13 Best SMTP Servers (99% Inbox Deliverability) | Free & Paid

Are you looking forward to running a successful email marketing campaign for your business? Well, cutting down to the chase, to accomplish the task, you will first need an SMTP service that ensures high deliverability.

When you shoot an email, there is a high probability that the email will land in the recipient’s spam folder. Like you, several other bloggers, agencies, etc., are trying hard to avoid this and make their emails land in the inbox of the target recipient.

The limitation here is that even after several trials, they fail constantly. The pain of such a limitation has led me to search for an SMTP service provider so that emails end up in the recipient’s inbox and no other folder.

I have rigorously tested numerous SMTP services for a few weeks to find an ideal fit. In this blog, I am discussing some of the best relay service providers to fit the different needs of businesses.

Hold on, let us first have clarity on what an SMTP server is.

What Is An SMTP Server?

Well, SMTP is an acronym for ‘Simple Mail Transfer Protocol.’ It refers to an application that focuses on sending, receiving, and relaying emails between email senders and receivers. Here’s a simplified overview of how SMTP works:

Client-Side: When you compose an email in your email client, the client communicates with the outgoing mail server (SMTP server) using SMTP.

• Handshake: The client establishes a connection with the SMTP server by initiating a handshake. This involves identifying the sender and recipient, as well as confirming the availability of the SMTP server.
• Sending Email: The client sends the email message to the SMTP server. The message typically includes the sender’s address, the recipient’s address, the subject, and the body of the email.
• Routing: The SMTP server checks the recipient’s domain to determine where to deliver the email. It queries the Domain Name System to find the recipient’s email server.
• Delivery: The SMTP server connects to the recipient’s email server and delivers the email message to the recipient’s inbox.

People generally use these servers to achieve the highest delivery of emails. However, that’s not all. SMTP servers provide numerous other benefits, some of which are listed below:

• SMTPs leverage business emails to send emails that help enhance brand reputation.
• You can send numerous emails in a few minutes.
• Sending bulk emails is possible with just a push of a button.
• No restrictions on the limits of sending emails through SMTP.

It is now time to uncover some of the best SMTP service providers (both free and paid) to help you make the most of your email marketing campaigns.

Best SMTP Servers To Ensure Brand Deliverability

Below are some of the best SMTP servers to ensure brand deliverability

1. MailerSend

MailerSend is one of the best SMTP service providers out there in the market.
MailerLite is one of the leading email marketing service providers, and the same team has developed MailerSend. One of the notable advantages of using MailerSend is that it provides real-time deliverability statistics and this way, you will know for sure that your email has been delivered to your recipient’s inbox.

Whether you are a marketing professional, a business owner, or a developer, you can sign up with this service provider and enjoy its services. The service provider offers robust services and is the best choice to send emails to thousands of recipients in only a few clicks. If you are confused between free and paid email service providers, check out the distinction between the two.

Highlights: Features

• For the ease of beginners, MailerSend enables users to either use its SMTP relay or RESTful API to send transactional emails.
• MailerSend offers an amazing drag-and-drop email builder. In addition, you can also use the readymade templates offered and add dynamic tags to customize it.
• MailerSend also offers integrations with Integromat and Zapier to amplify its use cases. Furthermore, the services are backed with continued and robust customer support.

Plans

MailerSend offers a lifetime free service and paid plans for users to enjoy other benefits. With the free plan, you can send twelve thousand emails in a month, and it offers all essential features.

2. SMTP2GO

SMTP2GO is a cloud-based SMTP service that provides reliable and secure email delivery for businesses and individuals. It is designed to ensure that your emails reach their intended recipients without being flagged as spam or encountering other delivery issues.

It has an amazing customer service team that ensures that all your problems are solved at the earliest. No matter whether you are dealing with hundreds of customers or millions of them, with this service provider, you can rest assured that you will see great results and higher customer retention.

Highlights: Features

• The service provider offers an impactful dashboard that displays real-time activities of the mail and all major activities.
• The SMTP servers of this service provider are located across the globe. It means that your emails will be sent at lightning-fast speed.
• The SMTP2GO service provider has been marked as one of the best SMTP mail services ideal for marketing and transactional emails.

Plans

SMTP2GO offers a lifelong free plan along with four different pricing plans. You get two months of service usage free when you pay for the plans annually.

3. TurboSMTP

TurboSMTP provides dedicated SMTP server solutions that allow users to have more control over their email delivery process. By using a dedicated server, you can optimize email deliverability, customize server settings, and manage your email campaigns effectively.

