Mass email marketing is easy. It’s like eating, except you’re eating soup with a fork in the middle of a zombie apocalypse 🔥.
But, luckily, there’s one thing that can alleviate your struggles and simplify the task – a reliable mass email service provider.
We scraped the market to find the best contenders and compared them based on key features, use cases, pricing, and other criteria. Let’s dive in!
Best tool to send bulk email: selection criteria
To single out top performers among hundreds of bulk email marketing tools, we used the following criteria:
- Separate infrastructure for bulk and transactional emails – This is probably the most important criterion as it’s directly linked to email deliverability. If not done right, mass emails can land in spam folders and ruin your sender reputation. With a separate infrastructure, such events won’t affect the deliverability of transactional emails.
- Cost-effective pricing plans – Depending on the size of the business, affordability is usually an important factor. And by affordability, we mean flexible pricing plans that don’t upsell on essential features such as access to support, for example. So, what we’re looking for is the value for money.
- High email deliverability rates – While deliverability rates aren’t usually among publicly available data, you can easily gather that information from user reviews. A great bulk email service provider should have a stable infrastructure and be able to deliver emails to inboxes.
- Analysis and reporting – Analyzing performance metrics is vital to be able to nail mass email marketing. You have to constantly track open rates, click-through rates, conversions, bounce rates, and unsubscribes, find the patterns, and adjust future campaigns accordingly.
- Easy and smooth integration – Ideally, a bulk email provider should have an SMTP server and an Email API along with detailed documentation to streamline the integration process. Helpful tutorials, SDKs, and ready-made integrations will help in that process even more.
- Contact list management and segmentation – You can’t jam mass emails to all of your subscribers if you don’t want to receive hundreds of unsubscribes and spam complaints. The ability to manage your contacts right from your mass email platform is certainly a useful addition.
- Ease of use – A user-friendly interface is a must for any tool or platform you’re using.
Best mass email service providers: a quick summary
- Brevo (previously Sendinblue) for businesses of all sizes looking for one platform to send transactional and bulk emails.
- Amazon SES for growing businesses that need affordable pay-as-you-go pricing.
- Mailchimp for medium and large enterprises looking for a marketing platform with bulk-sending features.
- Mailjet for businesses of all sizes prioritizing well-designed bulk emails.
- Mailgun for businesses looking for one platform to manage their transactional and marketing communications.
- Postmark for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are looking for a straightforward API and SMTP server for bulk email sending.
- SMTP2GO for high-volume senders that need a reliable and scalable SMTP for mass mailing.
- Elastic Email for small businesses looking for an affordable bulk email server provider.
- SendPulse for startups, individuals, and SMEs that need an all-inclusive marketing platform with flexible pricing options.
- Mailmodo for larger businesses and corporations that want to boost engagement with interactive emails.
- Mailtrap’s Bulk Email Stream for businesses and individuals looking to send transactional and marketing emails from a single platform.
10 Best bulk email services
Below, we’ll describe the top bulk email tools based on their features, pros and cons, and pricing. Apart from our own experience, we also researched how users evaluate each service on G2, Capterra, Stack Overflow, and Reddit.
Brevo (previously Sendinblue)
Brevo (previously Sendinblue) is a marketing platform that focuses on helping businesses build customer relationships. It has a range of features for creating and sending mass emails, including:
- Robust servers with a focus on email deliverability
- HTML and Drag-and-drop editors
- Email API and SMTP server
- Advanced analytics (available in higher plans)
- Transactional emails included
- Send time optimization (available in higher plans)
- Built-in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform
- Integration with popular platforms, services, and e-commerce stores, including WordPress, Appy Pie’s App Maker, WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, etc.
Pros
- Volume-based pricing plans with unlimited contacts
- A quick and easy setup process
- Allows for collaboration between different teams
- The ability to organize contacts using list and tag management features
- Powerful automation
Cons
- A limited selection of templates
- Support isn’t quick and responsive
- Has a learning curve, especially with more advanced features
Pricing
Unlike most marketing platforms, Brevo offers volume-based pricing plans. This means that the users can choose the plan according to their sending needs instead of the size of their contact list.
Brevo has a free tier with a daily sending limit of 300 emails. Their cheapest plan, Starter, starts at $25 for 20,000 emails per month. All of their Marketing Platform plans include transactional emails and a free CRM.
Dedicated IP, SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, and email credits are also available as add-ons for an additional fee.
Amazon SES
Amazon SES is a classic bulk emailing service without bells and whistles. It enables users to send different types of emails, including email newsletters, notifications, or promotions. While other bulk email marketing services don’t necessarily require technical knowledge, Amazon SES is certainly geared towards developers rather than marketers.
