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What are the best transactional email services?
18
Options
Considered
119
User
Recs.
Aug 16, 2022
Last
Updated
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13
Options
Considered
Best transactional email services
Price
Free tier
Event API
42
Mailgun
Paid
10000/month
Yes
--
Postmark
-
First 25000 emails free
Yes
21
Mandrill
-
No
Yes
--
Mailjet
-
6000/month
Yes
--
SendGrid
-
100/day
Yes
See Full List
42
Mailgun
My Rec
ommendation
for
Mailgun
My Recommendation for
Mailgun
All
7
Experiences
1
Pros
4
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Highly Available
See More
Top
Con
•••
Sub-par support
It has been reported several times that Mailgun's support is not excellent. Most of the time, they require a lot of time to respond to questions or support queries.
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Imelda Garcia's Experience
Mailgun was the most available and performant API for emails that I found in testing. Everyone else would drop my outbound emails.
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Specs
Free tier:
10000/month
Event API:
Yes
WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor:
No
Incoming email support:
Yes
Top
Pro
•••
Developer-focused
Mailgun has a RESTful API with libraries and code examples in curl, Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, C#, Go.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Supports testing mode
Instead of sending real e-mails out, can set a flag on real API calls and Mailgun will accept the message but will not send it. This is useful for testing purposes.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Integrates by default with Meteor.js
Mailgun is included and configured by default in Meteor.js. So for projects which are built using Meteor, it's very easy to integrate Mailgun.
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Paid
Recommend
21
4
--
Postmark
My Rec
ommendation
for
Postmark
My Recommendation for
Postmark
All
7
Pros
5
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Messages are unlikely to be marked as spam
Postmark is designed to send transactional messages. It specifically warns users not to use it to send weekly newsletter -- this way the emails sent by Postmark are less likely to be marked as spam, increasing the likelihood of your messages reaching the users.
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Top
Con
•••
Expensive
Postmark are one of the most expensive (if not the most expensive) services in the market, at $1.5 per 1000 emails.
See More
Specs
Free tier:
First 25000 emails free
Event API:
Yes
WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor:
No
Incoming email support:
Yes
Top
Pro
•••
DMARC
Supports domain-based message authentication which helps to prevent spammers from using your domain to send email without your permission.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Detailed analytics
Postmark offers very detailed analytics for your emails. For starters, it stores 45 days worth of email logs where you can search to find out which emails were sent, received, who received them, who read them and who marked them as spam. There are also recipient profiles which keep track of everyone who gets your emails, complete with a list of messages that they have opened, deleted or marked as spam.
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Top
Pro
•••
Messages are Saved for 45 Days
All outgoing messages are saved for 45 days so you can see what you're sending to who. This is important if you are sending any dynamic content in your emails.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Multiple server locations
Postmark has 5 server locations around the world (3 in the US, 1 in Amsterdam and 1 in SIngapore). This way emails will be sent fast regardless of where your users are.
See More
Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
8
21
Mandrill
My Rec
ommendation
for
Mandrill
My Recommendation for
Mandrill
All
17
Pros
11
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Has a bad history
When they decided not to support a free tier anymore they've set up a withdrawal period of only 2 months for existing customer before it stopped working (even for people who bought credits to send more than that free tier). Meaning people using it had a month to switch to another solution or start paying $20/month or more.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Both SMTP and HTTP APIs are easy to setup
Simply set your SMTP server to smtp://user:API_KEY@smtp.mandrillapp.com:465 and you're good to go. There are libraries for using the API in a variety of languages, including Node.js.
See More
Specs
Free tier:
No
Event API:
Yes
WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor:
Yes
Incoming email support:
Yes
Top
Con
•••
No free plan
There used to be a free plan which offered 12,000 free emails per month. Unfortunately it has now been discounted and there's no other free plan anymore. If you want to use Mandrill, you have to pay $20/month or more.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Clean UI
The UI is very clean and good-looking overall. While the Analytics may seem basic and not very detailed, the dashboard interface is very clean which also helps with the set up. The left side of the page has the navigation to different parts of the dashboard. The main view displays all the most important data and analytics that you may need (emails sent, deliverability, reputation etc...). While the navigation itself is pretty straightforward and self-explanatory.
