I Compared 5 Best SMTP Providers for FinTech Companies: Which One Should You Use

Reliably sending critical and time-sensitive emails while staying compliant with international data regulation laws is key for any FinTech company out there. 

In this article, I’ll provide you with 5 SMTP providers for FinTech that will allow you to achieve all of the above, and more.

To get you started, here’s a snapshot of the platforms, and here’s the methodology and criteria I used to select the providers on this list.

Disclaimer: The references to software ratings, available features, and pricing were valid at the time of writing this article, but could be subject to change in the future.

Best FinTech SMTP providers: a snapshot

Click on a platform name to jump ahead to the detailed review.

• Mailtrap is the best email infrastructure for FinTech products that plan to send a high volume of emails with high deliverability rates, in-depth analytics, and growth-focused features.
• Mailgun offers a plethora of advanced tech features FinTech, and a solid email API with in-depth documentation.
• SendGrid is a reliable transactional email service for FinTech companies with a plethora of quality-of-life features, but the customer support team that prioritizes high-tier users.
• Amazon SES is the best SMTP provider for FinTech companies with experienced developer teams who are already AWS users.
• Postmark is a minimalistic SMTP provider for FinTech companies that need detailed email logs and can live without any testing features.

For your convenience, here’s a table that sums up the most important points of each SMTP provider:

SMTP provider	Free plan	Pricing
Mailtrap	1,000 emails/month (sending), 100 emails/month (testing)	From $15 for 10,000 emails
Mailgun	100 emails per day	From $15
SendGrid	60-day free trial	From $19.95
Amazon SES	N/A	From $0.10 per 1,000 emails
Postmark	300 emails per day, 9,000 per month, and 500 contacts	From $9 for 5,000 emails/month and up to 500 contacts

Why FinTech companies need specialized SMTP provider

Before we proceed with the reviews, let’s quickly go over why you need specialized transactional email services for FinTech in the first place. 

Reliability

First and foremost, you need to make sure your transactional emails, that is, payment confirmations, e-invoices, 2FA codes, new device logins, etc., get delivered instantly with no hiccups whatsoever. 

Why? Well, they’re tied to real-time user actions, so even a delay of a few seconds can lead to a failed login or an abandoned transaction. This, in turn, loses users’ trust, which is key in FinTech since there is sensitive data in play.

With this, a specialized SMTP provider can help you by offering the following:

• High delivery speed (~5 seconds)
• Dedicated stream for transactional messages
• Flexible retry logic for handling issues like ISP failure
• High email uptime with transparent downtime reports

Example use case

You own a neobank, a challenger bank, or BNPL app, and your user needs to receive a one-time password (OTP). If the email with the OTP doesn’t arrive in the user’s inbox, they might face account lockout. So, in this case, you don’t just lose trust, but your customer support team gets more unnecessary work on their hands.

Scalability

Unlike with eCommerce companies, whose emails are a bit static (e.g., cart abandonment emails aren’t sent in blasts), in Fintech, emails can be more dynamic due to market shifts. So, your email infrastructure needs to be scalable in order to withstand new feature emails, regional launches, tax notifications, suspicious activity etc.

That is, an SMTP provider needs to be able to handle the increasing load without any bottlenecks or hiccups. To achieve this, a provider should have:

• Cloud-based infrastructure with multiple MTAs
• Support for sending high throughput
• Dedicated streams or at least dedicated IPs
• Deliverability expert support for emergencies

Example use case

You own a crypto exchange, a market cap website, or a trading platform, all of which can acquire a massive number of users in a short time. To register an account, your users need to verify emails, upload documents, connect their digital wallets, make a deposit, etc. 

Since the whole account activation process requires you to send them multiple transactional emails, from account confirmations and document approval notifications to welcome emails, your infrastructure needs to be able to withstand the spike in sending volume.

Compliance and auditability

Let’s be honest, if you’re in FinTech, you’re probably knee-deep or at least have been in regulations and compliance. Unfortunately, I have to tell you that there’s a whole lot more of them when it comes to emails.

Namely, since you deal with sensitive information, financial data, or even documents related to identity verification, regulations like GDPR, standards such as PCI DSS, and certifications like ISO 27001 require you to be transparent about user consent, have data protection mechanisms in place, auditable logs, and the list goes on.

Not complying with these usually results in massive fines. Take the CAN-SPAM Act, for instance, which penalizes users for violations with fines of up to $44k per email.

