Are you in need of the best SMTP service for email marketing to send promotional and transactional emails? If yes, then this guide is for you. Also, if high inbox deliverability is vital to your marketing needs, keep reading.
This guide compares the 11 top SMTP services for email marketing based on deliverability, features, and pricing.
But first, before the review, what makes SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) so crucial to email marketing?
Why do You Need an SMTP Service?
If you run an online business or a website, sending emails to your customers becomes necessary for reasons such as:
- To deliver welcome emails immediately after registration/sign up
- To deliver an email for order confirmation
- Recovering forgotten password
- To inform customers of new passwords, posts, comments, and a few other things.
The fact there are tons of SMTP services out there makes it overwhelming to make the right choice. So, how to pick the best becomes too challenging because most of them offer similar features.
However, to make it easier for you and your team, we’ve reviewed the best of the best SMTP services in the market and came up with a list. And, with our list, your choices are narrowed and safer.
Several SMTP services allow you to deliver emails in mass, transactional emails, WordPress emails, and more.
Nevertheless, each of them is unique in pricing, feature, number of emails allowed with the free plan, ease of use, and record on deliverability.
Here are the best SMTP services for email marketing that provide the best set of features and higher deliverability:
11 Top SMTP Services for Email Marketing
- WP Mail SMTP – best for third-party integration
- SMTP.com – best for large volumes of emails
- Sendinblue – best for intuitive interface
- Constant Contact – best for beginners
- MailGun – best for developers
- Amazon SES – best for advanced users and developers
- SendGrid – best for top-notch scalability
- Mandrill – best for Mailchimp users
- G Suite – best for small businesses and startups
- Postmark – best for speed and deliverability
- Pepipost – best for excellent email marketing
» MORE: What is Email Marketing?
1. WP Mail SMTP – best for third-party integration
WP Mail SMTP is unarguably one of the best WordPress SMTP plugins that allow you to deliver WordPress emails through any SMTP email service instantly. And it’s straightforward to set up this tool.
You can also get it as a free SMTP plugin or upgrade to the pro version to access more helpful features.
Additionally, it allows easy setup for other email services like Mailgun, SendGrid, and Gmail using the free plugin. However, Microsoft SMTP and Amazon SES come with the Pro version.
That said, if setting up the SMTP seems overwhelming, you can go for the Elite plan to access the White Glove Setup. With that plan, you’ll get an expert to set it all up for you.
Pros
- Works great with all the widely-used email services
- WP Mail SMTP integrates both your SMTP workflow and plugins for various providers
- Powered by the WPForms team
- Amazon SES and Native Microsoft integrations (for the Pro)
- Complete control over the email notifications WordPress delivers (with the Pro)
Cons
- WordPress multisite isn’t completely supported
Pricing
WP Mail SMTP comes for free! Nonetheless, there’s a premium version of the plugin that costs $49 per year.
» MORE: How Effective Is Email Marketing?
2. SMTP.com – best for large volumes of emails
SMTP.com is one of the most powerful email delivery services available today. It handles large volumes of emails while ensuring speedy delivery. The software is built for high responsiveness to eliminate delays.
SMTP.com allows you to set up, integrate, and begin delivering emails in minutes.
What’s more? It provides a Reputation Defender add-on to monitor your email list securely. It also protects your IP and domain reputation while ensuring maximum delivery rates.
SMTP.com provides you with comprehensive reports to review and improve your engagement performance and email delivery. It’s efficient for developers and businesses alike and comes with affordable plans.
Pros
- Scalable and flexible plans
- It supports dedicated IPs and shared IPs
- Constantly monitors and blocks spam while maintaining high delivery rates.
- Seamless migration from other email services
- It comes with a super-responsive support team that’s accessible 24/7
- Speedy delivery with more than 99% system uptime
Cons
- The interface lacks one or two minor features. While it doesn’t reduce its efficiency, the additions could be helpful.
The developers are known to improve the service constantly so that you can reach out for any suggestions.
