What is SMTP Service Provider?

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol also called SMTP service provider is a company or service that offers the infrastructure and technology to facilitate the sending and delivery of emails through SMTP. The accepted protocol for sending email over the Internet is called SMTP.

SMTP Service Providers typically offer following features

• Outbound email delivery: They send emails from your application or client to the recipient’s email server.
• SMTP relay: They provide a secure and reliable relay service to ensure the successful delivery of your emails.
• Email authentication: They may offer features like DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) and SPF (Sender Policy Framework) to authenticate your emails and improve deliverability.
• Scalability and reliability: SMTP service providers often have robust infrastructure and delivery networks to handle large volumes of emails and ensure high delivery rates.
• Tracking and analytics: They may provide insights and statistics on email delivery, open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics to help you monitor and optimize your email campaigns.

Are you trying to find the top SMTP service provider?

You can send emails to your users from your website with the assistance of an SMTP service provider. SMTP servers are configured to ensure that your outgoing emails are sent to recipients’ inboxes rather than the spam folder.

This article will list the top SMTP service providers with great email delivery. Additionally, we’ll demonstrate how to use these SMTP services to send WordPress emails.

Why Do WordPress Emails Need an SMTP Service Provider?

Email plays a significant role in many actions performed on WordPress websites. For example:

• finding a forgotten password
• setting up a new account
• notifications for new articles, comments, password changes, and other events
• Email customers’ order confirmations, invoices, and delivery information if it’s an online store.

WordPress is configured to send emails using the PHP mail() function by default. This is the primary reason users complain about WordPress not sending emails. There are several problems with the default mail method and why it doesn’t work. Most hosting providers need to have this function configured properly. Some people even fully block it to stop people from abusing their servers.

Because it doesn’t require authentication and can be used to send spam emails, misuse of this method is a widespread issue. Even if the mail function is working on your WordPress hosting, sometimes your WordPress emails may still end up in spam because most spam filters will verify the sender’s email, location, and domain name, and it would flag your site email as suspicious or spam. The only way to fix this problem is to use an SMTP email server to send WordPress emails.

Let’s examine the top SMTP services with excellent deliverability.

Best SMTP Service Providers

Numerous SMTP service providers let you send transactional emails, mass emails, WordPress emails, and more.

The features, pricing, convenience of use, quantity of emails permitted on a free plan, email server uptime, and, most significantly, each differ in terms of their history with email delivery rates.

The best SMTP service providers with the best features and deliverability are listed below.

Postmark

Postmark is a popular email delivery service and SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) provider known for its reliable and efficient email delivery infrastructure. It is designed to help businesses send transactional emails with high deliverability rates and ensure that essential emails reach the recipients’ inboxes.

Key features and details about Postmark include:

• Delivery Infrastructure: Postmark has a robust infrastructure optimized for email delivery. It employs advanced technology and practices to maximize email deliverability rates and minimize the chances of emails being marked as spam.
• Transactional Email Focus: Postmark sends transactional emails, such as account notifications, receipts, password resets, and other essential communications. It is not primarily designed for sending bulk marketing emails.
• Developer-Friendly: Postmark offers a developer-friendly API and SDKs (Software Development Kits) that allow easy integration into applications and systems. It provides comprehensive documentation and libraries in various programming languages to simplify the integration process.
• Email Tracking and Analytics: Postmark provides detailed insights and analytics on email delivery, including bounce rates, open rates, click-through rates, and other key metrics. These statistics help businesses monitor the performance and effectiveness of their transactional emails.
• Email Templates and Branding: Postmark allows businesses to create custom email templates with their branding elements, ensuring a consistent and professional look for transactional emails.
• Security and Compliance: Postmark prioritizes email security and complies with various email authentication protocols, including SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), to enhance email deliverability and protect against spoofing and phishing attempts.
• Support and Documentation: Postmark provides comprehensive documentation, guides, and support resources to assist users in getting started and resolving any issues or concerns that may arise.

Mailjet

Mailjet is a popular email service provider that offers robust email marketing and transactional email solutions. It provides businesses with the tools and infrastructure to efficiently create, send, and track email campaigns and transactional emails.

Key features and details about Mailjet include:

• Email Marketing: Mailjet’s platform enables businesses to create and manage email marketing campaigns. It offers a drag-and-drop email editor, customizable email templates, segmentation capabilities, A/B testing, and automation features. These tools help businesses engage with subscribers, build customer relationships, and drive conversions.
• Transactional Email: Mailjet allows businesses to send transactional emails, such as order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, and more, through its robust SMTP infrastructure. It ensures reliable and timely delivery of critical transactional emails to recipients’ inboxes.
• Deliverability and Optimization: Mailjet emphasizes email deliverability and provides tools to optimize email performance. It includes features like real-time monitoring, spam score analysis, and deliverability insights to help businesses improve inbox placement and maximize the chances of email engagement.
• Collaboration and Teamwork: Mailjet offers collaboration features, allowing teams to collaborate on email campaigns. It supports multiple users, team collaboration, and permission management, ensuring smooth workflows and efficient email marketing operations.
• Analytics and Reporting: Mailjet provides detailed analytics and reporting on email campaign performance. It tracks metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribes, helping businesses measure the effectiveness of their email campaigns and make data-driven decisions.
• Developer-Friendly: Mailjet offers comprehensive APIs and SDKs, making it easy for developers to integrate Mailjet’s services into their applications and systems. It provides detailed documentation, code samples, and libraries in various programming languages to facilitate seamless integration.
• Scalability and Reliability: Mailjet’s infrastructure is designed to handle high email volumes with scalability and reliability. It ensures that businesses can send large emails without compromising deliverability or performance.
• GDPR Compliance: Mailjet is committed to data privacy and security. It complies with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) regulations, providing businesses with the necessary tools and features to manage and protect customer data by the law.

