SMTP for email marketing is designed for software engineers sending marketing emails or bulk emails.
It’s also for tech-savvy marketers who value the flexibility that comes with an SMTP compared to email marketing platforms.
With this in mind, I aim to provide you with the best SMTP service providers for email marketing.
In this post, you’ll find a quick snapshot of the top SMTP providers, key features to consider, and detailed reviews to help you choose the right one.
Best SMTP service providers for email marketing: a snapshot
- Mailtrap—an email delivery platform built for developers and marketing teams who need a reliable SMTP solution to test, send, and manage their emails in one place.
- SendGrid is an SMTP service for high-volume senders who need to hyper-personalize their emails.
- Mailjet helps teams create responsive emails with its MJML markup language that ensures consistent rendering across devices and email clients.
- Brevo SMTP is for teams looking for affordable pricing and integrations with popular CRMs and other tools.
- Mailgun SMTP offers a generous non-profit plan at a fraction of the price and enables developers to create custom email workflows with clear documentation.
- Amazon SES is great for teams seeking a pay-as-you-go pricing model and seamless AWS integration.
- MooSend offers unlimited emails in all plans and provides responsive support.
Here’s a tabular overview of each provider. I’ve calculated the prices based on sending 20,000 emails per month to a contact list of 5,000 addresses. These prices are current as of December 2024.
As for the deliverability rate, I checked the G2 and Capterra reviews from real users.
I also considered the features like dedicated IP addresses, detailed analytics, support for authentication protocols, separate streams for bulk emails, reputation monitoring and other essential features for high delivery rates. More on this read in the next section.
| SMTP Providers | Free plan limits (emails per month/day) | Pricing (in US $) | Testing inbox | Email deliverability focus |
| Mailtrap | 1,000 / 200 | 20 | ✅ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| SendGrid | 3,000 / 200 | 19.95 | ⛔ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ |
| Mailjet | 6,000 / 200 | 37 | ⛔ | ⭐⭐⭐☆☆ |
| Brevo | 9,000 / 300 | 29 | ⛔ | ⭐⭐⭐☆☆** |
| Mailgun | 3,000 | 33 | ⛔ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ |
| Amazon SES | 3000 (free plan available for the first 12 months) | 2* | ✅ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ |
| MooSend | 30-day free trial | 24 | ⛔ | ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ |
*This price reflects only the cost of sending emails; additional charges for storage, email attachments, incoming emails, dedicated IPs, and other features are billed separately and will increase the overall cost.
**Deliverability gets significantly better at high-end tiers that include dedicated IPs and detailed analytics.
SMTP service for email marketing comparison criteria
To compare SMTP services, I selected the criteria that are absolutely must-haves for an effective email campaign. Without these features, your email campaigns might get lower engagement, poor deliverability, and, as a result — poor campaign outcomes.
Use these criteria for your own research and comparison, or read my findings on each of the platforms.
Email infrastructure
Email infrastructure influences such aspects as:
Deliverability and email placement
To ensure your emails reach recipients’ inboxes, look for services that support authentication protocols like DKIM, SPF, and DMARC and have features for bounce and spam complaint monitoring, inbox placement, and webhooks for real-time event notifications.
A separate SMTP stream for bulk emails is also a great addition to a great email deliverability rate and inbox placement.
Please note that deliverability and email placement heavily depend on your sender’s reputation. More on that in our dedicated guide.
To evaluate the deliverability of each platform, start by checking the service site and documentation to confirm they offer the features mentioned above.
Next, review user feedback on platforms like G2 and Capterra to find out how well these features perform in practice. Finally, check the deliverability tests from independent sources like Email Tool Tester.
Reliability of email delivery
Compare the uptime that the services promise. Most of the services have a dedicated status page that shows the current uptime, like this one for Mailtrap or this one for Mailgun. Some services provide uptime guarantees (SLAs) promising uptime no less than 99%.
Also, check the redundancy of their infrastructure (duplication of critical components or systems within a network, data center, or IT environment). For that, open the service documentation and look up the information on
- data center locations (the geography should be wide),
- backup systems (mentions of failover systems or backups),
- high availability (look for technologies like load balancer and replication to maintain uptime and fast email delivery),
- compliance with standards like ISO 27001 or SOC 2 that require backup systems and disaster recovery plans.