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Top
Con
•••
The documentation is split between two sites
The API is documented at https://mandrillapp.com/docs/, while howtos are in the Knowledge Base. Searching on the former for "Handlebars" doesn't find anything useful about using Handlebars.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Mandrill has a pay-as-you-go pricing model
Mandrill has the following pricing tiers: $20/block 1-500k emails 1-20 blocks $18/block 500k-1m emails 21-40 blocks $16/block 1m-2m emails 41-80 blocks $14/block 2m-3m emails 81-120 blocks $12/block 3m-4m emails 121-160 blocks $10/block 4m+ emails 161+ blocks There is also an option of a dedicated IP to improve deliverability for $29.95 a month.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Template rendering doesn't support Handlebars
The templates.render call doesn't support Handlebars. This makes complex integrations more difficult. You can, however, use handlebars with messages.send and messages.sendTemplate.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has sandbox mode for testing
Instead of sending real e-mails out, can use test keys which allows to test without actually sending out real e-mails. These test keys can also safely be shared inside the team since they cannot be used to send real e-mails on your behalf.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Lacking selection of integrations
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Clear API documentation
The API documentation is very clear and makes it pretty easy to set up you application with Mandrill's API quickly and painlessly.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great mobile apps
Mandrill has companion apps for iOS and Android that allow monitoring the service using a smartphone.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Highly customizable templates
Mandrill has made templates a core part of the product as they simplify the payload when compared to sending the full HTML each time and allow non-developers to design the template. Mandrill uses the flexible content formatting of MailChimp templates. This paired with the API access to template management, gives the user a great deal of flexibility.
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Top
Pro
•••
Webhook Reporting
Mandrill provides and Event API also or "webhooks" through which it registers events when they occur. So when an activity occurs, the application server is called along with the activity that occurred. Events include opens, clicks, bounces, deliveries and spam complaints.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
User friendly rules engine
Mandrill allows setting up rules in a non-technical way.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great MailChimp integration
Mandrill is made by the same company that made MailChimp. As such, both products work very well with each other.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Outgoing messages log
You can see the contents of all messages that Mandrill has sent out, for free for the last 24 hours, or for some cents per thousand messages if you need a longer retention period.
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Get it
here
Recommend
17
12
--
Mailjet
My Rec
ommendation
for
Mailjet
My Recommendation for
Mailjet
All
4
Pros
2
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Powerful template design capabilities
Mailjet has a template designer included, along with the option to upload your own custom templates. This gives you a lot of flexibility in personalizing emails.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Customer service is not the greatest
Mailjet uses a ticket system to solve customer problems and answer questions related to the product. But usually they take a little bit of time to answer tickets and solve them.
See More
Specs
Free tier:
6000/month
Event API:
Yes
WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor:
Yes
Incoming email support:
Yes
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Good interface
The interface is very nice. Clean and easy to understand, especially when it comes to analytics. The graphs are clear and well-organized and you can choose what kind of data to display through checkboxes on the top of the graphs.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
4
--
SendGrid
My Rec
ommendation
for
SendGrid
My Recommendation for
SendGrid
All
11
Pros
5
Cons
5
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Port 2525 is not encrypted
Most cloud providers block ports 25, 465, and 587. Port 2525 is commonly open but SendGrid only allows unencrypted messages via that port. Note: There are also so some certificate issues (see https://support.sendgrid.com/hc/en-us/articles/200182008-Certificate-verification-failed-for-smtp-sendgrid-net)
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Excellent analytics
SendGrid offers amazing analytics and reports. You can check which messages are delivered, which are marked as spam and much more. SendGrid also lets you download the data in order to look through it locally.
See More
Specs
Free tier:
100/day
Event API:
Yes
WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor:
Yes
Incoming email support:
Yes
Top
Con
•••
Poor deliverability of emails
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Great support for beginners and experienced users
If you are just getting started with email marketing and transactional emails or if you get stuck somewhere, SendGrid includes amazing videos and guides to help you work out any problem you may have. What's more, it also has phone, chat and email support available 24/7.