To help you comply with email rules and regulations, and other email marketing laws, an SMTP provider needs to provide you with:

• Custom sending domains so you can align with different policies
• Proper email authentication to prevent malicious attacks
• Detailed event logging that you can use for audits
• Clear and transparent data retention policies
• Access control and multi-tenancy support for your team
• Privacy-first infrastructure with data localization options (i.e., EU-based servers if you’re from EU for regional compliance)

That’s why we run an in-depth audit and comparison of SMTP providers compliance. Feel free to check the full blog post for methodology and detailed breakdown, meanwhile, there is a snapshot of the main compliance aspects:

	Mailtrap	Mailgun	SendGrid	Amazon SES	Postmark
Regulations Compliance	High	High	High	Configuration Dependent	High
Data Residency	EU/US	EU/US	Global	Multiple Regions	US
Auditing & Accountability	Excellent	Good	Very Good	Detailed	Good
Access & User Controls	Granular	Good	Very Good	Extensive	Good
Data Control & Retention	Flexible	Flexible	Flexible	Configurable	Flexible
Legal Compliance	Strong	Strong	Strong	Strong	Strong
Certifications	ISO 27001	SOC 2	SOC 2, ISO	Many (AWS)	SOC 2

Example use case

You’re sending custom invoices, loan approval, or P2P payments documents that can include sensitive customer information on payment terms, credit scores, etc. To ensure the data doesn’t get into the wrong hands, an SMTP provider needs to enforce TLS and DKIM policies for all outbound emails. 

For instance, Mailtrap requires each sender to have proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) before they start sending, so each domain is properly checked and prepared.

FinTech transactional email services comparison criteria

Now, let me explain how I came up with the providers on this list and the criteria I used to determine whether they can be the right choice for your FinTech company. 

Email infrastructure

Every email deliverability expert out there will tell you that a solid infrastructure consists of four key components: deliverability, reliability, scalability, and separate sending streams. 

Deliverability

Email deliverability refers to the SMTP provider’s ability to deliver your emails to your recipients’ inboxes. To achieve a high rate, providers use dedicated IP, have proper IP warmup protocols and authentication, and more. Additionally, they might offer some features to help you increase the performance of your emails as well, such as bounce tracking and inbox placement insights.

However, it’s important to note that deliverability % between providers differs greatly and that sometimes, the advertised deliverability rate also differs from the actual one.

Over at Mailtrap, we wanted to see how big of a difference this is, so we’ve decided to conduct tests with several top SMTP providers. To make the tests fair to everyone, we used:

• A free-tier subscription
• A shared IP environment
• Identical email templates across all providers
• Seed testing for accurate deliverability testing and tracking

Here’s a table with summarized test results:

Email service provider	Email placement results	Spam filter rating	Inbox email delivery with top providers
Mailtrap	Inbox: 78.8% Tabs: 4.8% Spam: 14.4% Missing: 2.0%	Google Spam Filter: Not spam; Not phishy Barracuda: Score 0 Spam Assassin: Score: -3.8	Gmail (4 years+): 67.50% Gmail (6 months+): 67.50% Google Workspace: 100% Outlook: 77.78% Exchange (Office365): 66.67% Hotmail: 100% Yahoo: 55.56% AOL: 75% Zoho: 50%
Amazon SES	Inbox: 77.1% Tabs: 1.9% Spam: 20.0 %Missing: 1.0%	Google Spam Filter: Not spam; Not phishy Barracuda: Score 0 Spam Assassin: Score: -4.3	Gmail (4 years+): 22.22% Gmail (6 months+): 87.50% Google Workspace: 33.33% Outlook: 100% Exchange (Office365): 66.67% Hotmail: 100% Yahoo: 44.44% AOL: 75% Zoho: 100%
Mailgun	Inbox: 71.4% Tabs: 3.8% Spam: 23.8% Missing: 1.0%	Google Spam Filter: Not spam; Not phishy Barracuda: Score 0 Spam Assassin: Score: -5.3	Gmail (4 years+): 100% Gmail (6 months+): 100% Google Workspace: 100% Outlook: 66.67% Exchange (Office365): 66.67% Hotmail: 40% Yahoo: 33.33% AOL: 50% Zoho: 0%
SendGrid	Inbox: 61.0% Tabs: 1.0% Spam: 17.1% Missing: 20.9%	Google Spam Filter: Not spam; Not phishy Barracuda: Score 0 Spam Assassin: Score: -0.1	Gmail (4 years+): 75% Gmail (6 months+): 100% Google Workspace: 66.67% Outlook: 0% Exchange (Office365): 33.33% Hotmail: 0% Yahoo:  33.33% AOL: 50% Zoho: 100%
Postmark	Inbox: 83.3% Tabs: 1.0% Spam: 14.3% Missing: 0.9%	Google Spam Filter: Not spam; Not phishy Barracuda: Score 0 Spam Assassin: Score: -4.3	Gmail (4 years+): 100% Gmail (6 months+): 100% Google Workspace: 100% Outlook: 100% Exchange (Office365): 66.67% Hotmail: 80% Yahoo: 77.78% AOL: 25.00% Zoho: 100%

For more information on our testing methodology, check out our deliverability comparison guide.

