9 Best FREE SMTP Server Providers (2023 Update)

By : Alyssa Walker Alyssa Walker
Hours Updated

SMTP is the set of procedures, rules, and principles to send emails/messages to an email server. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. Most development frameworks support SMTP protocol. So, there is no need to install additional libraries to get the SMTP protocol.

Following is a handpicked list of Top SMTP Service Providers with their popular features and website links. The list contains both open source (free) and commercial (paid) software.

Best Free SMTP Service Providers for Testing

Name Key Feature Link
👍 SMTP • Easy deliverability of transactional emails
• It uses email API for deeper integration.		 Learn More
Elastic Email • Learn from your reports and get smarter.
• Test and improve for better results.		 Learn More
SMTP2GO • This software automatically handles domain name.
• It shows full details of the emails you have sent.		 Learn More
Mass mail software • It provides easy to use message editor
• This application gives you easy to read mail statistics		 Learn More
Mail Marketer • Allows you to track and analyze your emails.
• Offers built-in email templates.		 Learn More

1) SMTP

SMTP is an SMTP email service that allows you to send and receive bulk emails without managing an SMTP server. This SMTP service is easy to set up and works with any WordPress website, and offers excellent scalability.

SMTP

Features:

  • This free SMTP server for testing offers seamless integration with WordPress via the SMTP plugin
  • Responsive and helpful customer support
  • This one of the best SMTP service provider offers complete analytics and real-time feedback on every Email you send.
  • It has a globally distributed architecture
  • Technical and strategic assistance from real people

Pricing plans: Three pricing plans:

  • Essential ($25 per month) gives 50,000 emails per month,
  • Starter ($80 per month) gives 100,000 emails per month
  • Growth ($300 per month) gives 5,000,000 emails per month.

Visit SMTP >>

2) Elastic Email

Elastic Email is a full-service SMTP service provider for email marketing. This tool helps you to automatically avoid duplicate addresses. It has an advanced algorithm that allows you to find invalid emails. This tool provides detailed statistics. You can scale to more than 100 million emails per month.

Elastic Email

Features:

  • Allows you to schedule numerous email campaigns with various settings according to send time, scheduling, and more.
  • Allows scaling over 100 million emails per month.
  • It has a drag-and-drop editor to modify the template quickly.
  • You can easily connect it via HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) API.
  • Build your contacts list even faster with modern landing pages that help you grow your business.
  • Learn from your reports and get detailed statistics about your email campaigns.
  • Test and improve for better results.
  • Allows you to create an unlimited number of web forms

Pricing Plans: Two pricing plans

  • (Email API) $0.4 per day or 0.1$ per 1000 emails.
  • (Email API pro) $1 per day or 0.12$ per 1000 emails.

Visit Elastic Email

3) SMTP2GO

SMTP2GO allows you to send beautiful newsletters and provides a powerful API. It is used for sending transactional emails with no monthly commitments and limits. This SMTP software also allows you to test emails against spam filters.

Features:

  • This software automatically handles domain name.
  • This free SMTP server can send emails from a mobile app or outlook.
  • It shows full details of the emails you have sent.
  • Avoids arbitrary throttling
  • You can test your emails against major spam filters
  • It helps you to stay out of spam folders
  • This application offers easy to understand visual reports.
  • It sends Emails even during outages of the internet.
  • Get alerted about problems

Pricing Plan: Three plans

  • Starter ($15 per month) gives 40,000 emails per month,
  • Professional ($75 per month) gives 100,000 emails per month
  • Premier (Custom) gives 3,000,000 emails per month.

Visit SMTP2GO >>

4) Mass mail software

Mass mail software application that enables you to automatically send emails.
It helps you to solve mail marketing tasks like searching messages, lists management, and monitoring result.

Mass mail software

Features:

  • It provides easy to use message editor.
  • Offers built-in templates.
  • This application gives you easy to read mail statistics.
  • You can verify email with ease.
  • Supports unlimited email lists.

Visit Mass mail >>

5) Mail Marketer

Mail Marketer is application that enables you to send bulk emails with ease. This program can automate your follow-up tasks depend on your events. It offers real-time reports which contain details of mail open frequency, number of click, bounce rate, etc.

Mail Marketer

Features:

  • Allows you to track and analyze your emails.
  • Offers built-in email templates.
  • This bulk mail service includes email spam checker.
  • Provides Google Analytics integration.
  • Enables you to import contacts in bulk.

Visit Mail Marketer >>

6) MailerSend

MailerSend is a comprehensive tool that allows you to send invoices, delivery updates, forgotten password links. It also offers a drag & drops email template to create professional-looking transactional emails.