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Top
Con
•••
Not suitable for people without a technical background
There are some features which are missing by default from SendGrid (sign-up forms or follow-up messages just to name a few). In order to implement those in your emails, you need to know how to program because you have to code them yourself through SendGrid's API.
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Top
Pro
•••
Both newsletter and transactional emails
Usually when choosing a service to send your application's emails you need two. One to send the newsletter or news and promotions from the marketing team and the other to send you application's automatic emails and messages. With SendGrid you don't have to choose two because it doubles both as a transactional and marketing platform at once.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No sandbox/test mode
Does not support test keys that can be used to check integration with SendGrid and that cannot be used to send real e-mail out. It means that either you don't cannot verify that your integration with SendGrid works during development, or you have to use real credentials which should not be shared widely across your team.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Has a free tier
12,000 free e-mails per month.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Can't view contents of sent emails
They do not capture the sent emails. This means you cannot check that the email was sent correctly, and it makes it harder to debug issues that arise.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Easy to use API
The API is very easy to use and very intuitive. On top of that, the documentation for the API is complete and very useful, covering everything you need to know.
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Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
7
8
--
Amazon SES
My Rec
ommendation
for
Amazon SES
My Recommendation for
Amazon SES
All
7
Experiences
1
Pros
3
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Highly cost effective
Amazon SES has one of the most competitive pricings on the market with just $0.10 per 1000 emails.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Poor error handling
When email could not be received by the recipient due to some failure on their side, SES just drops it. No error recovery, reporting is not that great either.
See More
Ray's Experience
It's ridiculously cheap: $1 for 10k emails, and the first 62k emails for the month is free when sending from an EC2 instance. Lots of libraries available for interacting with the SES API, and there's also an SMTP interface. Getting out of sandbox mode (where you can only send 200 emails in a 24 hour window to verified email addresses that you own) can be quite annoying though — I had to wait nearly two weeks for Amazon to process my request.
See More
Specs
Free tier:
62000/month for EC2 users
Event API:
No
WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor:
No
Incoming email support:
No
Top
Pro
•••
Barebones service
Amazon SES is created to be a simple service for just sending emails through the API. If you need only to send emails and only that, then Amazon SES should at least be a good contender for your service of choice.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Too lightweight
Since SES has been stripped down to do only one thing and do it well (send emails), there will be a lot of things missing which you will have to add on your own if you wish to have them. Things like analytics, template hosting, design tools etc... are missing from SES. Although there are third-party tools that allow you to use Amazon SES's API to send emails with all the above features added.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Free tier if using EC2
If you are hosting your web application on Amazon EC2, then the first 62,000 emails each month are free.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
9
6
--
zeptomail
My Rec
ommendation
for
zeptomail
My Recommendation for
zeptomail
All
4
Experiences
1
Pros
3
Top
Pro
•••
Good log access and stats
See More
CharmingNinhursag's Experience
I use for my ecommerce site and its easy to install and use
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Top
Pro
•••
Deliverability
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Pay as you go model
With zeptomail you are able to pay only for what you use.
See More
Hide
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Get it
here
Recommend
2
--
Sparkpost
My Rec
ommendation
for
Sparkpost
My Recommendation for
Sparkpost
All
4
Experiences
1
Pros
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Responsive and helpful support
The support team at SparkPost is extremely responsive to questions and goes above and beyond to solve any challenges and help customers get the most out of their messaging.
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EarnestInara's Experience
Good modern API, strong analytics
See More
Specs
Free tier:
5000/month
Top
Pro
•••
Built for developers
SparkPost supports both SMTP and REST APIs and has client libraries supportings many languages including nodejs, python, php, ruby, go, elixir, and java.
See More
Hide
See All
Get it
here
Recommend
3
2
--
Pepipost
My Rec
ommendation
for
Pepipost
My Recommendation for
Pepipost
All
9
Experiences
1
Pros
4
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Pay only for emails that are not opened
While other services make you pay for each email sent, Pepipost's philosophy is that email conversations should be free regardless, this way the pricing model is built around paying for emails that are not open. So it's up to you to make quality emails and make as much users as possible to open them in order to pay less.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Bad support
They don't give attention to small businesses.
