Sending email is vital for any business looking to grow their customer base. But what services should you be using? We’ve compiled a list of the best SMTP services to use on your WordPress site to send email.
The best part? All of these services integrate with Groundhogg, making it easy to deliver email to the inbox and monitor bounces, complaints, and other email performance metrics.
What is SMTP?
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is a protocol that used to be the standard way of sending emails through SMTP services.
However, as technology continues to improve, it has now become more of a marketing term. This is because email-sending providers now offer faster API-based alternatives.
So keep that in mind while browsing through this list.
Why do you need a good email-sending service?
Having an SMTP/ email-sending service is a vital part of ensuring your messages end up in the inbox. Here are some benefits you’ll want to consider:
Improved deliverability & managed reputation
Bulk sending services manage their IPs carefully and closely, making sure that customers are sending reputable emails. By sharing IP address among thousands of businesses, these bulk email companies can provide a better baseline email reputation than the one that comes with your own website hosting.
Reliability
Email sending services manage their uptime carefully and have invested significantly in providing super fast email delivery, so that when you have a spike in outgoing email they are ready to handle it.
Many hosting companies will actually throttle or outright block your server’s SMTP port for sending too much email, which can be damning if you’re in the middle of a sale or promotion.
Email Feedback
Email services will typically send feedback about an email you sent if it fails to reach the inbox (bounced) or if it was marked as spam. Your server’s MTA doesn’t do that!
Cost-effective
Email sending is a bit of a commodity now, so there are no shortage of good deals. There are many levels of pricing available to help you start sending emails to your subscribers.
Here are out top choices for outgoing bulk email services.
1. MailHawk
Starting Price: $1 a month for 1,000 emails
Main Features: Analytics, Domain Authentication, Email Log, Blacklist Management, Bounce Management, Ticket & Chat Support
MailHawk prides itself on being an easier way to get your critical email into the inbox. With four different plans to choose from, the SMTP for WordPress can serve a whole range of businesses. Whether you’re looking to send 1,000 emails a month to over 350,000, they have you covered.
Besides fast delivery, MailHawk also comes with insightful analytics where you can see your deliverability rates right within the dashboard on your WordPress site. With an email log, you can track what you’re sending and even resend emails, retry failed emails and see which emails have bounced.
It also comes with a bunch of other nifty features that help make sending those daunting emails 10x easier, including blacklist management, domain authentication and more.
2. SendGrid
Starting Price: Free for 100 emails a day for developers
Main Features: Ticket Support, Deliverability Insights, Delivery Optimization Tools
SendGrid has a bunch of features that make it easy to track exactly what is going on with your email sending. With an Email Validation API, you can get results in real-time to catch address typos in forms, bounce fewer emails and help improve your sending reputation.
Deliverability insights are also available on a single dashboard, which will monitor delivered mail, failed deliveries, opened mail and more.
3. Postmark
Starting Price: Free for 100 emails a month
Main Features: Analytics API, Click Tracking, Live Chat Support, Open Rates, Spam Score Checking
With pricing plans as big as sending nearly 2 million emails a month, Postmark is great for big senders. However, no matter how many emails you’re sending you’ll get access to their other features.
This includes click tracking, analytics API and real-time notifications. On top of that, you’ll also be able to track all of your delivery, bounce, spam and open rates for all the campaigns you send.
4. Elastic Email
Starting Price: Free for 100 emails a day
Main Features: Customer Support, Tracking, Analytics, Single & Bulk Email Verification, Suppressions Management
With three different plans, Elastic Email pricing changes depending on how many emails you want to send per month. When it comes to analytics, there are a variety of features to look forward to.
You can track through email status filtering (sent, opened, clicked, bounced etc.), get real-time delivery monitoring, view your unsubscribe reason insights and export your data to CSV.
5. Amazon (SES & SNS)
Price: $0.10 per 1000 emails
Main Features: Reputation Dashboard, Sending Statistics, Flexible Deployment Options, Mailbox Simulator
Amazon Simple Email Service is a pay-as-you-go service that charges you based on the number of emails that are sent and received. With a reputation dashboard, you can track issues that could impact the delivery of your emails.
On top of that, The Amazon SES mailbox simulator allows you to test how your application handles certain scenarios, such as bounces and complaints, without impacting your sender reputation.
6. Mailgun
Starting Price: $35 a month for 50,000 emails
Main Features: Tracking, Analytics, Ticket Support, Log Retention
Mailgun offers powerful insights into your mailing list, including what is being delivered, opened and clicked. In fact, the service prides itself on being able to “segment data your way.” This includes log retention which helps you better understand what is impacting your email performance.
To integrate MailGun with Groundhogg, you’ll need to purchase an extension through WooNinja (which you can find here)
Integrating Groundhogg with SMTP services in WordPress to send email
No matter which email delivery service you choose from this list, Groundhogg can integrate with all of them. You can view our integration list here when deciding which SMTP service to use to send email with a WordPress site.
If you haven’t already, get started with Groundhogg.
- Start a 14-day demo.
- Purchase a plan.
- Take the free quickstart course.
- Keep reading!
Have questions? Don’t hesitate to shoot us a message!
