Unlike other types of digital marketing, email marketing can get quite technical, especially if you plan on sending transactional emails or thousands of emails per day. But unlike other digital marketing channels, email marketing has some of the highest ROI, as high as $44 for every $1 spent.
To reach these ROI rates, however, you need a reliable SMTP email relay service ready to meet your demands. The reason these services are becoming so popular comes down to one simple fact - deliverability.
High deliverability equals reliability in the email world. Having the ability for your mass email campaigns to reach their designated inboxes has its worth weight in gold. That’s because ISPs can flag your emails as spam and if that happens, you can kiss your campaign goodbye.
That’s why we’re here to tell you all about the 12 best SMTP email relay services. But before that, let’s learn a bit more about what these services are.
What Is an SMTP Email Relay Service?
SMTP is short for simple mail transport protocol. An SMTP email relay service is a specialized service that facilitates the sending of emails from one server to another, ensuring reliable delivery of messages. When you send an email, your message first goes to your SMTP server, which acts like a local post office. If the recipient's email server is different, the SMTP relay service takes over, routing your email to the correct destination.
This service is crucial for businesses that need to send a high volume of emails, such as newsletters or transactional messages. By using an SMTP relay, you can avoid issues like being flagged as spam, which often occurs when sending bulk emails directly from your own server. The relay service manages the technical aspects of email delivery, allowing you to focus on your core business activities.
Additionally, SMTP relay services often include features like email tracking, analytics, and improved deliverability rates. They help ensure that your emails reach their intended recipients efficiently and securely, leveraging a robust infrastructure that many organizations may not have in-house.
How Do SMTP Email Relay Server Work?
When you send an email, you expect it to reach the recipient's inbox quickly and reliably. This seamless process is made possible by SMTP email relay servers, which act as the backbone of email delivery. But how exactly do these servers work?
SMTP, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, is the standard technology used to transfer email messages from your email client to the recipient's server. When you hit "send," your email client communicates with an SMTP server, which then relays your message to the recipient's email server. The SMTP relay server takes care of the entire journey, ensuring your email is routed correctly, overcoming any obstacles like spam filters, and eventually landing in the recipient’s inbox.
In essence, SMTP email relay servers act as intermediaries that manage the flow of email traffic, making sure your messages are delivered efficiently and securely. This process not only enhances email deliverability but also helps you avoid the pitfalls of being flagged as spam, which is crucial for maintaining a good sender reputation.
Summary of the Top SMTP Email Relay Services
Top SMTP Email Relay Services
Omnisend stands as a dynamic platform at the forefront of SMTP Email Relay Services. It distinguishes itself through its mastery of email and SMS marketing, characterized by customizable templates, a user-friendly interface, and a rich array of innovative features. Omnisend empowers businesses not only to amass subscribers but also to engage customers through bespoke email and SMS campaigns, fostering lasting connections. Omnisend has been the driving force behind successful collaborations with notable brands like Amundsen Sports, Snatcher, Inglot, SM Global Shop, and many others. These collaborations have yielded remarkable results, showcasing the platform’s capabilities in enhancing marketing strategies. Delving into its standout offerings: Plans and pricing: Omnisend offers a variety of pricing plans to suit different needs, including the “EMAIL + SMS Pro” plan at $59 per month for high-volume senders, the “EMAIL Standard” plan at $16 per month for growing businesses, and a free plan for beginners. Campaigner emerges as a distinguished choice among SMTP email relay services, offering a robust solution designed for both marketing and transactional email dispatches. With a focus on delivering emails that reach the inbox and engage recipients, Campaigner stands out for its reliable and secure email delivery system. Key to Campaigner’s success is its dedication to seamless, hassle-free communication. Businesses can send important transactional and marketing emails without the burden of managing in-house mail servers. This service is built on a foundation of proven reliability, offering full visibility into every email sent. Customers gain insights into email deliverability and interaction, ensuring no message goes unnoticed. For those new to email marketing, Campaigner provides robust support, guiding users through initial setup processes and best practices. This ensures a strong sending reputation from the very beginning, supported by Campaigner’s comprehensive monitoring. Expanding its service, Campaigner’s API allows for direct integration with apps and web products, facilitating seamless management of contacts and campaign content. Plans and pricing: Campaigner comes with a 30-day free trial. Once the trial ends, paid plans begin with Starter at $59/month for up to 5,000 contacts, going up to eCommerce at $79.95/month for unlimited