The service focuses on maximizing email deliverability rates by employing various techniques to avoid spam filters and blacklists. It ensures that your emails are delivered to the recipient’s inbox instead of getting marked as spam or bouncing back.

Highlights: Features

• Its SMTP servers are compatible with all major email clients like Windows Mail, Mozilla, Thunderbird, etc.
• You will get features to manage emails that bounce, are spam, or unsubscribed email addresses. Additionally, you can monitor all metrics in real time.
• The reputation of its servers is maintained, and therefore, they are all white-listed. This helps ensure the filtering is quite low and email deliverability is the highest.

Plans

The SMTP service providers offer flexible pricing plans to suit different business needs. Their plans are charged on a monthly and yearly basis.

Additionally, when you pay for the annual charges of a plan, you get to enjoy the benefits for two more months, free of cost. They also offer a “Pay As You Go” pricing structure for someone not looking to buy a plan.

4. Brevo

It is indeed one of the best SMTP service providers in the business industry. Brevo is used by several businesses out there, and they are all enjoying the benefits this service provider offers at affordable rates. Its SMTP server is quite efficient and easily handles bulk transactional emails.

It was initially developed as a simple email marketing service, but now it is a full-fledged marketing software. Also, it offers reporting and monitoring features that allow you to track the performance of your email campaigns. You can access data on email delivery rates, open rates, click-through rates, and other relevant metrics to assess the success of your email marketing efforts.

Highlights: Features

• The service has an intuitive dashboard that offers detailed analytics and reports. It helps users to properly monitor the performance of their email campaigns effectively.
• SendinBlue is a renowned name for offering transactional SMTP services. In addition, it offers segments for live chat and SMS marketing for greater ease.
• Besides the SMTP services, SendinBlue offers a fluid and attractive email template builder tool. This feature makes the service widely accepted, pushing its rank to the top.

Plans

The service provider offers several pricing plans for businesses to choose one according to their needs. The free plan allows you to send three hundred emails daily, and there are paid plans for you to benefit from additional features.

5. SMTP.com

SMTP.com is another popular service provider offering quality SMTP services. It has an industry experience of more than two decades, and this gives them immense knowledge in the email marketing field. They skillfully manage email deliverability and ensure the emails land in the inbox.

SMTP is an ideal choice, irrespective of whether you want to send a few hundred emails or want to manage a high volume. They have come a long way with a strong customer base of over 100,000 businesses, and thus, you can easily rely on them. In addition, they have also developed other SaaS applications, like iContact, Campaigner, and Kickbox, that speak volumes about their popularity and credibility.

Highlights: Features

• With SMTP, you can connect the services to your application, third-party software, or email marketing software through its API.
• Unlike other similar services, SMTP offers numerous solutions. Besides sending transactional emails, the services provide solutions to students, developers, startups, marketers, etc.
• SMTP offers a proprietary technology which is named Reputation Defender. The service helps safeguard your domain and the sender’s reputation by avoiding email bounces from the emailing list.

Plans

SMTP.com offers premium services. Put simply, to get started with sending emails through this service provider, you will first have to buy email-sending credits. It offers four different plans, all curated to satisfy different email marketing needs. Keep in mind that SMTP.com offers 99% uptime and unmatched email deliverability.

6. Moosend

Moosend is an email marketing suite service provider and offers SMTP services separately. This has helped them attract many users from across the globe.

Initially, when the company started offering SMTP services, it lacked several features, so businesses were not interested. Fast forward a few years, they have come a long way and made several improvements to the services that have helped them earn their place in a competitive market.

Moosend caters to businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a small business or an enterprise, you can choose a plan that suits your needs and easily scale resources as your email volume grows. This flexibility ensures that you have the necessary infrastructure to support your email communication requirements.

Highlights: Features

• Moosend takes pride in its offering as its services can easily be integrated with any bulk email marketing platform.
• It ensures that the emails sent are authenticated and do not land in the spam folder..
• Moosend was initially known for providing SMTP relay services, but now it is also relied upon for email marketing as well.

Plans

The free plan allows sending unlimited emails to 1,000 subscribers forever. For more subscribers, you will have to opt for their paid plans. It offers four different paid plans to suit the varied needs of the customers.

7. Elastic Email

Like the other service providers on our list, Elastic Email offers email marketing solutions at a very reasonable rate. It is the go-to SMTP for the majority of developers and marketers.

Elastic Email has a huge customer base, and that stands as proof of the quality of the services it provides. No matter whether you are just starting out or have an established market to cater to, you can rely on this service provider for the best quality services. Also, the platform is quite user-friendly, and you can easily integrate it with any software.