Over to you: I know that the deliverability rate can seem like just one more metric, but you should be aware that you lose $0.11 for every undelivered email. And according to our recent research, finance and insurance share the number one spot for landing in spam folders, with a staggering rate of 8.4% of total emails. Not to mention the meager 80% of actual delivered emails and 11.6% of them going MIA.

Industry	Main inbox	Spam	Missing
Finance & insurance	80%	8.4%	11.6%

Additionally, you need to pay extra attention to your deliverability since all major inbox providers, including Google, Yahoo, Outlook, and Apple Mail, have implemented their very own sending requirements and recommendations, which impact email senders.

So there’s some food for thought for you. Also, check out the video our YouTube team has made on the topic! 👀

Reliability

I’ve mentioned reliability in the previous chapter, but let me tell you how I evaluated it for this article.

Namely, I checked the status pages that display real-time uptime metrics, like this one, for example. I also researched whether the SMTP providers offer service-level agreements (SLAs), which ensure uptime of at least 99%.

Finally, I reviewed each provider’s documentation regarding details on:

• Datacenter distribution
• Backup mechanisms
• Load balancing and database replication

Scalability

To allow you to increase your business’s sending volume without any bottlenecks or deliverability issues, an SMTP provider needs to have the following mechanisms in place:

• Queueing – Allows you to pace your email instead of blasting emails, so you don’t hit spam filters.
• Throttling – Lets you limit how many emails you want to be sent out per second or minute, which can solve a lot of potential deliverability issues. 

The trick with these two is that not every provider lets you adjust this on your own, and instead does it for you automatically. Personally, I think this is great for businesses that want a minimal setup and don’t plan to increase their sending volume.

But if you have a large user base or if you foresee spikes in volume, you need full control of queuing and throttling mechanisms. 

Separate sending stream

With a separate sending stream, you can send different types of transactional emails (e.g., payment confirmations, transaction reports, etc.) at the same time as your bulk emails (e.g., product updates, newsletters) without seeing a drop in deliverability.

Some providers have a dedicated infrastructure for this, which they create through IP pooling or dedicated IPs, which are the norm for high-volume senders who send time-sensitive emails. Others offer a true separate stream, which can make a world of difference to your deliverability while maintaining your sender reputation at a high level.

To paint you a better picture, here’s what the providers on this list have to offer:

SMTP provider	Separate sending stream
Mailtrap	✅ Has a dedicated bulk stream and a bulk-aware email API
SendGrid	☑️ Not a separate sending stream, but it’s doable via IP pools or subusers
Amazon SES	☑️ Not a separate sending stream, but it’s doable via dedicated IPs and configuration
Postmark	✅ Uses Message Streams to separate the two sending stream
Mailgun	☑️ Not a separate sending stream, but it’s doable by using different domains

Security 

For the security aspect of this research, I went through the official documentation provided by each SMTP provider, analyzed email headers for specific security indicators (e.g., Authentication-Results or Received), checked how each provider handles SMTP commands, TLS encryption, and how it sets up authentication records.

Here are the results:

	Mailtrap	SendGrid	Amazon SES	Postmark	Mailgun
Encryption & transmission security	Strong TLS enforcement, MTA-STS support	Enforced TLS, MTA-STS	Opportunistic/ forced TLS, MTA-STS (manual setup)	TLS 1.2+ enforced	Mandatory TLS, MTA-STS
Authentication & identity control	SPF, DKIM, DMARC alignment	SPF, DKIM, DMARC	SPF, DKIM, custom MAIL FROM, DMARC	SPF, DKIM, DMARC	SPF, DKIM, DMARC.
API & credentials security	Granular API keys, IP whitelisting	Scoped API keys, IP access management	IAM policies, granular access control	Restricted API tokens, IP whitelisting.	Manage API keys, IP restrictions
Account access & user controls	MFA, RBAC, detailed audit logs	MFA, RBAC, SSO	IAM, MFA, CloudTrail integration	MFA, team roles, activity feed	MFA, granular user permissions
Abuse prevention & misuse protection	Robust reputation management, real-time security monitoring	Real-time spam feedback, proactive monitoring	Reputation dashboards, feedback loops	Proactive spam filters, bounce management	Spam detection, bounce handling
Security event logging & notifications	Detailed logs, customizable alerts	Activity feed, email event webhooks	Extensive logs via CloudWatch/ CloudTrail	Detailed activity logs, webhooks	Detailed event logs, webhooks for notifications

If you’re interested in exploring the topic of SMTP providers and security further, read our dedicated article on the topic.