contacts. Brevo is one of the top email marketing software solutions and can also help with SMS marketing, WhatsApp campaigns, and live chat on top of email marketing. It guarantees a deliverability rate of 97% which is backed up by 10 years of deliverability expertise. Similarly to SendPulse, Brevo also lets you buy email credits. This makes it a great choice for growing brands looking to stretch their marketing budgets. In addition to SMTP relay, Brevo also offers various other setup options like email API, webhook, or plugin. Plus, it also integrates with all the main eCommerce platforms and CMS tools, making it even more versatile. Here’s what else you can expect: Plans and pricing: Brevo offers a free SMTP server for up to 300 emails per day. Pricing for transactional emails is based on monthly email volume and starts at $25 per month for up to 20,000 emails. SMTP is one of the best email relay and deliverability providers and can help you to send a volume of email without breaking the bank or your email rep. As they like to put it on their website — they’re “engineered for reliable delivery at scale”. To give you a better idea of just how powerful and popular this tool is, here are some key numbers: It achieves its stellar delivery rate by proactively screening for spam. Not only do they prioritize ISP relations, but they also ensure that their email relay infrastructure keeps up with ISP protocols and benchmarks. Plans and pricing: After a generous 30-day free trial, pricing starts at $25 per month for up to 50,000 monthly emails. With SendPulse’s SMTP service, you can send transactional emails from your website. Then, to stay up to speed with the performance of your email marketing campaigns, you can also check SMTP stats in the mailing history. Here, you’ll find info like the number of emails sent, opens, delivery rate, bounces, and unsubscribe rate presented in an easy-to-digest graph which can also be exported as a report in CSV format. While it’s a powerful email marketing tool (and the hundreds of online reviews SendPulse has received are evidence of that), it can do so much more. Included in its products are SMS campaigns, a chatbot builder, and landing pages. However, if you just want to stick to email marketing (for now, at least). Here are some of the other key features that you can put to good use: Plans and pricing: SendPulse offers a number of subscription plans as well as pay-as-you-go pricing. There’s also a free plan for users with up to 500 subscribers. Even if you don’t qualify for the free plan, pricing starts at only $5.20 per month which makes it one of the most affordable solutions. With the pay-as-you-go option, you’re looking at about $0.0032 per email. Trusted by a number of names in the sharing economy like Airbnb and Uber, SendGrid helps its users to send over 100 billion emails on a monthly basis. You can either plug into their SMTP relay for standardized sending or improve your SMTP relay sending with their SMTP API. As you would expect of one of the more established players in transactional email software, in addition to offering reliable email delivery, it also offers various other useful products to help you grow and improve your email marketing campaigns. These include: One of the features that make SendGrid such a popular option is its level of support. Not only does it equip your marketing team with the communication tools, but it can also complement your in-house team. They offer set-up assistance as well as ongoing consulting. Together their team boasts 130+ years in email, so you’ll be able to access a wealth of strategic advice and quick answers for any deliverability issues that might pop up. Plans and pricing: SendGrid offers a free plan, two subscription options, and custom pricing. Pricing starts at $20 per month. Amazon has become more than just an online marketplace. From affiliate programs to various solutions for advertising and marketing, it can help you to drive more revenue in more ways than one. For help specifically with email marketing, you can check out Amazon Simple Email Service (aka Amazon SES). You can use its SMTP interface or API to send emails. It offers various SMTP-enabled programming languages. Then, to help you keep track of your email campaigns’ performance, it includes features like: Whether you want to send bulk emails or timely shipping notifications to customers, it can be used for a number of use cases. Duolingo, one of the leading education apps in the world, has used Amazon SES to send daily exercises or newsletters for over a decade. In addition to its ability to send huge volumes of emails, what attracted Duolingo to Amazon SES is that it easily integrates with the other AWS solutions. It’s this level of flexibility that has also helped them to land clients like Netflix. Plans and pricing: Amazon SES offers a very flexible pricing structure and doesn’t charge a fixed monthly contract, Instead, you pay only for what you use. Pricing starts at $0.10 per 1,000 emails. There are also a number of paid add-ons that you can check out. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a bootstrapped startup or an agency with multiple clients, Postmark, created by ActiveCampaign, one of the best email marketing software platforms can come in handy. Included in its list of features is an SMTP service and supports TLS for data security. Not only is it secure, but also fast. As it’s a globally distributed SMTP service with endpoints in various regions, the latency is very low. A standout feature is that you don’t have to pay extra to ensure great deliverability. One way that it does that is to vet all new senders carefully to eliminate any potential spammers. This means that even without a dedicated IP address, you can still enjoy the same level of deliverability. Combine this with their effort to keep transactional and promotional messages separate with message streams and you can enjoy peace of mind knowing that your emails will reach the right destination. If you do get stuck though, it also includes: Plans and pricing: Postmark offers a free trial (no credit card required) that includes SMTP and REST API. Pricing starts at about $15 per month for up to 10,000 monthly emails. For DMARC monitoring and dedicated IPs, you’re looking at about $10 and $50 per month extra respectively. Thanks to its pricing and long free trial, Moosend is a great tool for small businesses. While its SMTP server isn’t included in the free trial, with pricing starting at less than $10 per month, it’s still one of the most affordable plans on the market. In addition to its cost-effectiveness, another standout feature is that it includes reporting and analytics that you can use to keep track of how your transactional campaigns sent by means of their SMTP service performs. In fact, according to G2, its reporting has been rated as well above average. Other features that Moosend users have praised are its: Plans and pricing: Moosend offers a free 30-day trial (no credit card required). Pricing starts at only $9 per month for up to 500 subscribers. An enterprise plan is also available. Used by more than 150,000 developers and companies that include leading names in email marketing like Omnisend, Mailgun has established itself as one of the biggest transactional email software solutions. Its industry-leading SMTP relay services means that businesses don’t have to manage their own mail servers to send transactional as well as promotional emails. Not only does this free up time, but also reduces costs. All you need to do is add and authenticate your domain name and Mailgun will share all the key details inside your account. If your email volume should increase, you can also switch over to their email API to speed up processes. In fact, their mail send API has been rated well above average. As for support, they can connect you with a Technical Account Manager who’ll be able to offer recommendations and offer a helping hand. Alternatively, you can also turn to their log retention and analytics allowing you to track every step of the email journey and measure engagement. Users have also praise Mailgun for its: Plans and pricing: Mailgun offers a free trial for one month during which you can send up to 5,000 emails. Pricing starts at $35 per month for up to 50,000 emails. Custom pricing for an enterprise-grade solution is also available upon request. Mailjet offers a free SMTP server that’s simple to set up and integrates with any system. Basically, the only action that you need to take is update your SMTP server setting with the credentials they provide so that their server is used as a “smarthost” or “relay”. However, if you should get stuck, rest assured that their multi-lingual support team of deliverability specialists is at hand to guide during all the different phases. Not only is it intuitive, but it also offers flexibility and supports a selection of ports. And, its versatility doesn’t stop there. Another advantage of using Mailjet’s SMTP servers is that link trackers get added automatically enabling you to monitor opens and clicks efficiently. In addition to its outstanding sender reputation and reliability, Mailjet users have also highlighted the following as some of its biggest features and perks: Plans and pricing: Mailjet offers a free forever plan that lets you send up to 6,000 monthly emails (capped at 200 per day). Pricing starts at $15 per month for up to 15,000 emails and has no daily sending limit. Custom pricing is also available. If you don’t want to expand your focus on email marketing and simply need a tool to help with email sending and testing, you can check out Mailtrap, one of the top email testing tools. Trusted by individual users as well as businesses that include names like PayPal, Calendly, and Adobe. Mailtrap offers a number of powerful features and tools that include: If you’re just interested in its SMTP service, you can look forward to high deliverability rates, in-depth analytics, and deliverability alerts. You can also inspect your configuration by sending a test email first. All in all, it’s very easy to use thanks to its intuitive interface. To set up your SMTP server, no prior experience is needed. All you basically do is copy and paste the credentials. Plans and pricing: Mailtrap offers a number of pricing plans for email testing and sending. Pricing starts at about $10 per month for up to 10,000 emails. It also includes a free plan that you use to send emails by means of SMTP or API.1. Omnisend
2. Campaigner
Notable key features:
3. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)
4. SMTP
5. SendPulse
6. SendGrid by Twilio
7. Amazon SES
8. Postmark
9. Moosend
10. Mailgun
11. Mailjet
12. Mailtrap
Benefits of Using SMTP Email Relay Services
Utilizing SMTP email relay services offers several advantages for businesses looking to enhance their email communication and marketing efforts:
Flexible Email Infrastructure
You can choose between internal servers or cloud-based options, allowing for seamless integration with existing systems without the need for extensive maintenance. For instance, Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) offers both SMTP relay and various setup options like email API and webhook, making it versatile for growing brands.