Highlights: Features

• Elastic Email makes use of SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to maximize its deliverability.
• The Elastic Email API is the solution to every need. It can combine Elastic Email with any app or website by using its API.
• Elastic Email provides real-time reporting that helps you track the performance of your email campaigns.

Plans

The pricing structure of Elastic Email is simple and reasonable. The best part about it is it’s a forever-free plan.

• The free plan provides 100 emails/per day.
• The Email API begins at a rate of $0.10/1000 emails and $0.40/day.
• The Email Pro begins at a rate of $0.12/1000 emails, along with $1/day.

8. Mailify

With Mailify, you can manage your subscriber lists and segment your contacts based on various criteria such as demographics, purchase history, or engagement levels. This segmentation enables the creation of targeted and personalized email campaigns, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

The best part about this tool is that it offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop editor that allows users to create visually appealing and responsive email campaigns without requiring coding skills. It provides customizable templates, image libraries, and content blocks to streamline the email creation process.

Highlights: Features

• With the help of its drag-and-drop email builder tool, you can easily create your email campaigns.
• The software includes an automation feature that allows you to set up workflows based on triggers, actions, and conditions. You can automate welcome emails, follow-ups, abandoned cart reminders, and other sequences to nurture leads and build stronger customer relationships.
• Mailify helps you personalize your email campaigns by using various merge tags. The tags add your subscribers’ names to your emails automatically.

Plans

It offers a 30-day free trial to use the services before you pay for them. The free trial enables you to send 500 monthly emails and ten complimentary SMSs.

• The essential plan provides 5000 monthly emails for $69/month and only one user access.
• The Premium plan provides 5000 monthly emails for $159/month, along with many advanced features and three users’ access.
• The Exclusive plan offers 5,000 monthly emails for $289/month with all the features and ten-user access.

9. Pepipost (now Netcore)

Pepipost is a popular SMTP service provider known for its lightning-fast email delivery. It offers comprehensive analytics and reporting features to track the performance of your email campaigns.

Pepipost integrates with popular CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, and other tools to streamline your email marketing efforts. It provides plugins, APIs, and native integrations with platforms such as IceDrive, WordPress, and more.

Highlights: Features

• Compared to other SMTP service providers, Pepipost is regarded as the best transactional SMTP service. All your emails, including signup confirmation and order receipts, are transferred directly to your inbox.
• To minimize the server’s latency, Pepipost has six running servers in 6 different locations. These include New York, Delaware, Mumbai, Frankfurt, Bangalore, and Singapore.
• Pepipost even uses AI, thus improving email delivery speed for email campaigns. It does so by automatically adjusting the email sending speed.
• Pepipost’s API helps you integrate Pepipost with any system of your preference.

Plans

It has a volume-based pricing system; you pay for the number of emails you require. There are different price slabs for a particular amount of emails.
It offers 30,000 emails for your first 30 days in its free plan and then 100 daily emails in its free plan.

10. Mailjet

Mailjet is an email marketing software and automation tool designed to help businesses create, send, and track effective email campaigns. It provides a range of features and functionalities to optimize email marketing efforts and engage with subscribers more efficiently. Mailjet has provided SMTP, marketing, and other services to 1,30,000 companies since 2010.

You can access data on open rates, click-through rates, conversions, and other key metrics to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns and make data-driven decisions for future improvements.

Highlights: Features

• Mailjet can be integrated with other systems easily. After a bit of configuration, you can send emails easily through these systems.
• Privacy and security are its top priority. Thus, it has provisions for TLS and SSL encryption.
• Mailjet guarantees inboxing since it uses SPF, DMARC, and DKIM records to authenticate the domain.
• It helps you create eminent emails with the help of an email builder, track your campaigns, and even notify you of issues that may occur during email delivery.

Plan

Mailjet offers services at reasonable prices. You can even avail yourself of a ten percent discount on its annual plans.

• It has a free plan which provides 6000 free emails monthly.
• The basic plan begins at $9.65/month and provides 30,000 monthly emails.
• The premium plan begins from $20.95/month and offers 30,000 monthly emails along with additional services.
• The Enterprise plan is a custom plan in which the sales team decides your plan according to your needs. The Enterprise plan is for users who need more than 900,000 monthly emails.

11. SendLayer

SendLayer is one of the best SMTP server providers. It has customers in over 150+ countries and owing to its reasonable price, robust set of capabilities, and intuitive UI, it is often considered the best SMTP mailer service.