See More
FearlessHecaterus's Experience
Bad support. They don't give attention to small business like me.
See More
Specs
Free tier:
30000/month
Event API:
Yes
Real time reports:
Yes
Sub-accounts:
Yes
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Simple APIs to send emails
Simple HTTP APIs, which are easy to understand and integrate. Complete documentation with sample code snippets for different programming languages. Refer the documentation for more details.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Slow to approve an account
It seems an option for Mandrill, but "Pepipost" is slow with support as you may have to wait a while for an account to be approved.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Deliverability and strategic consulting
Inline with the philosophy, Pepipost offers deliverability and strategic consulting to clients to help them make most of their marketing investment.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Unpredictable price
Because of Pepipost's billing plans, it's very hard to predict costs. You never know how many users will open your emails any given time and if a lot of them end up not opening them (which most of the time is true) the price can get really high.
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Top
Pro
•••
Awesome support
They are available 24x7, and are very happy to help you.
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here
Recommend
4
2
--
Sarv Transactional Email Service (Sarv TES )
My Rec
ommendation
for
Sarv Transactional Email Service (Sarv TES )
My Recommendation for
Sarv Transactional Email Service (Sarv TES )
All
7
Pros
5
Cons
2
Top
Pro
•••
Pay as you go service
Sarv offers two plans; cost per subscribers, and cost per email. The cost per subscriber plan is 25,000 subscribers for INR 6,050 monthly. The next plan, cost per email, gives a user 25,000 emails for INR 1,000 monthly.
See More
Top
Con
•••
Not support adult and dating emails
See More
Top
Pro
•••
24/7 friendly customer support
24/7 support via a support ticket system, a toll-free number, e-mail, and live-chat.
See More
Top
Con
•••
No web forms
See More
Top
Pro
•••
High and instant email delivery
Sarv allows you to analyze your open and click reports according to the geolocation of the subscriber and target your customers directly based on their whereabouts.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Free trial offered, with no credit card needed
Sarv offers a 30 day free trial, and doesn’t require a credit card. The free plan includes 1000 emails. You just need to enter your email id and must verify your account. You’ll get a user id and password.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
A user-friendly interface
Drag and drop editor that makes it easier to design creative mailers. No need to have skillful hands in HTML and other heavy software, just to design a template.
See More
Hide
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$6.79
Recommend
2
--
SendPulse
My Rec
ommendation
for
SendPulse
My Recommendation for
SendPulse
All
2
Pros
2
Top
Pro
•••
Reporting
Detailed reporting on all opens and clicks
See More
Top
Pro
•••
A large free plan for startups
Sendpulse offers a free plan of up to 25000 subscribers and unlimited emails or a dedicated IP address which sends up to 100000 emails a month for startups as long as they accept to insert the SendPulse logo in each of their emails.
See More
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
1
--
Kingmailer
My Rec
ommendation
for
Kingmailer
My Recommendation for
Kingmailer
All
1
Specs
Specs
Free tier:
Yes
Event API:
Yes
WYSIWYG Newsletter Editor:
No
Incoming email support:
Yes
Hide
5
Recommend
1
--
EmailSuccess
My Rec
ommendation
for
EmailSuccess
My Recommendation for
EmailSuccess
All
6
Experiences
1
Pros
4
Cons
1
Top
Con
•••
Bad support
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Management
See More
FearlessHecaterus's Experience
They not even reply to my question. Had very bad experience with Pepipost.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Authentication
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Bounce processing
See More
Top
Pro
•••
High performance
See More
Hide
See All
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here
Recommend
1
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Checker Plus for Gmail
My Rec
ommendation
for
Checker Plus for Gmail
My Recommendation for
Checker Plus for Gmail
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Recommend
1
--
Gmail
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ommendation
for
Gmail
My Recommendation for
Gmail
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Recommend
1
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Kiwi for Gmail
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ommendation
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Kiwi for Gmail
My Recommendation for
Kiwi for Gmail
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2
--
swipepost
My Rec
ommendation
for
swipepost
My Recommendation for
swipepost
$20
Recommend
1
--
Poshmark
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ommendation
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Poshmark
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Poshmark
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