Pricing
Price starts at $25 per month
» MORE: Why Email Marketing Is Important
3. Sendinblue – best for intuitive interface
Sendinblue is a well-known email marketing service that offers SMS marketing. It’s also one of the best SMTP providers available on the market.
This top-notch SMTP email provider works perfectly with WordPress and other popular marketing tools such as Google Analytics, OptinMonster, and more.
Sendinblue comes with an extendable SMTP and API relay service that improves email delivery rates, especially for marketing and transactional emails.
Pros
- Various automation features for email marketing
- Effortlessly customizable email templates
- Easy-to-use, intuitive interface
- Competitive and inexpensive pricing
Cons
- Support can be a bit slow
Pricing
The pricing depends on the number of emails to be delivered. The free SMTP service version allows 300 emails per day. The paid plans start from $25 per month (40,000 per month).
» MORE: Best Email Marketing Service for Bounces
4. Constant Contact – best for beginners
Constant Contact is a highly responsive SMTP and email marketing service. It comes with a drag-and-drop builder and templates to create incredible emails that boost conversion. Additionally, you can manage your contacts, grow your email subscriber list, and track your progress.
Constant Contact is popularly known as the most reliable email service due to its remarkable delivery rate of 97%.
It’s a great choice for newbies. Not only does it offer all the crucial features required to grow your email list, but it also provides outstanding customer support to assist you in resolving any challenges.
Pros
- Real-time analytics and reporting
- Loaded with integrated automation and marketing services
- Advanced email marketing tools, including surveys and polls, custom web pages, and event management.
- Create powerful emails in minutes
Cons
- Although Constant Contact has advanced tools, it’s primarily designed for beginners. So, advanced users might find its behavior targeting features not enough.
Pricing
Constant Contact can be used as an SMTP service for free within a month. But, after a month, the paid plans start at $20/month (depending on the number of subscribers you have).
» MORE: Best Cheap Email Marketing Software
5. Mailgun – best for developers
Mailgun is a well-known SMTP service for developers. It comes with powerful APIs that everything easier. You can receive, send, and track transactional and marketing emails seamlessly.
Also, Mailgun is one of the best SMTP services that are easy to scale. Sending transactional and marketing emails are made easier regardless of the kind of website you’re managing: small consulting business, membership website, eCommerce store, or something entirely different.
Pros
- Allows testing mode
- Incredibly powerful
- An excellent choice for developers: comes with a RESTful API loaded with libraries and code examples in Ruby, Curl, PHP, Python, Java, Go, etc.
Cons
- Support isn’t always top of their game
- Fewer beginner-friendly features of other SMTP service providers on the list
Pricing
The free plan allows up to 10,000 emails per month (including up to 100 validations). Alternatively, you can opt for the Pay-As-You-Go plan or subscribe to the traditional plan, which starts at $79/month.
» MORE: Best Email Marketing Software for 10,000 Contacts
6. Amazon SES – best for advanced users and developers
Amazon SES is built as a flexible SMTP service for marketers and developers to deliver notifications, transactional, and marketing emails. It is also highly scalable.
Amazon SES SMTP service provider comes with powerful features and high deliverability but is mostly ideal for advanced users and developers.
The tool makes it easy to integrate your WordPress site with little help from plugins such as WP Mail SMTP.
This software has one primary goal – deliver emails – but it does it exceptionally.
Pros
- Offers one of the most competitive pricing on the market
- If you choose to host your web application on Amazon EC2, the initial 62,000 emails are free each month.
Cons
- Poor error handling
Pricing
- If you send your emails with an application hosted on Amazon EC2, the first 62,000 emails for each month are free ($0.10 for every 1,000 over).
- Sending emails from other software or an email client – $0.10 per 1000 emails.
- Receiving emails – free for the initial 1,000 emails you receive. After that, $0.10 per 1,000 emails you receive.
Added Charges – $0.12 per GB of attachments.
» MORE: How To Start With Email Marketing In 10 Easy Steps
7. SendGrid – best for top-notch scalability
SendGrid is one of the best SMTP email services that are cloud-based. It also allows you to receive and send bulk emails without bothering about an SMTP server. Also, you can build your email marketing campaigns.