Some of its distinguishing features include:
- Mailbox simulator for testing emails before sending them.
- The ability to receive emails and execute custom code with the AWS Lambda function.
- Sending statistics to track essential metrics.
- Reputation Dashboard to get notified if you hit spam traps or any other event that starts affecting your sender reputation.
- The ability to use shared, dedicated, or owned IP addresses.
- Different integration and sending options such as Amazon SES console, SMTP server, and Amazon SES API.
Pros
- Extensive security features and protection against spam abuse.
- Reliable infrastructure with only occasional downtime.
- Pay-as-you-go pricing and a generous free tier.
Cons
- The configuration process is difficult, especially for users who want to customize specific features.
- Statistics and reports aren’t comprehensive.
Pricing
Amazon SES has a pay-as-you-go pricing model. The first 62,000 emails are free if you’re using Amazon EC2 or AWS Elastic Beanstalk. But additional fees may occur if you’re adding large attachments.
For anything more than 62,000 emails per month, you’ll pay $0.10 per 1,000 emails.
Dedicated IPs are available as add-ons and start at $15/month depending on the option you choose (standard, managed, or BYOIP).
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a full-fledged email marketing and automation platform with mass mailing functionalities. While it’s beneficial for businesses of all sizes, it’s mostly suitable for medium and large enterprises. The reason is the pricing model, which limits the features available in the cheaper tiers.
Regardless, Mailchimp has a bunch of useful functionalities, such as:
- GPT-powered AI assistant to generate subject lines or email content.
- AI-powered Content Optimizer that analyzes well-performing campaigns and provides personalized suggestions.
- Analytics and dashboards.
- Integrations with more than 300 e-commerce and marketing platforms.
- Drag and drop builder and pre-designed templates.
- Marketing automation tools such as Customer Journey Builder and automation workflows.
- A mobile app to add contacts on the go during live events.
Pros
- Makes it easy to upload and manage customer database.
- Connects seamlessly with other digital marketing channels, such as social media, for example.
- Robust audience segmentation features.
- A/B and multivariate testing.
- Comes with an easy-to-use sign-up form builder for lead generation.
Cons
- The user interface can be complicated for new users.
- The pricing plans aren’t affordable for individuals or small businesses.
- Automated campaigns are difficult to set up.
Pricing
Mailchimp has a contact-based pricing system. Their free tier allows users to have a list of 500 recipients and send them up to 1,000 emails/month. The free plan is limited in terms of features and support options.
Mailchimp also has Essentials, Standard, and Premium plans. The Essentials tier starts at $13 for 500 contacts and 5,000 monthly emails. You can choose up to 200,000 contacts within these plans or, if you need more, contact support to get a custom quote.
Mailjet
Mailjet is a mass mailing service provider from Sinch. It combines bulk email marketing with transactional email services, allowing users to access both within a single platform. This software is ISO 27001 certified and GDPR-compliant, which means they take data protection seriously.
Mailjet has all the essential features you’d need to send occasional email blasts or regular mass campaigns. These include:
- Email design tools such as drag-and-drop, HTML, and MJML editors (the latter for building responsive emails).
- Template gallery for transactional and marketing emails.
- Inbox Preview to check emails in various email clients (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.).
- Contact management with sign-up form templates and the ability to upload lists in CSV or TXT formats.
- Collaboration across different team members.
- Integration with popular platforms and solutions.
- Email analytics that connects with Google Analytics.
Pros
- Easy-to-use interface.
- SMTP server and API integration.
- Comes with an email verification feature.
- Flexible and affordable pricing options.
Cons
- Free tier’s limited features make it hard to understand if the platform matches your needs.
- List segmentation options and tags aren’t enough for creating targeted campaigns.
- Customer support is only available for paid users.
Pricing
Even though Mailjet is marketed as a free mass email service, it certainly isn’t completely free. This platform has four tiers: Free, Essential, Premium, and Custom. None of these limit the number of contacts.
The Free plan allows users to send up to 6,000 emails per month with a daily sending limit of 200 emails.
The cheapest plan starts at $15 for 15,000 emails per month. There’s also an option to get a custom quote if your sending volume exceeds 500,000 emails per month.
Mailgun
Mailgun is a bulk email API provider for sending small or large volumes of transactional and marketing emails. Similar to Mailjet, Mailgun is also owned by Sinch. The main difference between these platforms is the fact that Mailjet is more of an email marketing software, while Mailgun is your typical email service provider that allows mass emailing.
With all of that in mind, here are the features offered by Mailgun:
- Real-time email validation API to clean email lists and reduce bounce rates.
- Email tracking with analytics and reports.
- Customizable email templates for newsletters, transactional messages, promotional emails, etc.
