Trends Email Traffic Trends Reflect the Ongoing Shift in Work and Communication By MailChannels | 3 minute read In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom emerged as the unlikely poster child for remote communication, riding a wave of global lockdowns and remote work mandates. But what began as a pandemic-era necessity has evolved into a long-term behavioral shift in how businesses, educators, and individuals communicate online. At MailChannels, we saw this transformation play out in real-time through SMTP traffic analysis across millions of domains. In early 2020, we observed a massive surge in email traffic involving Zoom’s domains — a clear signal that the world was rapidly shifting toward virtual meetings and webinars. Fast forward to 2025, and Zoom-related email volume continues to remain high, though the context has evolved. What Today’s Email Traffic Tells Us While the explosive early growth of Zoom-related emails has plateaued, usage remains significantly above pre-pandemic levels. This is part of a broader trend: email is increasingly being used not just for communication, but as infrastructure — powering transactional notifications, meeting invites, and workflow automation across platforms. Our SMTP traffic data now shows sustained high volume not only for Zoom but also for other collaboration platforms like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Slack. What’s notable is the shift in how these tools are used: Zoom and Google Meet traffic is now dominated by recurring meeting notifications and event reminders. Slack and Teams generate high volumes of integration-based emails — from activity summaries to user invites and automated alerts. Calendaring apps (like Calendly, SavvyCal, and Reclaim) are driving personalized notifications that indicate deeper integration into users’ daily workflows. What This Means for Email Hosting Providers The rise of transactional email volume across SaaS platforms has critical implications for web hosts and their email infrastructure: Deliverability is a strategic advantage: With business-critical notifications riding over SMTP, hosts can’t afford to have their IPs blocklisted. Even a brief outage can disrupt sales, support, or operations for end-users. Spam filtering must distinguish nuance: It’s no longer just about blocking Nigerian prince scams. Misclassifying a legitimate Zoom invite or a Stripe receipt as spam can ruin trust and create costly support tickets. Response Analytics™ is essential: MailChannels’ proprietary system categorizes SMTP responses in real-time, helping hosts quickly pinpoint and fix delivery issues—especially important when users expect immediate meeting notifications or two-factor authentication emails. Looking Ahead: Email as a Platform The broader implication of these trends is that email isn’t going away—it’s evolving. The most successful hosting providers are treating email not as a liability to be offloaded, but as a strategic part of the user experience. By adopting a smart SMTP relay like MailChannels Outbound Filtering, hosts can: Isolate spam before it causes IP reputation damage Gain real-time visibility into traffic patterns and abuse sources Offload the operational burden of maintaining IP health and sender reputation Final Thoughts Zoom’s rise may have been the spark, but the fire has spread across the entire communications ecosystem. Email remains the universal fallback — the fail-safe that every service leans on when it matters. Ensuring that it works flawlessly is no longer optional. At MailChannels, we help hosting providers meet that challenge head-on, every day. Ready to stop worrying about email delivery issues? Talk to our team or sign up for MailChannels Cloud and protect your sender reputation starting today.