SendLayer

One of the most reliable email delivery services, SendLayer, is used by clients in more than 150 nations. It is our #1 suggested SMTP mailer service because of its simplicity, durability, and price. Using the WP Mail SMTP plugin, SendLayer connects to your WordPress website without problems. It also functions with other systems, like BigCommerce, Magento, Drupal, HelpScout, and WooCommerce. Using SendLayer’s API and SMTP relay, you can reliably deliver transactional emails, confirmation emails, shipment notifications, password reset emails, and more. SendLayer also provides thorough email records to keep tabs on your outgoing emails. You may check your email’s success or failure by looking at open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribes.

Other features include:

• Built-in email list management.
• Spam filter protection.
• Reputation-protecting subdomains.
• World-class customer service.

Pricing: SendLayer offers a free trial with a 200-email sending cap. With 1,000 emails sent monthly and sophisticated capabilities like suppression management, event-based webhooks, and limitless mailing lists, the subscription plans begin as little as $5 per month.

SMPT.COM

Over 100,000 businesses globally use SMTP.com, a market leader in SMTP services. They offer a powerful API that integrates seamlessly with WordPress and the well-liked WP Mail SMTP plugin to send transactional emails. Since their primary area of specialization is SMTP relay, they have some of the best deliverability for companies with high email traffic. You receive detailed information on the number of sends, views, clicks, bounce rates, etc. Their domain reputation management tools ensure that the user always receives your email. You may send automated site notifications, registration confirmations, authentication emails, order confirmations from your WooCommerce store, status updates, and more using SMTP.com as the owner of a WordPress website.

Pricing: A 30-day free trial with 50,000 email sends is available from SMTP.com. The beginning monthly cost for their paid plans is $25. You can subscribe to the higher plan to acquire the Dedicated IP and reputation defender addon.

Brevo (Formerly Sendinblue)

Brevo, originally Sendinblue, is among the top SMTP email service providers for newcomers. They provide a powerful marketing platform that includes transactional emails, email marketing, SMS marketing, and other features. It seamlessly integrates with WordPress and numerous third-party platforms, like OptinMonster, Salesforce, Google Analytics, and many others. They also provide strong personalization and marketing automation options to support your marketing campaigns. Other capabilities include a drag-and-drop email editor, marketing email templates, and live chat help in real-time. Brevo’s highly extendable email API and SMTP relay service quickly enhance transactional email delivery.

Pricing: Brevo offers a 300-email per day, forever-free package. With 20,000 emails sent per month and no daily email-sending restrictions, their subscription plans begin at $25 per month.

Maligun

For developers and companies, Mailgun is a well-liked SMTP service provider. To send transactional emails, bulk emails, and other types of emails, they provide potent APIs.

You may incorporate it quickly into your WordPress website. Mailgun provides an easy-to-scale SMTP solution for sending your transactional and marketing emails, regardless of whether you run a small business, an eCommerce site, or a membership website.

It is less user-friendly for beginners than other SMTP providers because it is intended for developers.

Pricing: The first 5,000 emails sent through Mailgun’s “pay as you go” plan are free for the first month. In the market, their paid programs are fairly competitive. But if you want a dedicated IP and better deliverability, a single dedicated IP costs $80 a month.

SendGrid

You may send bulk emails without managing an SMTP server using SendGrid, a potent cloud-based SMTP email service provider. It has a strong feature set and improved scalability. Their SMTP relay is straightforward and compatible with all WordPress sites. It features connectors with third-party apps and services, email analytics, email templates with a basic email editor, delivery optimization tools, and email address validation. SendGrid provides excellent solutions, such as dedicated IP addresses and domain name authentication methods, to increase email delivery if deliverability is your top priority.

Pricing: A 100-email-per-day free plan is available. Monthly fees for paid plans begin at $19.95.

Amazon SES

AWS, or Amazon Web Services, is the market leader in cloud computing infrastructure. Along with their web services, they also provide Amazon SES, also known as Amazon Simple Email Service. For developers and marketers, it is a potent cloud-based SMTP service that makes sending transactional, marketing, and notification emails simple. With AWS’s cost-effectiveness, it enables more deliverability. Many strong features are available, but most are designed for power users and programmers. Amazon SES can be integrated into your WordPress website with plugins (more on this later in the article). Amazon SES can be the least expensive SMTP service available, depending on your usage.