Compliance

For compliance with the most important email-related regulations, I dug through pages like this one or this one. I also checked the event-logging availability, since they’re a must-have for FinTech users. Check out the table of the results:

	Mailtrap	Mailgun	SendGrid	Amazon SES	Postmark
GDPR	✅ Compliant	✅ Compliant	✅ Compliant	✅ Compliant	✅ Compliant
Data residency	Based in EU but the servers are in the US	EU region sending & storage	EU region selectable, US default	Region-specific data storage (EU/US/Asia)	All data hosted in EU or US (choose)
SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
User rights support	DSAR support & data deletion upon request	User data deletion & subject access	Supports DSARs, deletion, data export	IAM-level controls & data export tools	Data subject rights support
Logging	Detailed logs, exportable	Logging & audit trails	via Twilio’s security tools	CloudTrail logging	Granular activity logging
DPA	✅ Available on request	✅ Available	✅ Available	✅ Through AWS DPA	✅ Available upon request

Pricing

An SMTP provider for FinTech mustn’t promise high deliverability only for more expensive plans. Instead, it should be available for all paying users by default, so that regardless of your company size and the plan you choose, your emails still land in the main inbox.

Then, important features like dedicated IP addresses should also be available to everyone, not just end-tier users. Not to mention customer support, which is commonly locked by plan.

So, on this list, you’ll only see SMTP providers that offer deliverability by design and key features for everyone. Additionally, I’ll add a summary table for each provider’s pricing plans, so you can get a better idea of how much your budget is going to get hit.

Transactional email sending

If you’re in FinTech, one of your primary goals is sending transactional emails. To help you do it reliably, a specialized SMTP provider needs to cover the following:

Ready-made integrations

Ready-made SMTP integrations take some time off your developers’ hands by allowing them to simply copy/paste snippets into your app’s code for the integration to be complete. For instance, here’s a code snippet for Node.js offered by Mailtrap:

var transport = nodemailer.createTransport({
  host: "live.smtp.mailtrap.io",
  port: 587,
  auth: {
    user: "api",
    pass: "<YOUR_API_TOKEN>"
  }
});

So, all you would have to do to start sending transactional emails is use copy and paste.

Email API / SDKs 

SMTP providers typically maintain SMTP APIs and SDKs for major programming languages. If you ever want to automate your email sending process, here’s what each provider has to offer:

Provider	Integrations
Mailtrap	Node.js Ruby PHP Python Elixir
SendGrid	Java Python Node.js PHP Ruby C# Go
Amazon SES	Java .NET PHP Python Ruby Go
Postmark	Node.js Ruby Python PHP Java .NET
Mailgun	Node.js Go PHP Java Ruby

Webhooks

With webhooks, you can get instant notifications on key events such as deliveries, bounces, unsubscribes, etc. For FinTetch, webhooks are crucial since they allow you to track your transactional emails in real-time.

Say your app/website fails to dispatch a payment confirmation email. For such cases, you could set up webhooks to get notified instantly on Slack or your preferred communication channel and address the issue quickly.

The webhooks that SMTP providers offer differ in the types of events they let you track and retry logic. For example, Mailtrap has 40 retries every 5 minutes, making it great if you’re interested in handling errors fast, whereas Postmark lets you track changes for each sending stream, which is perfect if you’re sending different types of transactional emails.

If you’re feeling tech-savvy, here’s a table that sums it up:

Email service provider	API for webhooks	Supported events	Retry logic
Mailtrap	✅	Delivery, bounce, unsubscribe, spam complaint, reject, soft bounce, suspension, open, and click + activity logs for enterprise	40 retries every 5 minutes
SendGrid	✅	Opened, clicked, unsubscribed, spam report, group unsubscribes, group resubscribes, processed, dropped, deferred, bounced, delivered	For 24 hours
Amazon SES	✅	Delivery, bounce (hard/soft), spam complaints, rejects, open rate, clicks, failure rendering	Up to 23 days via Amazon SNS retry policy
Postmark	✅	Delivery, bounce, spam complaint, open, link click, and subscription change	For 6 hours with a specific schedule
Mailgun	✅	Accepted, delivered, clicks, spam complaints, unsubscribes, permanent failures, and temporary failures	For 8 hours on a specific schedule

Quality of life features

When it comes to QOL features, I’ve looked for some of the following:

• MCP agents – Mailtrap and Postmark offer their very own MCP servers, which you can hook up to your IDE and test your transactional emails locally or work on your workflow. 
• Testing solutions – Mailtrap and SendGrid offer dedicated testing solutions that let you preview your email design, check your spam score, and make sure your emails and sending functionality are fine-tuned before your project goes live.
  • You can also use these to improve your deliverability. Learn how to do it here.
• Validation tools – Email validation is like an additional layer you can add to your sign-up process to combat spam or clean up your lists and ensure your sensitive emails will go to the right recipient.

It’s important to note that none of these are necessary, but they can help you greatly, especially if your app or project is still in development. You can consider them as tools that can save you some time while you deal with more important things like KYC (Know Your Customer), legal docs, monitoring, etc.