Scalability
Without proper scalability, your service may experience slower delivery speeds or downtime when sending large email volumes, which is critical for time-sensitive emails.
To check scalability, start with the pricing page to see the email volume limits listed in different plans, or contact the provider to confirm their capacity for handling large volumes. Also, check if the platform offers dedicated IPs (and how much they will cost you).
Visit the service’s status page one more time and look for performance-related incidents such as “degraded performance” or “delayed email delivery,” which may indicate scalability issues during high-traffic periods.
Finally, check the API rate limits, especially if you plan to send mass emails. In case you send several hundred emails daily, an API rate of 1-5 RPS is enough. For high-volume senders and enterprises, the industry-standard API rate limit should be no less than 500-1,000 RPS.
Marketing email sending
To cover your existing and future email marketing needs, pay attention to the following criteria:
Bulk email sending
Effective marketing campaigns often mean sending thousands or even millions of emails at once. Look for a service that can cover your current and future sending needs. Review the pricing page or contact the company directly to confirm their sending capabilities and associated costs.
If you also plan to send transactional emails, look for a tool that divides transactional and marketing streams to handle large volumes of emails while maintaining high deliverability. This information is typically available on the service’s website, in its documentation, or both.
Analytics
Look for mail SMTP services that let you track bounce rates, delivery rates, and spam complaints through detailed logs, notifications, or webhooks.
Some advanced services may also offer dashboards to monitor these metrics in real time. Check the provider’s website for a full list of metrics and reporting features.
On platforms like G2 and Сapterra, check users’ feedback on provided analytics and especially on the intuitiveness of dashboards and reports.
Testing, personalization, and compliance
Choose an SMTP email service that lets you test email dispatch and content without actually sending testing emails to real users.
Traditional email marketing tools typically offer email list segmentation, merge tags, and dynamic content for personalization. However, SMTP services do not include these features. They support pre-generated dynamic content instead. So look up for it if you plan to personalize your emails.
If you operate in a data-sensitive industry, prioritize SMTP services that support TLS encryption for secure email transmission.
Compliance with recognized standards such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2 ensures secure email delivery and aligns with regulations like
- GDPR (EU),
- CAN-SPAM (USA),
- PDPA (Singapore and Malaysia),
- and PIPEDA (Canada).
Check out this information either on the website or in the documentation of a service.
Integrations
When selecting an SMTP server for marketing emails, check if it will be easy to integrate it with your existing product and other tools, such as CRMs, e-commerce platforms, and analytics software, etc. Look for services that offer RESTful API support and webhooks to sync data across your systems.
Email design
Email builder and HTML editor
A drag-and-drop email builder and an HTML email editor can significantly save you time and help you create visually appealing emails. Many services offer these features within their email marketing campaigns, but they are less commonly included in SMTP offers. Be sure to verify that the SMTP service explicitly provides these tools if they are essential for your workflow.
Email templates
While libraries of pre-designed templates are uncommon in SMTP offerings, some platforms do include this feature and let you store, reuse, and test templates for future email sending.
User experience
Prioritize SMTP services with well-structured documentation that contains clear instructions, step-by-step tutorials, API references, and troubleshooting guides.
Also, check the online knowledge base, YouTube videos, onboarding materials, and, most importantly, the responsiveness of the support.
Many services limit support in their free plans, but not all of them.
Review what communication channels the company supports and if it promises any time frames for answering you.
Check users’ feedback on the company’s support system to ensure it meets your needs.
Pricing
The things to consider here are the variety of plans and smooth price scaling.
By smooth scaling, I mean that you won’t need to jump from a Basic plan for, let’s say, $10/month and 1,000 emails to a Business plan for $100 with 100,000 emails because the platform doesn’t offer anything between these tiers.
Next, calculate the cost per delivered email considering the deliverability rate the platform shows. For instance, the deliverability rate of Mailtrap is 91%, the cost per 1,000 emails is $1.50. To calculate the effective cost per delivered email, use the formula:
For Mailtrap, that’s going to be:
Don’t worry—I’ll help you find one (or more than one) affordable options on my list and even one free SMTP server.
Customer experience
To find out about the hidden functionality or experience issues, check user testimonials of the services and compare their rating on G2 and Capterra, or keep on reading!
Best SMTP service for email marketing: Mailtrap Email Delivery Platform
Mailtrap is an all-in-one email delivery platform designed to test and send high-quality transactional, bulk, and email campaigns using infrastructure with high deliverability rates by default.
