It’s time we talk about SMTP services.
You might have heard about SMTP here and there, but aren’t quite sure what it is. Or maybe you do and are looking for a list of the best SMTP services.
Either way, stay here to learn about both. In this post, we’ll talk about what is SMTP and the 9 best SMTP services for you.
What is SMTP?
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is defined as a fundamental communication protocol used for sending and receiving emails. Awesome, but what does that mean?
Basically, SMTP is a fundamental component of the email infrastructure and most email services, like Gmail and Outlook, use SMTP to send emails.
Since SMTP is in charge only of sending emails, these platforms typically use it alongside other protocols such as IMAP o POP3. But we’ll leave that for another day.
Below you’ll find the best tools to send your emails via SMTP.
9 Best SMTP Services for Bloggers
1. Moosend
Moosend is a top-rated email marketing automation platform that allows you to send transactional emails over its SMTP server.
It includes reporting and analytics that you can use to keep track of how your transactional campaigns sent using their SMTP service perform.
In addition, Moosend offers AI tools. Like many, it has welcomed AI technology to its team, allowing you to have a product recommendation tool. This tool will send recommendations categorized by your users’ similar tastes and hit home every time.
Pricing
Moosend has a 30-day free trial and customizable plans that adapt to your number of subscribers.
- Free trial: have up to 1,000 subscribers and create one landing page. This trial doesn’t include the SMTP server.
- Pro: $9 per month. Have up to 500 subscribers, send unlimited emails and create multiple forms.
- Moosend+: custom. It includes all Pro features and the add-ons of your choice.
- Enterprise: custom. Get an account manager, custom reporting and add more than 10 team members.
2. Brevo
Brevo is a CRM Suite that, unlike Moosend, offers a free SMTP server.
It also has multiple interesting automation features. For example, if an email sent via Brevo SMTP results in a hard bounce, the contact will automatically be blocklisted from receiving your future emails.
With Brevo, you can run not only email campaigns but also SMS and WhatsApp campaigns, widening the ways to reach your audience.
Pricing
Brevo doesn’t limit your contacts in each plan. On the contrary, you can have unlimited contacts even on its free plan.
- Free: send up to 300 emails per day and customize email templates.
- Starter: $9 per month. Send up to 5,000 emails per month and access basic reporting and analytics features.
- Business: $18 per month. Invite team members, A/B test and automate your marketing campaign.
- Enterprise: custom price. Access advanced integrations and tailored onboarding.
3. SendPulse
SendPulse is a versatile platform with a wide variety of products. From chatbots to CRM and email, it gives you everything you need to automate your marketing campaign.
Amongst its features, you’ll find transactional emails, which you can send via SMTP or via their SMTP API.
SendPulse also offers a drag-and-drop editor and campaign analytics with readable graphs and reports.
Pricing
Sendpulse has a flexible pricing plan. Here are the standard plans for transactional emails, but you can also handpick a toolkit that aligns with your specific needs:
- Free: send up to 12,000 emails per month to up to 500 subscribers.
- Pro: $59.88 per month. Send up to 100K emails and get a dedicated IP address.
- Enterprise: $219.88 per month. Send up to 500K emails.
4. Twilio SendGrid
Twilio is a communication platform for SMS, voice, video, and authentication. With 26 offices in 17 countries and counting, Twilio supports communications worldwide and empowers people everywhere.
With Twilio SendGrid, you can send reliably at scale with SMTP service. It has 99.99% uptime and excellent customer support.
Other cool features you’ll get even on its free plan are A/B testing, design and code editors and email automation.
Pricing
- Free. Store up to 100 contacts and send up to 6,000 emails per month.
- Basic: $15 per month. Send up to 5,000 contacts and 15,000.
- Advanced: $60 per month. Send up to 10,000 contacts and 50,000 emails per month.
5. Google Workplace
We can’t talk about reliable email services without talking about Google, more specifically Google Workplace. This set of tools provides a seamless integration of email services with other essential business tools, ensuring a unified and efficient workflow.