MailerSend

Features:

  • Provides a wide range of real-time analytics
  • Advance user management system
  • Integrate quickly with API documentation
  • Build personalized relationships at scale
  • Offers wide ranges of predesigned email templates

Pricing plans: One pricing plan

  • Basic Free (12,000 emails)
  • Premium $25/per month (50,000 emails)

Visit MailerSend >>

7) mailjet

mailjet is a global email service provider that enables you to track transactional and marketing emails via SMTP, API, etc. It allows you to create responsive emails using email builders.

MailGun

Features:

  • You can integrate it with any server configuration easily.
  • It helps you to convert your company’s email data into segments.
  • Allows you to personalize your Transactional Messages
  • Helps you to track Email events in Real Time
  • Helps you to effortlessly create Email templates
  • You can get all the information you need from the comprehensive documentation.
  • This tool provides analytics to monitor your results and optimize performance.

Pricing plans: Three pricing plans:

  • $35 for 50,000 emails per month
  • $80 for 100,000 included
  • $90 for 100,000 email and additional features.

Visit mailjet >>

8) Brevo

Brevo is a SaaS SMTP service provider solution for email marketing automation. It helps you to manage your customers using your current CRM. You can use this tool to set up your email campaign with custom design, engagement, and transactional messages delivery.

Brevo

Features:

  • You can add your Facebook account and launch Facebook Ad from the Brevo account.
  • It enables you to build your own custom landing pages.
  • This tool helps you to automate your marketing messages.
  • It provides detailed statistics of your email campaigns.
  • Brevo allows you to connect plugins with various CMS like WordPress and Magento.
  • Powerful SMTP service for all your transactional emails
  • It is one of the best SMTP servers that offers all your transactional email statistics
  • Provides expert tools that you can trust

Pricing plans: Four pricing plans

  • Free (Free plan) gives up to 300 per day
  • Lite ($20.52) gives 100,000 emails per month
  • Premium ($54.15) gives 1,000,000 emails per month, Enterprise
  • You can contact from their site for this plan

Visit Brevo >>

9) SMTPProvider

SMTPProvider is an email management and delivery software. It offers marketing emails, transactional emails, and individual emailing. This tool allows you to view the delivery report with ease.

SMTPProvider

Features:

  • You can easily discover the number of messages you have sent.
  • Dedicated IP addresses
  • The SMTP servers send your emails using a secure SSL connection.
  • Allows you to send the delivery error reports.
  • It offers security through a secure SSL connection.

Pricing Plans: Three pricing plans

  • Unlimited P1 ($400 per month)
  • Unlimited P2 ($700 per month)
  • Unlimited P3 ($1000/per month)

Link: https://smtpprovider.com/

10) Postmark

Postmark is an SMTP service providing company that helps you to deliver and track transactional emails. This tool provides 45 days of full content history and statistics. You also get a detailed report for mail open and clicks.

Postmark

Features:

  • It provides API for sending emails.
  • This SMTP email service provider delivers emails using SMTP.
  • This SMTP replay offers notifications about essential messages and events.
  • Track messages through their entire life cycle with custom metadata.
  • You can group common message types using tags.
  • Developer friendly SMTP documentation.
  • Globally distributed SMTP service.
  • It has a responsive and compatible email templates.
  • You can integrate user email replies into your application.
  • It uses two-factor authentication (2FA) for better security of data.

Pricing plans: Three main pricing plans:

  • $10 for 10,000 emails per month,
  • $50 for 50,000 Emails per month
  • $100 for 125,000 emails per month.

Link:https://postmarkapp.com/

11) Amazon SES

Amazon SES is a cloud-based SMTP service provider company that is widely used to send bulk emails. You can integrate this tool with your existing applications. It is one of the best SMTP service providers that helps you to keep your customers updated by sending automated emails.

Amazon SES

Features:

  • You can send highly personalized messages to the customer.
  • It enables you to monitor the number of send and delivered messages.
  • This SMTP server offers higher deliverability and protects the sender’s reputation.
  • This tool provides features on the dashboard to help you track issues that can impact your email delivery.
  • You can accept or reject mail depending on the receiver’s P address, domain, or email address.
  • Offers various methods of sending emails, including SMTP, console, and SES API.
  • This free SMTP server can integrate with other AWS services, including AWS IAM.

Pricing plans: (As per selected plan)

Link:https://aws.amazon.com/ses/

12) Mailify

Mailify is the latest SMTP service provider that offers a drag-and-drop editor, which allows you to design attractive emails within a few minutes. It is one of the best SMTP services which has an automation technology which helps you to automate your certain email marketing tasks.