User experience

In FinTech, as you likely know, important features like email sending need to be shipped fast so you don’t waste your time trying to figure out how a provider’s SMTP setup works. Instead, the provider should provide clear documentation and have a user-friendly UI to save you some time.

Or, if you already have a sending system in place and you’re just looking for an SMTP provider to migrate, the migration process needs to be quick and easy; it shouldn’t be like switching apartments.

So, I asked myself some of the following questions when researching the SMTP providers on this list:

• How easy is it to verify my domain?
• Is there any assistance I can have during onboarding?
• How convenient is the user interface?
• How can I reach the provider’s customer support?
• When is the customer support available, and are they reliable?

Customer experience

To evaluate customer experience for each SMTP provider, I looked for social reviews from FinTech users on platforms like Reddit or X. I also dug for case studies, which were more than useful. These include online banking apps, crypto websites, and anything I was able to find from the FinTech world.

Additionally, I researched popular review websites like G2, Capterra, and TrustPilot just to get a better idea of the general opinion of its user base for each provider. Hence, you’ll see ratings before each SMTP provider review.

Best FinTech SMTP provider: Mailtrap Email Delivery Platform 

G2: 4.8 🌟 Capterra: 4.8 🌟

Mailtrap Email Delivery Platform is designed for FinTech companies with high sending volumes. It’s a perfect choice if you’re looking for a reliable SMTP service with high deliverability, growth-focused features, and industry-best analytics. 

What makes it good for FinTech?

• Reliable delivery

Mailtrap stands out for its reliable delivery and high deliverability rates, which it achieves with separate sending streams, dedicated IPs, email warm-up, throttling, and other advanced features. With Mailtrap, you won’t ever have to worry about your OTPs or KYC requests reaching your recipients’ inboxes.

Additionally, you can count on Mailtrap’s expert deliverability support to be there for you during seasonal email volume spikes, so your inboxing rates stay sky high.

And if you ever want to automate your sending, you should know that Mailtrap has a flexible email API for high-volume sending that’s easy to scale and integrate.

• In-depth analytics

Mailtrap’s in-depth analytics consist of helicopter view dashboards and drill-down reports, with which you can track opens, clicks, bounces, spam complaints, and more. This allows you to inspect your email performance from various different angles and make sure everything is fine-tuned. Moreover, email logs are quite detailed and are kept for up to 30 days.

• Email Sandbox 

With Mailtrap’s Email Sandbox you can capture your SMTP traffic in a safe environment, and then inspect and debug emails, preview and analyze content for spam, validate your HTML/CSS before sending, and make sure everything gets delivered as you intend it to.

Pros

• High deliverability rates
• Separate sending stream
• Industry-best analytics
• GDPR compliant
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certified 
• Email sandbox for testing emails
• Extensive documentation for your devs
• 24/7 expert support
• Free email deliverability consultation 
• Integration to MCP servers via Claude, Cursor, or VSC code editor.

Cons

• Email automation is available only via API, but a workflow builder is in beta.

Compliance 

The only thing I can note about Mailtrap is that although it’s ISO certified, SOC 2 is still in progress and is on its way. Other than that, the table can speak for itself:

Compliancy	Mailtrap
GDPR	✅ Compliant
Data residency	Based in EU but the servers are in the US
SOC 2, ISO 27001,HIPAA	✅ Compliant with ISO and HIPAA, SOC 2 is in progress
User rights support	DSAR support & data deletion upon request
Logging	Detailed logs, exportable
DPA	✅ Available on request

Pricing

First and foremost, Mailtrap offers high deliverability rates and customer support to all of its users, it doesn’t lock those features away. The plans are simple and allow you to scale easily, with the Business plan being the most popular since it’s in the golden middle. Check it out:

Plan	Monthly cost	Email limit	Key features
Free	$0	Up to 1,000 emails	SMTP relay, email API, drag-and-drop editor, webhooks
Basic	From $15	10,000+ emails	Email logs (5 days), body retention, click-rate tracking, HTTPS link branding
Business (the most popular)	From $85	100,000+ emails	Email logs (15 days), dedicated IP, auto warm-up
Enterprise	From $750	1,500,000 emails	All of the above + priority support and 30 days email log retention
Custom	Custom	From 1,500,000	All of the above

For more details, please consult the official Mailtrap pricing page.

Testimonials

Some of the reviewers who work in financial services say that they like Mailtrap for its robust, strong deliverability and dev-friendly transactional API. Like this one, for example:

Others like it for its reliability:

While some like Mailtrap because of its great customer support team:

Mailgun

G2: 4.2 🌟 Capterra: 4.3 🌟

Mailgun is an SMTP and email API service provider, which is, according to its creators, ‘built by developers, for developers’. 

What makes it good for FinTech?