Check out this GlockApps test that showed that more than 90% of transactional and marketing emails sent via Mailtrap land directly in the inbox or relevant tabs, with less than 6% being sent to secondary tabs.
Key features
- Ready-to-use code snippets in various programming languages for quick integration with your product.
- Automatic email authentication. Mailtrap helps validate essential DNS records such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and supports monthly DKIM key rotations for better security.
- Email testing environment. A dedicated sandbox to capture and inspect emails without sending them to real users.
- Email logs storing for up to 30 days.
- Customizable email templates, HTML, and drag-and-drop editors that work in SMTP service.
- Actionable email analytics, including helicopter-view dashboards, drill-down reports by mailbox providers, and email category reports.
- Separate stream for bulk email sending.
Pros
- Cost-effectiveness. Mailtrap email delivery service is one of the cheapest bulk email servers on the market with a wide variety of advanced features in the free and paid tiers.
- Reliable infrastructure with high deliverability. Mailtrap’s robust infrastructure ensures high performance with features like advanced email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), spam checks, bounce monitoring, real-time analytics, and a separate stream for bulk emails.
- Intuitive email builder. Mailtrap’s email builder works for emails sent via SMTP and includes drag-and-drop and HTML editors, pre-designed content blocks, and customizable elements. Also, there’s a library of free images and a built-in AI text editor to help you with catchy copies of emails. You can create email designs using templates, test them for accurate rendering, and store them on the platform for future campaigns.
- Advanced reporting. The detailed reports show how your emails perform across various mailbox providers and give you insights into key deliverability and engagement metrics to measure the success of your campaigns and identify areas for improvement.
- Round-the-clock human support. Mailtrap offers 24/7 online support with technical and deliverability experts who can help you optimize your email deliverability and troubleshoot urgent problems.
Cons
- Lack of integrations. Mailtrap lacks built-in integrations with popular CRMs and other business tools. This means that integrations must be configured manually or require additional middleware.
- No advanced features for handling domain-specific sending rules. Mailtrap’s SMTP service does not offer built-in support for creating and managing domain-specific rules, such as throttling limits or unique content customization.
Pricing
Mailtrap’s pricing is flexible and designed to fit businesses of various sizes.
- The free plan includes 500 contacts and has a sending limit of 1K free emails per month. For larger businesses, Mailtrap has paid plans.
- The Basic Plan costs $15 and includes 10K emails a month, and the Business plan costs $85 and includes 150K emails.
- In the Enterprise plan, you’ll be paying $750 for 1.5M emails.
Visit our pricing page to see all the up-to-date pricing information, as well as discounts and special offers.
SendGrid
SendGrid’s SMTP email service offers developers a robust solution for integrating email-sending capabilities directly into applications. Its key features include:
- Dynamic templates to create and manage customizable email templates with HTML rendering and conditional formatting, accessible via API calls.
- Email validation API to catch typos in real-time, reduce bounces, and maintain a strong sender reputation.
- Detailed analytics. SendGrid offers insights into email performance with metrics like open rates, click rates, and bounce statistics.
- Comprehensive documentation. SendGrid provides extensive guides and open-source libraries in multiple languages for smooth integration.
Pros of SendGrid:
- Low prices for high-volume senders. SendGrid offers competitive pricing for users who send a large number of emails.
- Scalability. SendGrid’s infrastructure can handle spiking email volumes with high performance.
- Advanced personalization. SendGrid lets you personalize emails with dynamic content, dynamic templates, merge tags, and unique arguments.
- Advanced email delivery optimization with features like custom DKIM selectors and IP warmup for specific domains.
Cons of SendGrid:
- Poor customer support. Some users reported unexpected account closures without prior notification, which led to disrupted ongoing campaigns.
- Higher costs for advanced features. Dedicated IPs and advanced analytics are not available in the free plan. To get these features, you’ll need to upgrade to higher-tier plans.
- Limited built-in testing capabilities. SendGrid lacks testing tools to thoroughly test and preview emails before sending.
Pricing
- The platform offers a generous free tier with 2K emails per month.
- The Essential Plan starts at $19.95 per month and includes 50,000 – 100,000 emails.
- If you need digital marketing automation and a dedicated IP, you’ll have to pay from $89.95 per month.