Besides being a secure option for an SMTP server, using Google Workplace gives you access to Gemini, an AI that helps you write emails.
Pricing
- Business Starter: $4.20 per user per month. Get 30 GB of storage.
- Business Standard: $9.60 per user per month. Get 2 TB of storage.
- Business Plus: $18 per user per month. It includes eDiscovery and email retention.
- Enterprise: custom.
6. SMTP
An obvious choice if you are looking for the best SMTP service is SMTP.com, which has been in the business for over 22 years.
Its easy-to-use email API offers a quick setup in 5 minutes or less. Thanks to it, you can auto-trigger emails that seek customer feedback.
Finally, if you need extra help with your email delivery rates, SMTP offers a team of delivery experts to manage your services for an extra fee.
Pricing
- Essential: $25 per month. Send up to 50,000 emails per month.
- Starter: $80 per month. Send up to 100,000 emails per month.
- Growth: $300 per month. Send up to 500,000 emails per month.
- Business: $500 per month. Send up to 1,000,000 emails per month.
7. Campaigner
Campaigner is an email marketing platform with automation and workflow features. Its SMTP Relay service ensures fast, secure delivery to your subscribers’ inboxes.
One of Campaigner’s cool features is its Reputation Defender. This proprietary technology proactively monitors your email list health to address any inbox placement or campaign performance issues.
Expanding its service, Campaigner’s API allows for direct integration with apps, facilitating seamless management of contacts and campaign content.
Pricing
Campaigner offers a 30-day free trial, where you can try all its features. It has four premium plans:
- Starter: $59 per month. Includes up to 5,000 contacts and more than 900 responsive templates.
- Essential: $179 per month. Includes up to 25,000 contacts and dynamic content.
- Advanced: $649 per month. Includes up to 100k contacts and automation workflows.
- Ecommerce: $79.95 per month. Get unlimited contacts, abandoned cart emails and the Magento integration.
8. Mailchimp
Back in the day, Mailchimp was seen exclusively as an email marketing platform for bloggers. Since then, it has long grown and currently offers plenty of marketing and automation features.
However, it remains true to its roots, and that’s why you’ll find Mailchimp Transactional as part of its add-ons.
Unlike the rest of the SMTP services mentioned in this list, Mailchimp Transactional is targeted specifically to developers and it’s not included in Mailchimp’s plans.
With it, you can get real-time insights into your data and connect inbound email to your app with webhooks.
Pricing
Thanks to its flexible pricing, you’re able to customize your plan according to how many emails you deliver.
The add-on works with blocks. Each block is a credit for 25,000 emails and the price for sending up to 500K emails is $20 per month per block.
New transactional email users can get up to 500 free emails sent to their verified domain.
9. Amazon SES
Last but not least, Amazon Simple Email Service. By using Amazon SES, you benefit from the years of experience and the sophisticated email infrastructure Amazon.com built to serve its own large-scale customer base.
Amazon SES offers several methods of sending email, including the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) interface.
It lets you analyze email deliverability performance and allows SES to automatically implement email deliverability recommendations.
Note that this SMTP service might have a steeper learning curve than the rest on this list, however, it’s one of the most affordable ones.
Pricing
- Free: receive up to 3,000 message charges fee each month for the first 12 months.
- Premium: $0.10 per 1,000 emails.
You can also purchase add-on features such as dedicated IPs.
Conclusion
SMTP is a fundamental protocol for sending emails that guarantee they are sent correctly and reach their recipients efficiently. Although there are plenty of tools out there that use it, not all of them are user-friendly.
In this post, we gathered the best SMTP services, with many having free plans or trials, making them perfect for beginners.
Now that you know what SMTP services are and which ones are the best, which one do you choose?
Tell us in the comments!
If you want to learn more about email marketing platforms, check our Email Marketing Archives.
Great list of SMTP services! This will definitely help bloggers ensure their emails are delivered reliably and efficiently.