Mailchimp spends $200M+ on marketing annually. MailerLite spends a fraction of that. Yet when we asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude to rank the best email marketing platforms for small businesses, MailerLite beat Mailchimp on three out of four models.
Marketing spend doesn't buy AI recommendations. Something else does.
The experiment
We asked each AI assistant the same question: "What are the best email marketing platforms for small businesses? Rank your top 10."
Same prompt. Same day. Four different answers.
The raw data
| Platform | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Gemini | Claude | Avg Rank | Mention Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MailerLite | #3 | #1 | #1 | #1 | 1.5 | 4/4 (100%) |
| Brevo | #2 | #2 | #2 | #2 | 2.0 | 4/4 (100%) |
| Mailchimp | #1 | #4 | #3 | #3 | 2.75 | 4/4 (100%) |
| ActiveCampaign | #4 | — | #4 | #4 | 4.0 | 3/4 (75%) |
| Klaviyo | #6 | — | #5 | — | 5.5 | 2/4 (50%) |
| Omnisend | — | #8 | #6 | — | 7.0 | 2/4 (50%) |
| GetResponse | #8 | #7 | #10 | — | 8.3 | 3/4 (75%) |
| Moosend | — | #3 | #8 | — | 5.5 | 2/4 (50%) |
| ConvertKit (Kit) | #7 | — | #7 | — | 7.0 | 2/4 (50%) |
| Constant Contact | #5 | #6 | — | — | 5.5 | 2/4 (50%) |
| Sender | #10 | #5 | — | — | 7.5 | 2/4 (50%) |
| AWeber | #9 | — | — | — | 9.0 | 1/4 (25%) |
| Beehiiv | — | — | #9 | — | 9.0 | 1/4 (25%) |
| EmailOctopus | #10 | — | — | — | 10.0 | 1/4 (25%) |
What this means: Share of Model
We define Share of Model as the percentage of AI assistants that mention a brand when asked about a category. It's the AI equivalent of market share — except it measures mindshare inside the models that are increasingly replacing Google.
Three platforms achieved 100% Share of Model: MailerLite, Brevo, and Mailchimp.
Only one platform — MailerLite — ranked in the top 3 across all four models. It's the consensus pick. Not Mailchimp.
The Mailchimp paradox
Mailchimp is the most recognized email marketing brand on the planet. It ranks #1 on ChatGPT. But Perplexity puts it at #4. Gemini at #3. Claude at #3.
Meanwhile, MailerLite — a company with maybe 5% of Mailchimp's brand budget — holds the #1 spot on three of four models.
Why? Because AI models don't care about brand awareness. They care about:
- Third-party reviews and comparisons. MailerLite consistently tops independent comparison articles. Those articles become training data.
- Specific, structured product information. MailerLite's documentation and feature pages are clean, structured, and easy for models to parse.
- Community sentiment. Reddit threads, Quora answers, and forum posts frequently recommend MailerLite for value. Models weight these heavily.
Mailchimp's massive brand campaign with billboards and Super Bowl ads? Invisible to LLMs.
The invisible brands
AWeber, Beehiiv, and EmailOctopus each appeared in only one model out of four. Their Share of Model is 25%.
If you're AWeber and 75% of AI assistants don't mention you when someone asks "best email marketing platform," you have a visibility crisis that no amount of Google Ads will fix.
This matters more every quarter. Gartner estimates 25% of web searches will shift to AI by the end of 2026. When your prospect asks ChatGPT "what email tool should I use?" instead of Googling it, your SEO rankings are irrelevant.
The Brevo surprise
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) achieved the second-best average rank (2.0) and 100% mention rate. Every model ranks it #2.
That consistency is rare. Most brands fluctuate wildly between models — Constant Contact is #5 on ChatGPT, #6 on Perplexity, and absent from Gemini and Claude entirely.
Brevo's consistency likely stems from its rebrand strategy. When Sendinblue became Brevo, they systematically updated every comparison article, review site, and documentation page. That content refresh created a unified signal across the web that all models picked up simultaneously.
The ecommerce split
Klaviyo and Omnisend have strong niche positions — they dominate when the query specifies "ecommerce." But on a general "best email marketing platform" query, they drop to 50% mention rate.
This reveals a critical insight: your Share of Model changes based on the question asked. A brand can be dominant in one query context and invisible in another.
Methodology
- Models tested: ChatGPT (GPT-5.2), Perplexity (default), Gemini (2.5 Pro), Claude (Opus)
- Date: February 20, 2026
- Prompt: "What are the best email marketing platforms for small businesses? Rank your top 10."
- No context or follow-up prompts were used — single-shot query only
- Share of Model = (number of models mentioning brand / total models) x 100
Results may vary with different prompts, dates, or model versions. That variability is itself a finding — brand visibility in AI is not stable.
What brands should do
If your Share of Model is below 75%, you're already losing deals you don't know about. The prospect who asked Claude for a recommendation and didn't see your brand? They never visited your site. They never entered your funnel. You can't retarget them. They're gone.
Three actions that actually move Share of Model:
- Audit your third-party content. Find every comparison article in your category. Are you included? Are you ranked well? If not, that's where the models are learning to ignore you.
- Structure your product pages. Clean, parseable documentation with clear feature lists beats marketing fluff. Models extract structured data, not vibes.
- Monitor monthly. Share of Model shifts as models update. What works today might not work in 90 days.
We track Share of Model for 150+ SaaS brands at VectorGap. The email marketing vertical is our latest dataset.
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