The best part about using this tool is that it Integrates easily with several other systems, including WordPress, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Drupal, HelpScout, and many more.

Highlights: Features

• You can view comprehensive email logs to monitor outgoing messages and their statuses, such as delivery, open, clickthrough, and unsubscribe rates.
• Provides defense against spam filters, increasing the likelihood that your messages will be delivered to their targeted inboxes.
• SendLayer has capabilities built specifically for managing email lists, so you can easily sort and categorize your contacts.

Plans:

You can start up risk-free with a 14-day trial that allows 200 free outgoing emails. It offers plans with additional capabilities, like suppression management, event-based webhooks, and limitless mailing lists, starting from just $5 per month.

12. Inboxroad

If you want to level up your email marketing efforts, then Inboxroad is the right choice. It has gained popularity in recent times, and it is known as one of the best SMTP service providers.

This Dutch service provider has been providing top-notch email marketing services for the last seven years and thus is a favorite among many customers. They make sure that no emails are missed or delayed by your recipients. Also, they have an excellent support team that you can reach out to 24/7.

Highlights: Features

• Inboxroad’s SMTP Relays & APIs make integration with other systems seamless. It easily integrates with other services like Ongage, Mailwizz, etc.
• Inboxroad even provides a delivery expert who will advise you on enhancing your email campaigns.
• If you encounter a problem, you can always refer to the guides on overcoming some common problems. You can even contact customer support for the same.

Plans

Inboxroad fulfills the bulk email-sending requirements at reasonable and affordable rates. However, it does not offer any free plans.

You can choose plans based on the number of monthly emails you send.

• The basic plan offers 100,000 monthly emails for $59/month.
• The Pro plan begins at $139/month for 250,000 monthly emails.
• The premium plan offers a million monthly emails for $299/month.

13. Amazon SES

There is no list on the internet about the best SMTP services that do not entail Amazon SES. Amazon SES stands for Amazon Simple Email Services, and the services they provide are indeed simple, efficient, and eminent.

Amazon SES is considered the oldest and most reasonable SMTP service provider in the email marketing sector. It has many reputed companies like Siemens, HBO, and Vodafone on its clients list.

Highlights: Features

• It is regarded as one of the best SMTP service providers for sending bulk emails. It is very flexible in terms of sending promotional and transactional emails.
• It has a pretty solid email delivery record as it has email authentication policies. It includes some reputed records like DKIM, DMARC, and SPF.
• The inexpensive dedicated IP helps you maintain your sending reputation.
• As Amazon SES is a service offered by the Amazon MNC, it enables easy integration with other Amazon services like Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon S3, among many others.

Plans

The feature that helps Amazon SES is its pricing, and it does not charge you monthly or yearly. It charges you only for the services you use, and it offers some amazing offers, such as the first 62,000 emails you send every month being free.

The only requirement is that you have to send it on an Amazon EC2-hosted application. Even if you use a different platform, you will be charged only a dollar for 10,000 emails a month.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below mentioned are some commonly asked questions:

Q. What services does SMTP provide?

SMTP is a communication protocol that enables the sending and receiving of emails. Without an SMTP server, no one can send emails. The server examines the sender account, and the emails are transmitted to the respective mailboxes.

Q. What is an SMTP server?

Like other servers, an SMTP server refers to an application that offers services to other clients within a network known as clients. That said, an SMTP server is responsible for sending, receiving, and relaying emails. The process takes a few minutes, and the sent email lands in the recipient’s mailbox.

Q. Are an SMTP server and an SMTP relay the same?

SMTP relay is the process of transferring the emails between different SMTP servers. Relay takes place when the domains of the sender and the recipient are other. However, in day-to-day life, SMTP relay refers to the SMTP servers that allow relaying.

Q. Can I use free SMTP services for a lifetime?

Yes, if you want to send limited emails to only a few subscribers for your business, you can choose any service provider that offers free and powerful services. Some of the best SMTP service providers that provide forever free services are Moosend, Google, SMTP2GO, and others.

Summary

There are numerous SMTP service providers out there in the market. However, the choice boils down to your needs and requirements. Besides using SMTP services, you must focus on collecting genuine emails, registrations, and signups. You should be aware that no matter how powerful the SMTP server you are using, if your contact list has a lot of fake and spam email addresses, you can get blacklisted.

Besides the best ones I have listed in my article, dozens of other options exist. However, the above-mentioned ones ensure high deliverability and provide great features and scalability.

Depending on all your business needs, you can try out the free services of some of the providers and then choose their paid options. Push your email marketing game to the next level with the help of some robust solutions.