Are you in search of the best SMTP providers?
If you want to send emails from your website to your visitors, you’ll need a reliable SMTP provider.
I can bet your users and you (as a customer) have received emails into your junk folder when they should have gone to your inbox. An SMTP provider can actually help your emails reach a users’ inbox, bypassing the junk folder.
This article will give our recommendations for the best SMTP service providers, taking into account email deliverability. We’ll also provide you with a guide on how to send your WordPress emails using the services listed below.
Here’s a quick overview of the best SMTP service providers:
- SMTP.com
- Sendinblue
- SendGrid
- Mailgun
- Google Workspace
- Amazon SES
- Postmark
Table of Contents
What Is SMTP?
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It’s the industry standard to send emails on the internet.
There are both free and paid SMTP service providers, like Google and Outlook, but you may find that some free options limit the number of emails you can send.
If you want your emails to be delivered properly and successfully, you’ll need a decent SMTP provider to ensure your emails are received.
1. SMTP.com
SMTP.com is used by over 100,000 businesses globally. Their API allows transactional emails to be sent, as well as integration with WordPress using the WP Mail SMTP plugin.
As one of the leading SMTP service providers, SMTP.com offers high delivery rates, starting from just $25 per month.
Their Essential package allows 50,000 emails per month, with email relay API, detailed reporting, and 24/7 support.
SMTP.com have a great reputation, ensuring emails always reach the end users’ inbox. WordPress site owners can use SMTP.com to automate site email notifications, authentication emails, order confirmations, and so on.
Free Trial: SMTP.com offers a 30-day free trial, allowing you to send 50,000 emails per month. If you want a dedicated IP, you can upgrade to the Starter package which allows up to 100,000 emails per month.
2. Sendinblue
Taking second place, Sendinblue is one of our favorite SMTP service providers for beginners. Sendinblue’s powerful marketing platform offers transactional emails, email marketing, and live chat.
Integration with WordPress is seamless, as are other platforms including Google Analytics and OptinMonster. If you want to create an outstanding marketing campaign, Sendinblue providers marketing automation features to help you achieve great things.
Sendinblue’s SMTP relay service is incredibly fast, offering email delivery and a highly extensible API. They offer a free plan which comes with unlimited contacts and up to 300 emails per day.
Their Lite and Premium plans can be tailored to increase monthly email volume, with no daily sending limit and A/B testing from $25 per month.
Free Trial: While Sendinblue doesn’t offer a free trial, they do have a free plan which you can use to test the waters and see if Sendinblue is the right SMTP service provider for you.
3. SendGrid
SendGrid’s cloud-based SMTP email service is very powerful and is perfect for businesses or individuals who want to send mass emails. There’s lots of room for scalability and is incredibly easy to set up.
The SMTP relay works with WordPress, offering delivery optimization tools, email templates, and email analytics. SendGrid also integrates well with other platforms.
If you’re worried about deliverability, SendGrid can improve delivery rates with dedicated IP addresses and domain name authentication tools.
Like Sendinblue, SendGrid also offers a free plan. The free plan includes APIs, SMTP relay, Webhooks, but no access to email validations or dedicated IPs. The Essentials plan starts at $14.95 per month and can be tailored to your requirements.
Free Trial: The free plan unlocks access to code SMTP features. There’s also a free trial that allows you to send up to 100 emails per day.
4. Mailgun
Mailgun is an excellent SMTP service provider for businesses and developers. You can send transactional emails with powerful APIs which are easy to integrate with WordPress.
Their scalable SMTP service is perfect for eCommerce stores or membership websites, enabling you to send marketing and transactional emails within your limits.
If you’re looking for a beginner-friendly SMTP service provider, Mailgun does lack some of the features other SMTP providers offer. It’s definitely more focused towards developers who know what they’re doing.
Mailgun’s pay-as-you-go service offers 5,000 free emails per month for the first 3 months, then you pay for what you send. This is a fantastic plan to choose if you’re not quite sure how many emails you’ll be sending. The Foundation plan starts from $35 per month and includes 50,000 emails.
Free Trial: While there isn’t a free trial for Mailgun, you can send the first 5,000 emails for free each month, up to 3 months.
5. Google Workspace
Google Workspace, formerly G Suite, is an all-in-one productivity suite for businesses. You can view calendars, meeting invites, Google Drive, and Gmail with your own domain name.
This means you can still use Google’s familiar interface with a professional business email address. Using Google’s SMTP servers, G Suite allows you to send emails even from your WordPress website.
However, Google Workspace is only really suitable for small businesses, because you’re limited to 2,000 emails per day.
The Business Starter plan offers 30GB of cloud storage, custom and secure business email, and 100 participant video meetings.
Free Trial: Although you can use Gmail for free, if you want to use a professional email address for your business, you’ll need to upgrade to Google Workspace, which doesn’t offer a free trial.
6. Amazon SES
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is without a doubt the industry leader in cloud computing. Amazon SES is their simple email service and comes as an add-on to AWS.
The cloud-based SMTP service is ideal for developers and marketers who want to send emails with high deliverability, including marketing emails, notifications, and transactional email campaigns.
Most of the powerful features are useful for advanced users, but Amazon SES can be integrated with WordPress. Depending on how many emails you send, Amazon SES is one of the cheapest SMTP service providers.
If you host your website via AWS, you can use their free Amazon SES tier which can send 62,000 emails per month. Otherwise, pricing starts from $0.10 per 1,000 emails you send.
Free Trial: There isn’t a free trial, but if your website is hosted with AWS, as mentioned above, you’ll get 62,000 emails for free each month.
7. Postmark
Postmark is probably one of the easier to use SMTP service providers, ideal for websites, marketers, and businesses. Their super-fast email delivery service and easy integration are perfect for beginners or those less technical.
Postmark excel in sending transactional emails, focusing on deliverability and speed. They offer email analytics, mobile-friendly templates, simple webhooks, and lots more.
Their pricing is fairly simple, with each tier unlocking a certain amount of emails per month. You can also pay for additional emails, with the cost lowering the higher the pricing plan.
Free Trial: Postmark offers a free trial where you can send 100 emails per month. Their lowest pricing plan starts at $10 per month and +$1.25 for 1,000 additional emails.