- The ability to personalize emails with the help of Handlebars templating engine.
- Send Time Optimization to deliver emails at the right time.
Pros
- Easy integration via SMTP server or API.
- Streamlined domain verification process with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.
- Extensive documentation.
- Intuitive user interface.
Cons
- Doesn’t have a free tier.
- The paid plans are expensive compared to the competitors.
- Susceptible to spam abuse which can affect the reputation of shared IPs.
Pricing
Mailgun has four pricing tiers: Trial, Foundation, Scale, and Custom.
The Trial provides access to 5,000 free emails for one month and unveils most of the basic features of the platform.
The cheapest paid plan starts at $35 for 50,000 emails/month. You’ll need to purchase more expensive plans if you want to access features such as Send Time Optimization, live support, and SSO.
Postmark
Postmark is an API and SMTP provider for bulk email and transactional messages. In other words, it allows you to send any application email, be it a newsletter, account confirmation, or email marketing campaign.
To maintain high email delivery rates and deliverability, Postmark uses a separate infrastructure for mass and transactional emails. So, if your marketing messages get blocked by spam filters, the deliverability of transactional emails won’t be affected.
Let’s take a look at the key features of Postmark:
- Dedicated SMTP server for bulk mailing.
- SMTP and REST API with comprehensive documentation and official libraries.
- Message retention for 45 days.
- Inbound email processing.
- Inbox previews.
- Email template library and a templating engine.
- Spam score check.
Pros
- Quick and responsive customer support.
- Can easily be integrated with various platforms.
- Simple to navigate.
- Decent deliverability rates.
Cons
- A bit expensive with a limited free trial.
- The search feature could be more intuitive.
Pricing
Postmark is one of those mass email sending services that only charge based on the number of emails you send per month, not the availability of the features. So, you don’t have to upgrade to a higher volume plan just to access certain functionalities.
The free trial allows you to send 100 emails a month. Ten thousand emails/month costs $15. A custom quote is also available for bulk email senders with more than 1.9M monthly sending volume.
If you need a dedicated IP, you’ll have to purchase it separately for $50/month per IP. Keep in mind that this feature is only available to users who send more than 300,000 emails per month.
SMTP2GO
SMTP2GO is yet another decent option if you’re looking for the best SMTP server for mass mailing. With this platform, you can send transactional or marketing emails without encountering any issues. Some of its features include:
- Reports and analytical dashboards with stats on spam complaints, bounce rates, and unsubscribes.
- A testing tool to see how your emails will render in various email clients and test them against spam filters.
- Automatic domain verification with SPF and DKIM.
- Official SDKs for PHP, .NET, Django, Python, Ruby, and Ruby on Rails.
- The ability to integrate with various CRM and CMS platforms.
Pros
- Strict anti-spam policies.
- Rapid and helpful customer support.
- Great history of deliverability.
- Reliable infrastructure both for transactional and bulk emails.
Cons
- Limited filtering capabilities for the reports.
- Doesn’t have a ready-made integration for email marketing platforms.
Pricing
SMTP2GO has four pricing plans: Free, Starter, Professional, and Premier.
The Free plan allows users to send 1,000 emails per month and access 5 days of email reporting.
The Starter plan starts at $10 for 10,000 emails per month. The Professional costs $75 for 100,000 emails/month and also provides access to email testing and SMS messaging features.
Elastic Email
Elastic Email is a mass marketing email service that offers two products: Email Marketing and Email API.
Email Marketing is suitable for those who are looking for various marketing features such as a drop email builder, a contact-based system with unlimited emails, email automation, subscription forms, landing pages, etc.
Email API, on the other hand, is for businesses and individuals looking for a platform to manage their transactional and marketing communications. Here, you’ll find only simple functionalities without any complex add-ons. These include SMTP server for bulk email, RESTful API, webhooks, inbound email routing, statistics, suppression management, etc.
You can choose either of these two products depending on what you’re looking for in your bulk email platform.
Pros
- Straightforward dashboards and reports.
- Intuitive interface.
- Email editor with an array of customizable templates.
- Robust audience segmentation features.
Cons
- Customer support responses aren’t always quick and helpful.
- Doesn’t have send time optimization feature for different time zones.
Pricing
Elastic Email has separate pricing plans for Email Marketing and Email API.
With Email API, you can choose the plan based on your monthly sending volume. The free tier allows you to send up to 100 emails per day. The Starter costs $9 for 10,000 emails per month. There’s also a Pro plan with more advanced features.
Email Marketing has a contact-based pricing structure. The Free plan provides access to 1,000 contacts/month and 100 emails/day. If you buy the Starter for $9, you’ll get up to 2,000 contacts and 60,000 emails per month.
