Last Updated on July 30, 2024 by Ewen Finser
If you are looking into SMTP.com as a mass emailing solution for your organization, but aren’t sure if it’s right for you, this review is my hands-on take & personal opinion.
The good news (up front) is that SMTP.com is a really solid email platform. It’s less about “is it legit” and more about is it RIGHT for you.
I’ll go through some of the key features I tested, what I liked (and didn’t), BUT at the bottom of the article I’ll run through what types of organizations will get the most out of it.
But first, what’s SMTP.com and what’s the history behind it?
SMTP.com vs SMTP Protocol
I’ll admit that my first take of SMTP.com was some initial confusion. I’d definitely heard of SMTP as a concept, but how was that related to SMTP.com?
Were they related? Same entity? A Linux Foundation sort of thing?
Put simply, SMTP refers to a foundational protocol for sending bulk emails over a server: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. This is a technical definition.
SMTP.com is a cloud server company for email that SPECIALIZES in sending these types of SMTP packets… hence the name.
SMTP.com is not the “official” owner of SMTP, therefore. It’s just a brand that heavily uses the protocol and was able to register or acquire a pretty cool, rare 4 letter domain back in the day.
SMTP.com Background
SMTP.com was started under the brand name EMUmail Inc in 1998 as an early internet darling by Matt Mankins. Back then, SMTP.com was just one little asset within the overall company and was only separated out when the rest of the company was sold, with SMTP.com remaining as the sole product offering.
Today, they focus on high volume senders and while they are similar in some ways to popular mainstream email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, Aweber, etc… they are more of an email infrastructure company similar to Amazon SES, Google Cloud, or mid scale technology services.
SMTP.com is a popular choice for any company sending lots of emails or with fairly customized use cases that don’t fit neatly into a email marketing software tiered plan.
Stand Out Features to Me
After giving SMTP.com a spin for a few weeks, here’s what really stood out to me:
- ISP Reputation: SMTP.com is known for their impeccable reputation among the email service solutions (98% delivery rate). This makes them an excellent scalable delivery solution for large enterprise and mass senders.
- Responsive Delivery: SMTP.com is also known for their fast delivery times, including no latency and 99% uptime.
- Customized Integrations: If you have complicated email marketing use cases and embeds, SMTP.com is highly flexible and can be implemented pretty much anywhere in your stack with just a few lines of code.
- Managed Onboarding: SMTP.com has an excellent team for bespoke integrations and implementations, well worth the price of admission.
- Dev Friendly: They have an excellent tech-forward and dev friendly orientation, with excellent API flexibility, RESTful integration, and many prebuilt migration templates for common use cases.
Things to Improve
- Aggressive Sales Chats: I couldn’t do much price shopping without getting a popup to “chat with their sales teams”. Maybe it’s just me, but I despise getting caught up in enterprise sales rodeos.
- Free Trial Requires Credit Card: While they DO offer a 30 day free trial offer on their lowest tier plan, you still have to enter your credit card. This is presumably to combat tire kickers and spammers, but I feel they could have addressed these concerns differently!
SMTP.com Pricing Considerations
SMTP is definitely targeted towards higher volume sellers, with plans starting at 50,000 emails/month, but I didn’t find the prices to be very high for this level of volume.
For brands and users with very established email use cases, you may actually release a cost savings by switching to a more bespoke experience with SMTP.com.
As you scale, pricing escalates a bit, but isn’t egregious. Main distinction here to note is the transition for “Shared IP” on Essential to “Dedicated IP” on Starter and above. This gives you a bit more control over your sender reputation and deliverability (in theory).
There are also custom quote options for bulk senders above the top Business tier.
SMTP.com Alternatives & Competitors
There’s no sense in reviewing a platform in the vortex, so here’s how I see SMTP stacking up against some of their closest competitors. May be worth a look if you need something slightly different:
- Sendgrid: Sendgrid is perhaps the best known and most direct competitor to SMTP.com, known for similar functionality, some additional API endpoints (Webhooks & events) and a completely free tier up to 2,000 sends per month (good for testing). Also read: Sendgrid vs Brevo.
- Suprsend: A brand new competitor on my radar, Suprsend is a multi-channel mass sending platform that goes beyond email and can include Slack (chat), SMS, Push and Whatsapp. A good option if these alternate channels fit your use case.
- ForwardEmail: This is an interesting open source mail forwarder / relay. Useful if you have a technical team to harness and a specific use for open sourcing.
- Mailgun: Another similar service for bulk sending as SMTP and Sengrid, worth considering.
Who Should NOT Use SMTP.com
While I do really like SMTP.com for bulk senders and many use cases, there’s a few types of senders who may be disappointed with SMTP.
- Non Technical Founders / Teams: If you want to do bulk sending or have a large list, but don’t have technical resources or consultants in place, you may not get the most out of SMTP.com.
- Grey Area Verticals: If you operate in a vertical known for “questionable” or unscrupulous marketing or “sin” categories, SMTP.com might not be the best platform to leverage due to their stringent ISP standards.
Who SHOULD Use SMTP.com
Alright, so who is SMTP.com ideal for?
Pretty much everyone else doing bulk sending that needs a customized solution! There are only a few true alternatives in this category (Sendgrid, Mailgun), and SMTP.com offers the most scalable pricing and support I’ve personally seen.