• Rapid Fire Delivery SLA

Mailtrap’s Rapid Fire Delivery SLA promises fast delivery even for high-volume senders and a reliable email infrastructure capable of sending up to 15,000,000 emails per hour. However, it’s important to note that the SLA is not available for every plan, but is reserved for high-tier paid plans.

• High server uptime

Mailgun has, as they advertise, ‘a herculean infrastructure built for reliable scale’. They promise 99.99% server uptime, and they’re transparent about it since you can check it out on this page.

• Mailgun Optimize

Although not a part of the platform’s main pricing plan, Optimize is a suite of features that lets you see where your emails are landing (e.g., spam, promotions, main inbox, etc.). This can be super helpful for troubleshooting and auditing your deliverability.

On top of that, you can see how your emails are doing with different inbox providers like Gmail or Outlook.

And finally, you can upload your email list to Mailgun and validate your contacts, which can be super useful if you’re sending emails with sensitive data. Or, if you want to add email validation logic to your sign-up page, you can use the Mailgun API.

Pros

• Promised high delivery rates
• Scalable email infrastructure
• EU and US data centers
• In-depth analytics
• Developer-friendly
• Solid webhooks
• Fully compliant
• Onboarding help from experts
• Extensive API documentation

Cons

• Not as seamless to set up as other SMTP providers out there since it’s geared for developers.
• You have to pay for the email testing suites separately, which can get pricey if you’re a high-volume sender.

Compliance

Mailgun is fully compliant with most of the latest email rules and regulations. Check it out:

Compliancy	Mailgun
GDPR	✅ Compliant
Data residency	EU region sending & storage
SOC 2, ISO 27001,HIPAA	✅
User rights support	User data deletion & subject access
Logging	Logging & audit trails
DPA	✅ Available

You can get more information about Mailgun’s certificates on its dedicated compliance page.

Pricing

Mailgun is pretty straightforward when it comes to pricing, providing you a slider you can use to select the number of emails you want to send per month and several plans with different features. Here’s a summary:

Plan	Monthly cost	Email limit	Key features
Free	$0	100 per day	Email API and SMTP,  1 custom sending domain, 2 API keys 1 day log retention 1 inbound route
Basic	From $15	10,000+	Email API and SMTP,  1 custom sending domain, 2 API keys 1 day log retention
Foundation	From $35	50,000+	1,000 custom sending domains, Email template builder and API, 5 days log retention,
Scale	From $90	100,000+	SAML SSO, 5,000 email validations, Dedicated IP pools, 30 days log retention

For more details, please consult the official Mailgun pricing page.

Testimonials

Overall, I’ve noticed that Mailgun is a success among its FinTech users. Although I did find some reviews like in the screenshot below, which gave it a slightly lower mark because the platform is developer-oriented.

On the other hand, I also saw that people like Mailgun because of its email logs and suppression lists:

Additionally, you can find a plethora of case studies on Mailgun’s website, where you can read stories on how other companies successfully set up and used its SMTP. Although I couldn’t find any FinTech ones, there were a few interesting ones like SparkToro and Scribd.

SendGrid

G2: 4.0 🌟 Capterra: 4.2 🌟

SendGrid is one of the longest-standing providers in the industry that offers a scalable SMTP as well as in-depth analytics and many quality-of-life features.

What makes it good for FinTech?

• Analytics and insights

When it comes to tracking the performance of your emails, SendGrid knocks it out of the park. It offers its deliverability insights, which are a set of tools you can use to track everything from bounced and blocked messages to unique opens.

I must also note that some of the insights go quite deep. For example, you can see what’s causing your emails to bounce.

And, unlike with Mailgun, you don’t have to pay separately for these analytic features.

• Deliverability features

SendGrid has a cloud-based infrastructure that gives you plenty of room to control how it performs. You can adjust IP usage manually, ending rates, and more. Overall, if you have many hands in your dev ops team, they will appreciate the level of control they’ll get with SendGrid SMTP.

Moreover, dedicated IP addresses come pre-warmed up and are geo-specific, meaning you can choose if you want to send your emails from EU or US. Again, this improves both local deliverability and compliance with data residency and anti-spam laws.

• Quality of life features

AI-powered deliverability such as automatic IP warm-up and throttling, a plethora of access controls for your account, ready-made code snippets; these are only some of the features that make your life easier with SendGird.

Additionally, SendGrid’s deliverability experts can help you along every step of your sending journey, from onboarding to optimization. This feature, of course, is locked to higher plans, but the platform offers a plethora of documentation and helpful articles for lower-tier users.

Pros

• High sending throughput 
• In-depth analytics
• Detailed event tracking
• Long webhook retry windows
• Reliable customer support
• Plugins for WordPress
• Integration with Twilio’s marketing tools
• Support for CRM and other customer relationship platforms

Cons

• Reverse DNS and dedicated IPs are reserved for Pro tier plans
• Customer support is also limited to higher-tier plans

Compliance

SendGrid is quite compliant with the regulations, and even lets you select EU for data residency, while US is by default. As for logging, you’ll have to use Twilio’s security tools.