Look for all the pricing details on the official pricing plans page.
Mailjet
Mailjet is a popular email marketing SMTP service focused on delivering high-volume emails with reliable authentication protocols and real-time delivery tracking. Its key features include:
- Event tracking via webhooks – real-time notifications for email events, including opens, clicks, bounces, and spam complaints.
- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication.
- IP reputation management with dedicated IPs and IP performance monitoring features.
- Detailed email logs.
- Enhanced security compliance with GDPR and other data protection standards, with encrypted email transmission and secure account access.
Mailjet pros:
- Mailjet Markup Language (MJML) created by Mailjet to create responsive email templates.
- Magic lists – a feature that allows sending an email to a predefined contact list with a single SMTP request.
Mailjet cons:
- Limited integration options. This SMTP email service lacks built-in integrations with popular CRMs and other business tools.
- No domain-specific sending rules. The service doesn’t support advanced features like throttling limits or unique content customizations per recipient domain.
- Performance at scale. While scalable, some users report occasional delays in email delivery during high-volume campaigns.
- Customer support limitations. Access to customer support is restricted for free plan users.
Pricing
- The free plan includes 6,000 emails per month, 1500 contacts, and basic analytics.
- The entry-level plan starts at $17 per month and includes 15,000 emails.
Check out full details of all plans on the official website.
Brevo
Brevo, formerly known as Sendinblue, is an SMTP service with a primary focus on transactional emails. However, it can also be used for sending marketing business emails, including automated newsletters, promotional campaigns, and bulk emails from custom platforms or CRMs. Brevo’s key features are:
- Event tracking via webhooks. Brevo provides real-time notifications for events such as delivery, bounces, and spam complaints to monitor email performance.
- Support for SPF, DKIM, and DMARC authentication protocols.
- Dedicated IPs (available in higher-tier plans).
Pros of Brevo:
- Affordable pricing for senders with the need for large email volumes.
- Integration with popular CRMs and other tools.
- Customization of SMTP headers. This feature allows users to add additional metadata to their emails, such as custom tags to categorize or label emails for better tracking in reports and tracking parameters to pass data like campaign identifiers or user-specific information for analytics purposes.
Cons of Brevo:
- Integration complexity. Some users have reported challenges when integrating Brevo’s SMTP service with certain platforms.
- Customer support response time. I found several complaints from users about slow response times from customer support.
- Deliverability concerns. While Brevo generally has decent deliverability, some users complain about occasional issues with emails landing in spam folders. Also, the deliverability directly depends on the plan you choose. Some features that directly influence email deliverability, such as dedicated IPs or advanced analytics and reporting, are available only in higher-tier plans.
Pricing
- Brevo’s free plan includes unlimited subscribers and a daily limit of 300 emails.
- The paid tier starts at $8.08 per month when billed annually and covers 5K emails, customer support, and basic analytics.
- The Business plan costs $16.17 and includes 5K emails, along with advanced features such as detailed analytics and priority customer support.
For up-to-date pricing information, visit Brevo’s official site.
Mailgun
Mailgun is an SMTP email service provider that lets developers create custom email workflows, such as dynamically generated newsletters, and deliver them to the subscriber’s inboxes. The Mailgun’s key feature list includes:
- Webhook-based event tracking to get real-time updates on delivery status, bounces, opens, and clicks.
- SPF, DKIM, and DMARC support.
- Automatic email validation to maintain a clean email list and reduce bounces.
- Inbound email routing to parse and route incoming emails to your application.
Mailgun pros:
- Granular suppression management feature to automatically manage unsubscribes, complaints, and bounces.
- Inbox placement monitoring.
- Spam trap monitoring.
- Automated IP warmup.
- Clear documentation.
- Foundation plan for non-profits that include 50,000 emails, 5,000 email validations, and one dedicated IP for $35/month.
Mailgun cons:
- Inadequate reporting and error handling. Limited error management and reporting features make it difficult for users to diagnose and resolve issues effectively.
- Pricing escalation. Costs rise quickly for users with higher email volumes that require dedicated IPs and other advanced features.
- Limited support. Access to personalized support, such as live chat or phone, is restricted to higher-tier plans.
- Regional server limitations. Mailgun keeps its servers mainly in the US and EU, which may cause latency issues for users in other regions.
