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The Email Love Figma Plugin has been live for about 18 months. This year we did $220k in revenue, made $110k in profit, got 7,400 installations, and closed 13 enterprise deals.

We also spent months building a product nobody wanted to pay for, finally figured out who our actual customers are, and grew from $500/month to $3k MRR.

Here’s what happened.

The Money Part

Revenue was $220,224. Profit was $110,380 (44% margin). MRR went from $500 in January to $3,000 in December.

If you’re wondering why MRR is only $3k when we did $220k in revenue, here’s how it breaks down. We have self-service subscriptions at $19-35/month (that’s the $3k MRR) and enterprise deals for custom design systems, onboarding, and support. Most of our revenue came from those 13 enterprise deals. Some are one-time, some are annual contracts.

Monthly MRR growth:

Steady climb on the subscription side, plus jumps when enterprise deals closed.

Other numbers: 7,400 plugin installations, around 85 paying self-service customers, 13 enterprise customers, 14,000 newsletter subscribers (up from around 9,000 in January), 40,000 monthly visitors to emaillove.com. Still just Matt and me plus 5-6 contractors. Still bootstrapped.

We Finally Figured Out Our ICP

For most of 2025, we had a churn problem. People would install the plugin, use it once or twice, then disappear. Conversion was low. Support tickets were all over the place.

Then after dozens of sales calls and customer conversations, a pattern emerged. Some customers would install the plugin and immediately get it. They’d use it every week. They’d tell their whole team. They’d upgrade to enterprise. Others would install it, struggle, and churn within weeks.

The difference? The customers who stuck around were lifecycle and CRM teams at mid-market to enterprise companies. They already knew Figma (or had designers on their team). They were sending regular campaigns and hating the process of rebuilding designs in their ESP. The customers who churned were usually working solo, didn’t know Figma well, or were expecting a drag-and-drop email builder.

We weren’t intentionally targeting the wrong people. We just hadn’t figured out who our actual customers were yet.

Once we understood this, we updated our content, marketing, and messaging to speak directly to lifecycle teams with design resources. The results over the last few months: fewer poor-fit customers installing the plugin, lower churn, better conversations. Took most of the year and a lot of customer conversations to figure out.

What Worked

Enterprise Became the Real Business

We started the year not really understanding what “enterprise” meant. Our first deal included the plugin and some email support.

Then customers started asking for more. “Can you build our design system?” “Can you train our team?” “Can we get you on a call when things break?” We said yes to everything (probably too much). But we learned what enterprise customers actually want. They don’t want software. They want a partner.

By the end of the year, our enterprise offering included a custom email design system built in Figma, white-glove onboarding, team training, and ongoing support through Slack, email, and Zoom.

13 companies paid for this in 2025. Startups to Fortune 500s. Fintech, hospitality, ecommerce, health tech, SaaS. The enterprise model changed everything. We’re not just selling a plugin anymore. We’re helping companies streamline their email production process.

We Went Deep on Integrations (Not Wide)

We could have tried to support every ESP that exists. Instead, we focused on the platforms our actual customers use: Braze, Iterable, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot, MoEngage, Klaviyo.

And we didn’t just build basic export functionality. We built the features that lifecycle teams actually need. Snippet support for Iterable. Localization tags for Braze. Platform-specific features that other tools don’t support.

When enterprise teams evaluate us, they’re not asking “Does it work with our ESP?” They’re asking “Does it work the way we actually use our ESP?” Now the answer is yes.

Other tools might technically support Braze. But they don’t support the advanced personalization and localization features that these teams rely on every day. Going deep with five platforms beat going shallow with twenty.

Email Love Kept Being Our Secret Weapon

The free Email Love website is still why the plugin works. By the end of 2025, we had 14,000 newsletter subscribers and 40,000 monthly visitors to the site.

Our newsletter has a 42% open rate and 5% click rate. People trust us because of Email Love. We’ve been curating emails and sharing what works for almost two years now. 30,000+ emails from 5,000+ brands. So when we say “we also built a plugin that makes this easier,” they listen.