Here’s a quick breakdown table: 

Compliancy	SendGrid
GDPR	✅ Compliant
Data residency	EU region selectable, US default
SOC 2, ISO 27001,HIPAA	✅
User rights support	Supports DSARs, deletion, data export
Logging	via Twilio’s security tools
DPA	✅ Available

Pricing

Offers a free trial for 60 days with limited features, which you can use to check out the service itself and see if it fits your needs. Other than that, it has 3 straightforward plans that start from $19.95 per month. Here’s a quick table that sums them up:

Plan	Monthly cost	Email limit	Key features
Essentials	From $19.95	50k	Analytics and deliverability insights, Email API Limited webhooks, 1 additional teammate
Pro	From $89.95	100k	All of the above +Dedicated IPs,  Validation API, Reverse DNS, 1,000 additional teammates
Premier	Custom	Custom	All of the above + more

For more details, please consult the official SendGrid pricing page.

Testimonials

The FinTech reviewers of SendGrid I found usually praise the platform for its affordable pricing and user experience, like this one, for instance:

I also liked the SendGrid case study page, where I could read how other FinTech teams have successfully used the platform. In the screenshot below is the success story of Gusto, an online payroll service:

Amazon SES

G2: 4.3 🌟 Capterra: 4.7 🌟

Amazon SES, short for Simple Email Service, is a cloud-based email service provider that’s catered to experienced developers, offering scalable email sending capabilities, as well as giving them a plethora of control over its email infrastructure.

What makes it good for FinTech?

• Stable infrastructure

Firstly, Amazon SES has one of the most rock-solid email infrastructures out there since it’s a part of AWS Global Infrastructure.

You can also seamlessly integrate with various AWS services like Lambda, CloudWatch, and others. Although this might sound like technical jibber-jabber, your devs will know what I’m talking about.

What this means for your FinTech company is that you’ll be able to automate email workflows (e.g., send automated emails for KYC), track email behavior, etc.

• Advanced configuration options 

Amazon SES gives you super granular control of your email infrastructure and sending configuration. You can play around with IPs, TLS encryption, even archiving, you name it. 

This is a big selling point for FinTech teams who want to have fine-tuned settings, enforce strict authentication protocols, or ensure data regulation law compliance.

Moreover, Amazon SES integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), which gives you fine-tuned permissions per user, role, or system, providing you with improved internal security.

Lastly, you can also apply tracking, IP pools, headers, and other rules to specific types of emails. So, for example, you can send your onboarding emails from one dedicated IP and your legal notices from another.

• High sending throughput

By default, Amazon SES supports 50,000+ messages per day, which is a number you can scale upon request if you need it. For FinTech companies, this can be useful if you’re sending large volumes of real-time messages.

Pros

• Super scalable and configurable
• Deliverability reports
• Reputable IPs
• A/B testing
• High deliverability rates
• Supports data residency for EU, US, and even Asia
• Real-time email event tracking via webhooks
• Budget-friendly pricing model

Cons

• Requires a developer team to set up. Although it’s super flexible, it needs expertise to be used to its fullest potential.
• Doesn’t have a dedicated UI for analytics and provides only basic metrics like delivery and bounces.

Compliance

When it comes to compliance, two features make Amazon SES stand out:

• AWS CloudTrail – With CloudTrail, you can get super detailed logging for all your email-related activities, which can be super helpful if you need to audit your sending for compliance.
  • Note that this feature only works for sending emails via API integration.
• AWS Data Processing Addendum (DPA) – DPA automatically applies to all Amazon SES users and outlines AWS data handling responsibilities. In other words, it ensures compliance with GDPR and data protection laws.

As for the rest of the compliance elements, take a peek at the table below:

Compliancy	Amazon SES
GDPR	✅ Compliant
Data residency	Region-specific data storage (EU/US/Asia)
SOC 2, ISO 27001,HIPAA	✅
User rights support	IAM-level controls & data export tools
Logging	CloudTrail logging
DPA	✅ Through AWS DPA

Pricing

If you’re on a budget or simply don’t want to spend too much on an SMTP, Amazon SES is probably the most affordable solution for you out there. Its pricing model is quite simple: you pay $0.10 per 1,000 emails, which equals $1 for 10,000 emails or $10 for 100,000 emails.

Additionally, Amazon EC2 and AWS Elastic Beanstalk users get the first 62,000 emails for free.

For more details, please consult the official Amazon SES pricing page.