Pricing: If AWS hosts your website, you can send 62,000 emails for free each month. For every 1,000 emails sent to other websites, prices start at $0.10.

Google Workspace (Formerly G Suite)

The productivity suite for enterprises from Google is called Workspace. You may use Gmail, Calendar, Google Drive, Docs, and Photos with your domain name. This enables you to obtain a credible corporate email address while retaining the comfort of Google’s user experience. You can set up an email account for your WordPress site and use it to send WordPress emails using Google Workspace since it enables you to use Google SMTP servers to send emails. However, because it can only send 2,000 email messages daily, it is only appropriate for small business websites and blogs. See our post on how to set up a business email account with Google Workspace for more information.

Price: $6 per user per month is the starting price.

Which Is the Best SMTP Service Provider?

In addition to the leading SMTP services we listed above, there are hundreds more, including Mandrill, Mailjet, Moosend, Pepipost, Postmark, and Microsoft Office 365. Users need help to choose the most suitable SMTP service provider due to the abundance of options. It would help if you considered email deliverability, scalability, and affordability when selecting an SMTP service. We will concentrate on affordability since it’s frequently a key deciding factor. Every platform on our list delivers good email deliverability and can scale to send millions of emails monthly, except Google Workspace.

The free plans across all devices appear extremely competitive at first sight. SendLayer, SMTP.com, and Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) are our top three SMTP suggestions if you operate a tiny website. However, you really can go right with all of them. Pricing, however, becomes a significant concern as your website expands. With scalability and trustworthy technical assistance, SMTP.com delivers the most affordable prices. For instance, if you send 100,000 emails monthly, you would spend $80 per month and receive a dedicated IP address. While Brevo would cost $99 and exclude Dedicated IP because that is an Enterprise product for the same amount of sending requirements, it does include Dedicated IP.

The price of Amazon SES, which is $0.10 per 1000 emails provided you have an internal technical team, must be lowered. As a result, Amazon SES will only charge $10 for 100,000 emails sent each month. The main drawback is how little technical help they offer. Just $24.95 a month is required for dedicated IP.

• There isn’t a more affordable SMTP option than Amazon for huge sites.
• Our selection for the top small business SMTP providers: SendLayer
• SMTP.com is our top recommendation for the best SMTP providers for growing organizations.
• We recommend Amazon SES as the finest SMTP provider for significant commercial and eCommerce websites.

How to Easily Connect Your SMTP Service to WordPress

The next step is to integrate the SMTP service provider with your WordPress website after signing up with them. By doing this, your SMTP service would take the role of WordPress’ built-in mail function, ensuring that your email is delivered as intended. The finest WordPress SMTP plugin is WP Mail SMTP, enabling you to send WordPress emails via any SMTP service provider easily. A premium version with more functionality and a free SMTP plugin is also offered. You can access email controls in the paid version, so you can pick which WordPress notification emails to send using your SMTP service provider.

You also receive email logs and simpler setups for well-known SMTP service providers, including SMTP.com, Mailgun, SendGrid, Amazon SES, Gmail, Outlook, and Google. You can set up your SMTP service using their White Glove Setup using the Elite package, allowing access to this service.

• Installing and turning on the WP Mail SMTP plugin is the first thing you must do. More information is available in our step-by-step tutorial on installing a WordPress plugin.
• After activation, you must enter your license key to go to WP Mail SMTP > Settings. Your account on the WP Mail SMTP website is where you may find this information.

• The next step is configuring your mailing service after inputting your license key.
• In the Mail area, scroll down and type the ‘From Email’ address. To use your SMTP service provider, you have added this email address.

• You then need to input a “From Name.” It should ideally be your website title to let your users know where the email is coming from.
• Find the Mailer section by scrolling down. You can choose your SMTP service provider here if it is included in that list.

• When you select an SMTP provider, settings unique to that service provider are displayed, along with a link to step-by-step instructions on how to enter the necessary data.
• Select the “Other SMTP” option if your server isn’t listed there. With all SMTP providers, WP Mail SMTP functions.
• The required information is now visible beneath that. This data is accessible through your account on the website of your SMTP service provider.

• The following details are necessary.
  • SMTP Host: Your SMTP host address often appears as smtp.yoursmtpserver.com.
  • Encryption: Typically, SSL or TLS are used.
  • SMTP port: The SMTP port, Typically, is 465.
  • Authentication: Enable authentication
  • Username: Typically, the username offered by your SMTP service is your email address.
  • Password: the password for your SMTP account
• The plugin now advises adding your login and password to your wp-config.php file instead of saving them in plain text. To edit the wp-config.php file, refer to our tutorial.
• Remember to click the ‘Save Settings button after you’ve completed all the necessary fields to save your changes.
• You can now send a test email to check that everything is functioning properly. Enter an email address and select the Email Test option to send a test email.

• Your address will now get a test email from WP Mail SMTP. Make sure the test email arrives by checking your inbox.
• Congratulations! You’ve just configured your WordPress website to use your chosen SMTP provider.

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