Australians are among the most connected people on the planet. DataReportal’s Digital 2026 report counted 26.2 million internet users at the end of 2025, or 97.1 percent of the population, and 34.1 million active mobile connections, equal to 126 percent of the population (DataReportal, 2026). An inbox or a phone is almost always within reach, which is why email and SMS remain the most direct channels an Australian business owns outright, with no algorithm deciding who sees the message.
That reach comes with some of the most actively enforced marketing rules in the world. Mailpro is built to help you use both channels well: to write the message, send it at the right hour in Perth as well as Sydney, and keep the paper trail that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) expects to see.
What makes the Australian market different
One country, several clocks
Australia runs on three standard time zones: AEST (UTC+10) on the east coast, ACST (UTC+9:30) in South Australia and the Northern Territory, and AWST (UTC+8) in Western Australia. From October to April, New South Wales, Victoria, the ACT, Tasmania and South Australia move to daylight saving time, while Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia do not. A campaign scheduled for 9am in Sydney in January lands at 6am in Perth. With Mailpro you can schedule each send and split your list by state so every region receives it at a sensible local time.
A calendar that runs upside down
Christmas falls in the middle of summer, the end of the financial year (30 June) drives the biggest mid-year sales, and winter campaigns go out in July. Australia Day on 26 January, Mother’s Day in May, Father’s Day on the first Sunday of September, Click Frenzy, Black Friday and the Boxing Day sales all shape the retail year. Northern-hemisphere templates that talk about snow at Christmas simply do not work here. Our guide to email campaigns in Australia includes a local calendar you can plan around.
A multilingual audience
English is the working language, but the 2021 Census found that 5.6 million people, or 22 percent, used a language other than English at home, with Mandarin, Arabic and Vietnamese among the most common (ABS, 2021). Mailpro’s interface is available in six languages, and you can segment contacts by preferred language to send a translated version to the people who will read it.
The rules every Australian sender needs to know
The Spam Act 2003 applies to commercial emails, SMS, MMS and instant messages with an Australian link. It rests on three rules: you need consent, you must identify who sent the message, and every message needs a working unsubscribe that is honoured within five working days. The ACMA enforces it, and it does so publicly. The Commonwealth Bank paid a $7.5 million penalty in 2024 after sending more than 170 million marketing messages without a way to unsubscribe, and Pizza Hut Australia paid $2.5 million the same year for texts and emails sent to people who had not consented or had withdrawn consent (ACMA).
The Privacy Act 1988 and its Australian Privacy Principles, overseen by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), govern how you collect and store the personal information behind those messages. We explain both regimes in plain English on our email marketing law in Australia page, and the SMS-specific rules, including the new SMS Sender ID Register, in our FAQ on SMS regulations in Australia.
What you can do with Mailpro
- Newsletters that look right on a phone. Start from more than 600 templates or build from scratch in the drag-and-drop editor. Every design is responsive, so it reads well on the mobile screens most Australians check first. See how to create a newsletter.
- SMS campaigns to +61 numbers. Send bulk or personalised texts to Australian mobiles, schedule them by time zone, and include an opt-out in every commercial message, as the Spam Act requires. Details on our SMS marketing page.
- Automation. Welcome series, birthday messages and date-based reminders run on their own once set up. Tax-time reminders in July or renewal notices before EOFY are good Australian candidates. Learn about automated emails.
- Forms and surveys. Collect express consent with a tick-box you control, add double opt-in, and keep a timestamp for every sign-up. Build them with our online forms tools.
- SMTP relay and email API. Route receipts, booking confirmations and password resets from your website or app through Mailpro’s SMTP server or REST API.
- Contact management. Tags, custom fields and segments let you separate customers in Hobart from customers in Darwin, and keep unsubscribes suppressed everywhere.
Where your subscribers’ data lives
Under Australian Privacy Principle 8, when you disclose personal information to an overseas recipient, you must take reasonable steps to ensure that recipient handles it consistently with the APPs. Most email platforms used in Australia store data in the United States. Mailpro, run by Maxony in Geneva since 2001, hosts all data on its own private infrastructure in Switzerland, outside US jurisdiction. Switzerland holds an EU adequacy decision, the platform is GDPR-native, connections use TLS 1.3, and your contact lists are never sold or rented. That gives you a clear, documented answer when a customer or auditor asks where their data goes. More on why Switzerland matters.
How Mailpro compares on the points Australians ask about
In Mailpro’s own customer survey, users rated email deliverability 9.6/10, SMS deliverability 9.8/10 and ease of use 9.3/10. Pricing is based on the number of sends, not the size of your contact list, which suits seasonal businesses that email heavily before Christmas and EOFY and quietly for the rest of the year. You can start with 500 free credits and see how your first campaign performs before committing. Compare the options on the pricing page.