart emails. The nine-year old company is now a team of 11 that will be joining Automattic.

What is MailPoet?

MailPoet is both a plugin and an email marketing service. Using the plugin, you can design and send emails to your subscribers without leaving your dashboard. As for the emails themselves, MailPoet takes care of delivery for you, so you don’t need to worry about setting up a different SMTP service.

Earlier this year MailPoet introduced its own SMTP solution to ensure emails sent from the plugin land in recipients’ inboxes, instead of flagged as spam. This silent background feature includes store emails as well, bringing higher deliverability without users having to depend on separate SMTP plugins.

What benefits does MailPoet offer website owners?

MailPoet can be used for standard WordPress websites and also WordPress websites using WooCommerce to sell products and services, some of the benefits it can offer a website include:

• Capture Emails for Marketing Campaigns
• User List Segmentation / Multiple Audiences
• Newsletter Campaigns
• Abandoned Cart Retrieval
• Automated Workflow Emails
• WooCommerce Email Customizer
• SMTP Delivery of Emails
• WordPress Email Templates
• Post Notification Emails

In WooCommerce’s acquisition announcement, CEO Paul Maiorana said adding MailPoet “helps accelerate our roadmap toward a fully-integrated commerce experience.” Last year Maiorana and MailPoet CEO Kim Gjerstad met at WordCamp U.S. and exchanged ideas about a partnership.

“As our conversation progressed in the following months, we came to realize that we shared a common vision for stores; with store owners being able to access email right in their dashboard,” Gjerstad said.

Maiorana said Automattic’s initial focus of the acquisition is to work together on improving the experience for WooCommerce users, but the company plans to “evolve our collaboration in a way that can benefit the entire WordPress community.” MailPoet has confirmed all WordPress users will continue to be able to use the plugin, even if they do not have a WooCommerce store. There are no immediate changes planned for the plugin’s features.