How we built a $400K per month email marketing company

Dmytro Kudrenko, the founder and CEO of Stripo, started his journey in software development 25 years ago alongside friends. About 15 years ago, they launched a customer data platform that featured an integrated email template editor.

Understanding the difficulties marketers encountered when designing complex emails without coding knowledge, they developed a solution: an intuitive email template builder. This innovation allowed marketers to focus on their core tasks, leading to the creation of Stripo.

Stripo is a bootstrapped startup with Ukrainian origins, serving over 1 million users globally. It offers an all-in-one email design platform for building emails of any complexity really fast. Stripo has transformed the email creation process, reducing time spent by at least 3.7 times. With a library of over 1,550 professionally designed templates, users can easily find suitable designs for any need. The platform’s modular design system enables the creation of reusable elements, minimizing the need for repeated email testing. It also integrates smoothly with more than 80 ESPs and email clients, such as Mailchimp and Gmail, through a simple click. Stripo’s smart elements feature allows users to generate multiple product cards and email digests simultaneously, while its AI tools assist with content creation and optimization directly in the editor.

Additionally, Stripo offers a plugin version of its editor that can be embedded into any CRM, CDP, or similar system.

Stripo’s focus on simplifying email production is what makes it unique. Although Stripo does not handle email sending, it enables users to create and export their designs effortlessly to various marketing platforms, including ESPs like Mailchimp and traditional email clients like Outlook or Gmail.

With more than a decade of experience and expertise in email marketing, Stripo understands the challenges of building HTML emails that render well across different devices and email clients. This understanding led to the development of an editor that enables users to craft professional emails without the need for technical expertise. Initially part of a CDP, Stripo has since grown into a standalone product.

Revenue

Stripo has achieved steady growth of 10% month-over-month over the past few years, reaching a Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) of roughly $381,499. In 2023, Stripo generated around $4 million in revenue. We’re excited to have exceeded the milestone of one million users globally.

Business model

Stripo operates on a freemium and subscription-based model. Users can access a free version with no time restrictions, while paid plans offer various options tailored to different needs. For instance, the Prime plan allows users to add up to 100 team members, provides unlimited projects, includes credits for testing emails across different clients, and offers access to a countdown timer feature.

Creation of Stripo

Developing the initial version of Stripo was a significant challenge, particularly given our small team and limited budget.

Right from the start, we recognized the value of a committed, high-quality team. To build Stripo, we needed at least three developers, along with a QA specialist, a business analyst, the CEO, and a designer—especially with our emphasis on design and email coding. Despite the small team, we had productive debates that pushed us to make well-considered choices. Though we all came from development backgrounds, our primary focus was solving user problems and delivering high-quality results, rather than simply creating complex code.

After completing the editor, we realized that we were competing not only with other email editors but also with established ESPs. The market was saturated with ESPs, so for users to choose Stripo for email creation, we needed to truly address their pain points. Our editor only allowed users to design and then export emails.

This understanding shaped our direction: we wanted users to create emails with more flexibility than traditional drag-and-drop blocks allowed. We envisioned an editor where users could create content once, then update data without altering the design, or adjust design without changing the content. This modular approach became a central part of our vision.

Stripo initially launched as a free tool, with a focus on validating the product’s consistent value rather than generating revenue. Our main measure of success was user retention and ongoing usage. After nine months, once we were confident in the product’s effectiveness, we introduced a paid plan to support our growing monthly expenses, which had reached about $20,000.

To streamline email creation, we gradually integrated Stripo with over 80 ESPs. Rather than relying solely on APIs, we developed direct integrations, enabling users to export emails without any code adjustments. Our integration strategy was built for speed, allowing us to add new ESPs in under two days. We initially integrated with major ESPs, expanding further based on user feedback.

Our early users were marketing agencies of various sizes, from small teams of five to large organizations with over 1,000 employees. Dmytro Kudrenko personally visited many of these agencies, even flying to different countries to observe their processes and gain a wide range of insights. This hands-on approach allowed us to blend technical expertise with invaluable feedback from marketing professionals.

At first, we integrated with Gmail, one of the most widely used email clients. To our surprise, we found that 30% of our users were exporting emails to Gmail. When we reached out, we learned they were using our editor to create HTML-based business emails and sending them to clients through Gmail. This insight revealed that our tool had applications beyond marketing. Following this, we integrated with Outlook, enabling users to send polished, professional emails through Outlook as well. This addition brought in a broader range of users, including HR professionals who used Stripo for internal communications.

While financial growth is important, our core mission has always been to simplify life for email marketers and elevate the quality of emails reaching people’s inboxes.

Three key differentiators for Stripo

1. Flexible and user-friendly: Stripo achieves a balance that makes it easy for beginners to create custom-designed emails effortlessly while offering advanced features for professionals to streamline their workflows.

2. Modular design approach: Our email templates are built using a modular design, enabling users to create flexible and efficient templates.

3. Dedicated to innovation: Stripo continuously incorporates essential and cutting-edge features as they emerge. For instance, we promptly implemented Gmail’s AMP4Email and integrated AI tools, giving our users access to the latest in email design technology.

Stripo’s mission

Shaping the evolution of email marketing