Testimonials

Like I said at the beginning of this chapter, if you’re an EC2 user, Amazon SES is a really great choice, which one of the FinTech reviewers confirmed on G2:

Amazon SES also has a customers page, where I found a lot of big names, but most importantly, some FinTech companies as well. One of them, Quirion, a European robo-advisor / financial investment company, says that they not only enjoyed the affordability that comes with SES, but also its transactional email templates, which they used for personalized transactional emails.

Postmark

G2: 4.6 🌟Capterra: 4.9 🌟

Postmark is an email API and SMTP provider geared for developers that offers a variety of features you can use to configure your infrastructure and your sending workflow as you like it.

What makes it good for FinTech?

• Worldwide data centers

If data redundancy is your concern, Postmark might be a good choice for you since it has redundant data centers in several locations around the world. This ensures low latency and fast email sending.

Moreover, according to Postmark, your data will be safer and more secure with N+2 redundancy, regular audits, and its encryption protocols.

• Separate sending streams

Similar to Mailtrap, Postmark offers separate sending streams for different types of transactional emails. You can also create a custom sending stream for a specific email type. So, you could technically send, let’s say, password reset emails from one stream, fraud alerts from another, and so on.

Also, one more thing I liked about Postmark is that you can see its delivery metrics in real-time on the platform’s status page.

• 45 days of full content history

Besides keeping your email logs for up to 45 days, Postmark has a really detailed content history. 

The logs are categorized based on the stream you sent it from, its status (e.g., bounced, processed, delivered, etc.), subject, custom tags, and date. You can also configure them so you retrieve them automatically via Postmark’s Message API or use webhooks to notify you about crucial events.  

Pros

• Fast email delivery
• Reliable transactional email sending
• Minimal configuration
• Great for developer teams
• Pay-as-you-go pricing
• Transparent deliverability status
• Extensive documentation and knowledge base
• Has its very own MCP agents

Cons

• Dedicated IPs are available only as an add-on, and you need to be sending at least 300,000 emails per month to be eligible for them
• Customer support is only available via tickets and isn’t available 24/7
• The sandbox mode is a bit limited, but nonetheless still useful for testing emails.

Compliance

Besides the fact that your data can be stored in EU or US and that you get detailed logs for auditing, Postmark is GDPR-friendly and compliant with all key security and privacy frameworks:

Compliancy	Postmark
GDPR	✅ Compliant
Data residency	All data hosted in EU or US (choose)
SOC 2, ISO 27001,HIPAA	✅
User rights support	Data subject rights support
Logging	Granular activity logging
DPA	✅ Available upon request

Pricing

Postmark doesn’t beat around the bush when it comes to its pricing model, giving you 3 different plans to choose from and a slider for selecting your email volume. However, keep in mind that it can be a bit pricey when compared to some of its competitors. Check it out:

Plan	Monthly cost	Email limit	Key features
Free	$0	100	Email API, SMTP service, Core features like email templates,  analytics, webhooks
Basic	From $15,00	10,000+	Up to 4 users,  SMTP & Rest API,  Up to 5 servers and domains,  Email templates
Pro	From $60,50	50,000+	Up to 6 users,  Up to 30 streams,  Up to 10 signature domains,  All event webhooks,  Stats & open/link,  Tracking APIs
Platform	From $138,00	125,000+	Unlimited users,  Unlimited servers,  Unlimited streams,  Unlimited signature domains,  All event webhooks

For more details, please consult the official Postmark pricing page.

Testimonials

I didn’t have to look far for Postmark since the platform has a customers page, describing success stories from other FinTech companies like Invoice Ninja, an invoicing app that’s been sending around 150k emails per month with Postmark. 

In summary, Invoice Ninja relied on Postmark’s reliability and delivery speed to send invoices to its customers and track engagement. You can read more about it here.

There’s also a case study done in collaboration with DriveWealth. Being a registered broker-dealer, DriveWealth has to deal with a plethora of compliance obligations, with which Postmark helped them by providing dedicated streams for compliance emails, dedicated IPs to bypass spam filters, timed and throttled delivery to send emails optimally, and more. Find out more details on this link.

Conclusion: What’s the best SMTP provider for FinTech?

At the end of the day, there really isn’t the best overall SMTP provider for FinTech, since every company and team has different requirements. What might work for some might not work for others. However, here are my personal recommendations: 

If you want an all-around solution, go with Mailtrap. In case you’re looking for something more minimalistic, go with Postmark, and if you need advanced functionality for your devs, Amazon SES would be the best fit for you.

One for the road: Regardless of which SMTP you choose, make sure to configure it properly. That is, use the proper ports (e.g., 465 with SSL and 587 with TLS encryption) and authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. 

And if you need some extra tips on deliverability, configuration, and all things email, check out our blog, where you can find other articles, such as:

• How to Avoid Emails Going to Spam: Tutorial
• 10 Email Deliverability Tools and Marketing Platforms
• Find Out What’s the Best Email API Service for Developers