Enhanced Deliverability and Reputation Management
These services protect your primary domain from being blocklisted by using dedicated domains for bulk emails, ensuring that your marketing communications reach their intended recipients. Campaigner, for example, excels in ensuring emails reach the inbox through rigorous monitoring and maintaining a strong sender reputation.
Bulk Email Handling
SMTP relay services are designed to efficiently manage high volumes of emails, enabling businesses to scale their operations without infrastructure limitations. SMTP.com, known for sending billions of emails monthly, provides a reliable platform engineered for delivery at scale.
Compliance and User Management
They help ensure adherence to email marketing regulations by managing opt-out and unsubscribe features, which is crucial for maintaining compliance. SendPulse, for example, offers detailed stats and compliance features that help businesses stay within legal boundaries while managing high volumes of emails.
Advanced Tracking and Analytics
You gain access to detailed insights about email performance, including delivery rates and open rates, allowing for data-driven optimizations of your email campaigns. Omnisend, known for its data-driven insights, empowers businesses to optimize their email marketing strategies with precise tracking tools.
Improved Security and Reliability
These services provide secure transmission of messages and help reduce the load on internal servers, enhancing overall operational efficiency. Postmark, with its globally distributed SMTP service, ensures low latency and secure email delivery, making it a trusted option for businesses requiring high security and speed.
How to Pick the Right SMTP Email Relay Service
Choosing the right SMTP email relay service involves several key considerations:
1. Reputation and Reliability
Look for providers with a strong reputation and proven track record in email deliverability. A service like SMTP.com, known for its 98% delivery rate and over 20 years of experience, can significantly enhance your sender reputation and ensure your emails consistently reach their intended recipients.
2. Scalability
Ensure the service can handle your email volume as your business grows. For example, Amazon SES offers a highly scalable solution that adjusts to your needs, whether you’re sending a few thousand emails or millions, without hitting ISP-imposed sending limits.
3. User-Friendly Interface
Opt for a service that offers an intuitive interface for managing campaigns, which can save time and reduce complexity in your email marketing efforts. Campaigner, with its user-friendly drag-and-drop builder and easy-to-navigate platform, makes campaign management more straightforward, especially for small to medium-sized businesses.
4. Support and Documentation
Good customer support and comprehensive documentation are essential for troubleshooting and maximizing the use of the service. SendGrid by Twilio is renowned for its responsive customer support and extensive documentation, ensuring users have the resources they need to resolve issues quickly and effectively.
5. Advanced Features
Consider services that provide analytics, tracking, and compliance tools to help you manage your email campaigns effectively and ensure regulatory adherence. Omnisend, with its advanced analytics and segmentation capabilities, empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions while maintaining compliance with email marketing regulations.
Source: Omnisend
Wrapping Up
Selecting the right SMTP email relay service is crucial for maximizing the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts. With email marketing offering one of the highest ROIs among digital channels, the reliability and deliverability of your emails become paramount. A robust SMTP relay service ensures that your messages reach their intended recipients, protecting your sender reputation and avoiding spam filters.
As you consider options, prioritize services with proven reliability, scalability, and user-friendly features. By choosing the right service, you can effectively manage high volumes of emails, enhance your marketing strategies, and ultimately drive better business outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an SMTP email relay service?
An SMTP email relay service is a specialized platform that facilitates the transmission of emails from one server to another. It acts as an intermediary, ensuring reliable and efficient delivery of messages between different email providers.
Why should I use an SMTP email relay service?
Using an SMTP email relay service offers several benefits, including:
- Improved email deliverability and sender reputation
- Ability to handle large volumes of emails
- Expert technical support and guidance
- Detailed analytics and tracking capabilities
- User-friendly interfaces for managing email campaigns
How do I choose the best SMTP email relay service for my needs?
When selecting an SMTP email relay service, consider factors such as:
- Reputation and reliability of the provider
- Deliverability rates and sender reputation management
- Scalability to handle your email volume
- Advanced features like analytics, tracking, and compliance tools
- Ease of use and customer support availability
What are some of the top SMTP email relay service providers?
Some of the best SMTP email relay service providers include:
- Brevo
- Campaigner
- SMTP.com
- Omnisend
- SendPulse
- SendGrid by Twillo
- Amazon SES
- Postmark
- Moosend
- Mailgun
- Mailjet
- Mailtrap
How do SMTP email relay services work?
When you send an email using an SMTP relay service, the process typically involves:
- Your email client connects to the SMTP server
- The server determines the best route for your email
- The email is forwarded to the recipient's mail server
- The recipient's server delivers the message to their inbox