Private IPs are available as an add-on starting from $40 per month.
SendPulse
SendPulse is a robust email software for those looking for a marketing and bulk email sending service. It enables users to build engaging mass campaigns with ease and nurture relationships through automated drip sequences.
SendPulse has multiple useful features such as:
- Free subscription forms to collect contacts.
- An extensive template library with a drag-and-drop editor.
- A/B testing suite.
- Automation features to follow up with your leads after the mass campaigns.
- A built-in spam checker to improve deliverability.
- Various reports for clicks, devices, geographics, and errors
- Audience segmentation.
- Integrations with multiple tools and platforms such as Google Analytics, for example.
Pros
- Affordable pricing options for small and medium businesses and enterprises.
- Intuitive interface.
- Paid plans come with unlimited emails.
- Great customer support.
- A wide range of customization options.
Cons
- Low limits on email verification on cheaper plans.
- The list of native integrations could be extended.
Pricing
As an email marketing platform, SendPulse has a contact-based pricing structure. They offer four tiers: Free, Standard, Pro, and Enterprise.
The Free plan allows you to have up to 500 contacts and 15,000 emails per month. Their cheapest plan costs $8 for up to 500 contacts and unlimited emails.
If a monthly subscription isn’t the right choice for your business, there’s also a Pay-As-You-Go option. You can select the plan depending on the features you’re looking for and then purchase the email credits based on your sending volume. The plans start at $32 for up to 10,000 emails.
Mailmodo
The last SMTP mass email service we have on this list is Mailmodo. It has all the necessary and typical features you’d expect from a marketing platform, namely:
- Contact synchronization from various CRMs.
- Mass email list segmentation based on user properties, activities, or events.
- The ability to create interactive or HTML emails in addition to the existing template library.
- Personalization.
- A/B testing.
- Automation features with a journey builder.
- Authentication, dedicated IPs, and IP warmup for improved deliverability.
Pros
- Generous email credits.
- Helpful customer service.
- The ability to build AMP emails with diverse options.
- Easy to integrate with other platforms and solutions.
Cons
- Doesn’t have campaign exclusion options.
- Doesn’t allow adding attachments to the templates.
Pricing
When it comes to pricing, Mailmodo is a bit more expensive compared to other bulk email SMTP and API services. It has three plans: Lite, Pro, and Max.
The Lite plan costs $39 for 5,000 contacts and 40,000 emails per month. The same amount of contacts but higher sending limits will cost you $99 with the Pro plan and $249 with the Max. All plans have a 21-day free trial so that the users can try out available features.
Honorable mention: Mailtrap’s Bulk Email Stream
Mailtrap’s Bulk Email Stream is a feature using which you can send bulk emails at the price of transactional. What’s more, as the Mailtrap Email Delivery Platform supports marketing and transactional emails, you’ll be able to cover all your sending needs with one platform. And no, your deliverability won’t suffer as you will have separate sending streams.
Are there other benefits to Mailtrap’s Bulk Email Stream? Yes, plenty, including:
- Smooth and secure setup
- The option to choose between an email API and an SMTP service
- Actionable in-depth analytics,
- 30-day email logs
You can try out this feature today by signing up for a free Mailtrap account!
Choosing the best SMTP server for sending bulk emails: comparison chart
We made it to the end! We hope you enjoyed our overview of the leading mass email service providers on the market. And to summarize everything we mentioned so far and help you make the final decision, here’s a quick comparison chart. Enjoy!
| Mass email sender | Analysis and reporting | Ease of integration | Pricing (for the cheapest tier) |
| Brevo | Advanced | Ready-made integrations | $25 for 20k emails/month and unlimited contacts |
| Amazon SES | Moderate | Integration through SMTP, API, and SDKs | $0.10 per 1,000 emails above sending volume of 62k emails/month |
| Mailchimp | Decent | Ready-made integrations | $13 for 500 contacts and 5k emails/month |
| Mailjet | Decent | Ready-made integrations | $15 for 15,000 emails and unlimited contacts |
| Mailgun | Decent | Ready-made integrations | $35 for 50k emails/month |
| Postmark | Advanced | Ready-made integrations (with limited selection) | $15 for 10k emails/month |
| SMTP2GO | Decent | Ready-made integrations (with limited selection) | $10 for 10k emails/month |
| Elastic Email | Great | Ready-made integrations | $9 for 2k contacts and 60k emails/month |
| SendPulse | Advanced | Ready-made integrations | $8 for 500 contacts and unlimited emails |
| Mailmodo | Moderate | Ready-made integrations (with limited selection) | $39 for 5k contacts and 40k emails/month |