This SMTP email service is very easy to set up and works perfectly with all WordPress sites. It also provides top-notch scalability!
What’s more? Email deliverability is at the top of the game. SendGrid comes with tools that improve deliverability, such as domain name authentication tools and dedicated IP addresses.
Pros
- Effortless integration with WordPress through its plugin
- Helpful and highly responsive customer support
Cons
- The paid plan might come off as pricey for new and small businesses
Pricing
The free version allows up to 40,000 emails for the initial 30 days. After that, it only allows 100 emails per day.
Paid plans begin at $14.95 per month for up to 50,000 emails per month.
» MORE: Email Marketing Coordinator
8. Mandrill – best for Mailchimp users
Mandrill is an exceptional SMTP email service built by the notorious Mailchimp. It’s an efficient and secure way to send transactional and marketing emails if you’re already using Mailchimp.
Likewise, you can use Mandrill for your eCommerce and email marketing emails. Also, Mandrill comes with advanced email tracking to help you monitor your click rates, open rates, and bounce rates for your Mailchimp emails.
Pros
- Extremely convenient and reliable for Mailchimp users
- Seamless integration with the Mailchimp software
Cons
- Limited to Mailchimp users
Pricing
Pricing depends on blocks of 25,000 emails. A single block of 25,000 emails will cost you $20.
» MORE: What is an Email Marketing Strategy?
9. G Suite – best for small businesses and startups
G Suite allows you to run a professional business address while relying on the Google interface familiarity. Also, you gain access to the whole productivity suite, including Google Drive, calendar, Docs, and your own domain.
Pros
- Excellent for small businesses and startups
- Reliable tools
- Super cheap
Cons
- Limited to 2000 messages per day
Pricing
The pricing plans start at $6 per month per user.
» MORE: Make Money with Email Marketing
10. Postmark – best for speed and deliverability
Postmark is an amazing SMTP email marketing service that specializes in sending both transactional and marketing emails. That means they are more focused on email speed and deliverability.
This efficient email service offers top-of-the-game security and analytics to help you grow your email list. It also offers mobile-friendly responsive templates, message events that trigger via simple webhooks, and many more.
Pros
- Offers detailed analytics with up to 45 days worth of email logs that display emails received, sent, who got them, read them, and moved them to the spam folder.
- Multiple server locations – 1 in Singapore, 1 in Amsterdam, and 3 in the US.
Cons
- Postmark particularly discourages the use of their servers for newsletters
- Not exactly the most budget-friendly SMTP service available out there
Pricing
The pricing plans begin at $10 per month for up to 10,000 emails per month.
» MORE: Best Email Marketing Service for Business Events
11. Pepipost – best for excellent email marketing
Pepipost is an SMTP service and an email API service that offers a secure platform for excellent email marketing. The settings are simple, and it makes it easier to connect and deliver bulk emails instantly.
Pepipost also helps you monitor your email delivery rates. Bounce rates and open rates, and also notifies when a contact unsubscribes. You can also track any other action taken by your subscribers.
Pros
- Basic HTTP APIs that are easy to integrate and understand
- Real-time analytics and reports
- 24/7 customer support
Cons
- Support might sometimes take time to respond
Pricing
Their free plan allows up to 30,000 emails for the initial 30 days. After that, it’s 100 emails per day.
The paid plans begin at $17.50 per month (annually).
How to Choose the Best SMTP Service?
Besides our list, it is crucial to know what to look for in an SMTP email marketing service. The essential factors when choosing an SMTP email marketing service includes:
- Scalability
- Email deliverability
- Budget
With those three factors in mind, you can be sure of making the right choice for your business. Nevertheless, you’ll want to consider budget last since your email campaign is a long-term strategy.
Conclusion
All of the SMTP email marketing services in this article are widely used for good reasons. Some of these are the amazing features, high deliverability, and scalability they offer.
All the services mentioned above are not just reliable but also cost-effective. All you have to do is choose the one with the essential features you need and start sending powerful emails to your customers.