This is our moat. You can’t just buy 14,000 engaged subscribers and 24 months of trust.

What Didn’t Work

We Built a Product Nobody Wanted to Pay For

In 2025, we spent months and a significant amount of money building Email Love Pro. The idea was to add a new revenue stream. Premium content, deeper insights, exclusive trend reports for $19/month. Based on our website traffic, our AI forecasts had us making thousands within months of launching.

We launched in June to crickets. Within a few months, we only had a handful of paying customers. Out of 40,000 monthly visitors, our conversion rate was ludicrously low.

In November, we made it free for everyone. Blessing in disguise? Probably. We’ve already seen a bump in website visitors since making everything free. Long term, having Email Love Trends and Brand Insights available to everyone should help us hit our goal of 100K monthly visitors.

What we learned: Email Love’s value is in building an audience and trust, not in direct monetization. The plugin is the business. Email Love is how people find us and learn more about email marketing.

Sometimes the best product decision is admitting you built the wrong thing.

Trying to Be Everything to Everyone

Early in the year, we didn’t have a clear picture of our ICP. We were marketing to anyone who builds emails. This led to a lot of wrong-fit customers. People who expected different things from the product. People who churned fast.

Once we got specific about who we serve (lifecycle teams with design resources), everything got easier. Marketing. Sales. Product decisions. Support. The lesson: It’s better to serve fewer people really well than try to make everyone sort of happy.

What We’re Learning

Figure out your ICP. Took us most of the year. Once we got specific (lifecycle teams with design resources), everything clicked.

Kill things faster. Email Love Pro should have died sooner. When something’s not working, move on.

Profitability buys options. 44% margin means we’re not desperate. We can turn down deals. We can invest in features that take time. We’re not scrambling.

Enterprise takes patience. Sales cycles are 3-6 months. But the deal sizes make it worth it.

Churn tells you who you’re actually for. Don’t fight churn by trying to please everyone. Fight it by getting more specific.

Your audience is your moat. It took us 24 months to reach 40K website visitors per month. Competitors can’t just buy that.

Most days are just work. The highlight reel looks like constant wins. Reality is answering support emails, fixing bugs, taking sales calls, shipping small features, and waiting for prospects to reply. Wins are scattered between lots of regular work.

Building in Person

Matt and I met up in person twice in 2025. Otherwise, we worked remotely from San Francisco and London.

We also attended one conference – The Inbox Expo where we won the Startup pitch. And we ran our first live in-person event – Email Love Live in London. We had around 40 people show up at a jazz bar and it was a super fun event.

I think next year we’ll be attending Inbox Expo again and maybe some other conferences. We’re also keen to run another Email Love Live event. Maybe eventually running our own conference. With AI and people being remote more than ever, we feel like in-person connection is more important than ever, and we want to foster that as part of Email Love.

What’s Coming in 2026

I know we’re late to the AI party, but we’re launching two AI features in Q1. AI Co-pilot automatically finds issues in your email designs. Broken links, missing alt text, MJML problems. One-click fixes.

AI Studio lets you upload your campaign brief. AI builds the first version using your design system. Pulls in content, images, links into your pre-approved components. Gets you 60-70% done. You spend time refining instead of starting from scratch.

We’re not trying to replace creativity. We’re trying to kill the grunt work so lifecycle teams can move faster without sacrificing quality.

Also adding more ESP integrations: Blueshift, DotDigital, Emarsys. And new pricing with the AI features coming soon.

Wrapped

2025 has been a super fun year for us. We’re still quite small, but I feel like we’re heading in the right direction, and I’m excited about what we can do in 2026. Thank you so much if you gave our Figma Plugin a try, used us for email inspiration and insights, or subscribed to our newsletter. We wouldn’t be here without you.

We’ll see you in 2026.

P.S. If you’re on a lifecycle team that needs a better way to build emails, let’s talk. And if you just want to see what we’re building, join the newsletter.

Much love,
Andy

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @emaillove