Mailgun pricing:
- The Free plan includes 3,000 emails, one sending domain, and one day of log retention.
- The Basic plan costs $15 and includes 10,000 emails, email analytics, and one day log retention.
- The Scale plan for $90 lets you send 100,000 emails and store email logs for 30 days.
Check all the pricing details on the official website.
Amazon SES
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) by Amazon Web Services provides an SMTP server with a pay-as-you-go model, charging based on the volume of emails sent. The key features of the product are:
- Email authentication support. Amazon SES supports SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configurations.
- Reputation dashboard. The service helps you track metrics like bounces, complaints, and rejection rates to monitor and maintain a positive sender reputation.
- Bounce and complaint processing. Amazon SES automatically processes bounces and complaints, flagging or removing problematic addresses from future mailings.
- Mailbox simulator for testing emails before sending them.
- The ability to use shared, dedicated, or owned IP addresses.
Pros:
- Extensive security features and protection against spam abuse.
- Integration with AWS Services — connection with Amazon S3 for storing emails, AWS Lambda for custom email processing, and CloudWatch for monitoring metrics.
- Cost-effective pricing. The pay-as-you-go model is ideal for businesses or teams that don’t have consistent email-sending patterns or need cost flexibility.
- Ability to configure sending limits and policies tailored to specific domains.
Cons:
- Regional configuration. Amazon SES requires configuration within specific AWS regions. This means that to send emails from a particular region, you must set up SES in that region, which can add complexity if your operations span multiple regions.
- Fragmented pricing. While Amazon SES offers low email-sending costs, the overall pricing can add up with additional charges for features like incoming emails, email attachments, inbound email processing, and data storage in S3, making cost estimation more complex.
- Lack of email content preview and validation. Amazon SES doesn’t include tools to preview email content across different clients or validate HTML/CSS for compatibility.
- Statistics and reports aren’t comprehensive according to the users’ complaints.
Pricing
- The Free tier allows you to send up to 62,000 emails per month at no cost for the first 12 months. Beyond this, sending emails costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails, and attachments are billed at $0.12 per GB.
- Receiving emails is priced at $0.10 per 1,000 emails, with an additional charge of $0.09 per 1,000 incoming email chunks.
- Dedicated IPs are available as add-ons. A standard dedicated IP costs $24.95 per month per IP, while managed dedicated IPs start at $15 per month per account, plus per-message usage fees.
For comprehensive and up-to-date pricing details, including potential additional costs, please visit the Amazon SES pricing page.
Moosend
Moosend is an SMTP email service to help developers seamlessly integrate email-sending capabilities into their applications. Key features include:
- Authentication protocols support (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC).
- Delivery tracking. Real-time monitoring of email status, including bounces and successful deliveries.
- Email logs retained for 15 days (in the Production plan)
- Event notifications with webhooks.
- Suppression list management.
- Email templates that work in SMTP.
Pros of Moosend:
- Responsive customer support. Many users commend Moosend for its prompt and helpful customer service, which assists in resolving issues efficiently.
- Cost-effective pricing. Moosend offers affordable plans for small businesses, and budget friendly tiers for medium, and large companies.
- Unlimited emails even in lower-tier plans.
Cons
- Doesn’t have a free plan.
- Limited advanced features, such as support for domain-specific sending rules.
- Poor template variety. There have been mentions of a limited selection of modern email templates, suggesting room for expansion in this area.
- Access to priority support is reserved for higher-tier plans.
Pricing:
- Moosend offers a 30-day free trial (not a free plan!) that includes unlimited emails to 1,000 contacts.
- The Pro plan costs $9 for a list of 500 contacts and unlimited emails.
- The Moosend+ and Enterprise plans are available upon request.
Similar to other platforms, Moosend also offers frequent special deals, so check its pricing page to get up-to-date information.
Wrapping up
If you’re still hesitant about the best SMTP email marketing service for your business, you may find the following materials helpful:
- Discover 13 Free SMTP Services for High-Volume Email Sending
- Find Out What’s the Best Transactional Email Service in 2024
- Find Out What is the Best Alternative to Mailgun [2024]
- Find Out What is the Best Alternative to SendGrid [2024]
- Top 6 Amazon SES Alternatives [2024]: Best Options Compared
- Top 10 Mailjet Alternatives for Sending Transactional and Marketing Emails