May 2025 Shareholder Update

Hi there,

The month of May was a major milestone in Buffer’s journey. After more than 5 years, we officially reached a new all-time-high ARR. We’re seeing the compounding effects of our hard work these past few years and it’s incredible to imagine where we’ll go from here.

Read on for the May results and my reflections on this milestone.

Notes:

• We achieved a new all-time high of $22.4M in ARR, surpassing our previous peak from February 2020.
• We are currently seeing strong and accelerating growth in MRR/ARR and the number of paying customers. Notably, May was our second month with over 5,100 new paid customers.
• Monthly Active Users, which includes our free active users, is growing but not at the rate we’d like. We’re currently making efforts to increase our growth rate of MAU.
• We are continuing to see ARPU decline slightly, and this is an outcome we are happy about. Our current strategy is to primarily grow through acquisition and new customers, and these metrics are strong. This growth will give us future opportunities to drive ARPU growth if we choose to utilize that lever.
• Cash growth was exceptional, increasing by $463K and making this our strongest month since May 2019. We ended May with $3.26M in the bank.
• Total cash inflows were $1.88M, the fifth consecutive month above $1.8M, a threshold we hadn’t hit once since early 2020.
• Net income came in at $249K, our best result since August 2020, bringing YTD profit to $578K.

Note-worthy updates and reflections

A New All-Time-High ARR

Our previous all-time-high ARR was $22,384,598 on February 6, 2020 and on May 27th, 2025 we officially reached a new all-time-high ARR. This milestone has been 5 years in the making for us, and it's still sinking in for me personally.

From our previous peak, we dropped 20% in ARR over 4 years to a low of $17,879,503 on January 7, 2024. It was a very nerve-racking situation to experience, and it took a monumental effort combining thoughtful strategy and diligent execution to turn it around.

What I'm most proud of, is that the team here today is largely made up of people who dug in or joined to support Buffer as we worked through our most challenging chapter as a company. 51% of the team (38 of 74) experienced the last all-time-high on February 6, 2020. A further 27 folks joined us during our decline. This means that 91% of the current team joined before our recent growth phase that began in January 2024 .

Each and every person at Buffer played a role in us reaching this new all-time-high ARR milestone. And it makes me very energized to think about what this team, having been through this experience, can build from here.

We're now officially in uncharted territory as a company. We have, by definition, never been here. I'm excited to keep going and see where this leads! And I think that defines this moment quite perfectly, because I believe that the way we'll discover how far we can take this company is by continuing to uncover our own path.

Template Library is Now Live

We launched our Template Library for all Buffer users in May, and the early response has been really encouraging. This feature is designed to reduce the friction of getting started with content. We know how often people stare at a blank page, unsure of what to post. The Template Library helps by offering prompts and inspiration and an easy way for anyone to start writing a social media post.

What I love about this launch is that the feature came directly from customer feedback. The earliest version was shaped by real struggles our community shared, and we’re already learning more now that it's live.

Thank you for being part of our journey and for your continued support. As always, feel free to reply if you have any thoughts or questions.

– Joel, Founder CEO