Mailify

Features:

  • Mailfy offers additional services, including SMS marketing, automation software, landing pages, CRM, sign-up forms, etc.
  • Mailify’s artificial intelligence detects common errors in email addresses and fixes them.
  • This free SMTP server helps you optimize the email template design, improve email deliverability, increase open and clicks delivery rates, and a lot more.
  • This SMTP server free service allows you to send responsive campaigns through a bulk email SMTP server.
  • Allows you to set up campaigns to send emails with attachments
  • Allows you to customize your merge-tags

Pricing plans: (You can ask for the customized plan)

Link:https://www.mailify.com/bulkmail/create/responsive

13) Inboxroad

Inboxroad is a fast-growing SMTP service provider. This SMTP provides tools that meet all the criteria of an exceptional email marketing solution.

Inboxroad

Features:

  • It helps you to scale your business at a higher level
  • All your email traffic is handled through a secure connection with the TLS protocol.
  • You can select various existing front-ends, or you can make your custom system.
  • Blacklist monitoring
  • Integrates easily with your website front-end
  • Provides multiple backup servers and guarantees your emails being delivered every day.

Pricing plans: Three pricing plans :

  • $69 (100,000 emails per month),
  • $139 (250,000 emails per month)
  • $349 (1,000,000 emails per month).

Link: https://inboxroad.com/

FAQ:

SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is the set of procedures, rules and principles to send emails/messages to an email server. Most development frameworks support SMTP. Therefore, there is no need to install additional libraries to get the SMTP protocol.

Below are some of the best free SMTP servers:

An SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server is an application that is primarily used to send, receive or relay outgoing emails between the sender and the receiver. When a user sends an email, the SMTP server processes this email. After that, it decides the server on which the email will be sent and relays it to the server. Then, the server provider of the receiver downloads this email and puts it in the recipient’s mailbox.

Here are the reasons of using SMTP service:

  • Helps to send more Emails per hour
  • SMTP servers help to save money by ensuring maximum email delivery
  • Helps you to keep your email list private and secure
  • Allows users to add custom features to their Email campaign
  • Supports Bulk Email Sending

The CAN-SPAM Act is a cyber law that sets the rules for commercial Email, that gives recipients the right to stop sending messages and emailing them, and spells out tough penalties for violations.

However, it does not only apply to bulk Email. It also includes commercial messages, which the law defines as “any email message”. The primary purpose is the commercial advertisement or promotion of a commercial product or service.

It also includes Email, which promotes content on commercial websites. The law makes no exception for B2B Emails. For example, a message to former customers announcing new service or product lines must comply with the law.

Send Time Optimization (STO) is a method that uses data science to determine when your contacts are likely to engage and send your email marketing message at that time.

Here are important things that you should know before starting this process:

  • Based on your plan, you may not have access to Send Time Optimization. First, you should know what features are included in each plan.
  • You can use Send Time Optimization for plain-text, A/B testing, and multivariate email types. However, this feature is not available in automated emails.
  • You should use this method only when five hours left in a day in the time zone set for the account.

You should look at the following parameters while selecting an SMTP service provider:

  • Deliverability: A robust server infrastructure and proven delivery rate helps you to ensure that all your transactional and commercial messages reach to the recipient.
  • Delivery speed: Delivery speed is the number of emails sent per unit of time (minute/ hours). It is important to have a high delivery speed if your email list is large.
  • Dedicated IP: It is important that the SMTP provider assigns you a dedicated IP so that any spamming activity done on any other shared IP does not affect your deliverability.
  • Bounce back handling: A high number of consistent bounce back can hurt your email marketing campaign. To reduce this, your site should have a good sign-up form, regular updated information, and most important, regularly schedule your emails.
  • Feedback loops: A Feedback Loop (FBL) is a service offered by some ISPs that tracks the activity when a subscriber hits the spam or junk button in their inbox and notifies to senders. It is provided to aid senders in keeping the clean contact list.
  • Tracking: You should also make sure that your email service provides has a consolidated dashboard with all the statistics you need. For example: clicks, open rates, bounces, unsubscribes, and an option for social sharing.
  • Customization: It should provide the power if you want to change feature of a template so you can make it your own.
  • Define your budget: The last but probably most vital thing you need to look before selecting the email service provider is budget. While you have an option for selecting low, medium, and enterprise-level providers, selecting the right one for your needs helps you to lower the cost and ensures high Return On Investment (ROI) while still delivering the functionality you need.

Email deliverability is the ability to deliver emails to subscribers’ inboxes. It is important because some email marketers gauge the likelihood of their email campaigns reaching their subscribers’ inboxes.

For example, if you send 100 emails, and 50 emails didn’t reach to subscribers due to IP reputation, catch-all, stale emails, high bounces, etc. reasons, your open rate is already down by 50%.

Email deliverability is determined by the email delivery parameters like ISPs, throttling, bounces, spam issues and bulking.

  • SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is a protocol for validating email, which is designed to find and block email spoofing.
  • DKIM (Domain Keys Identified Mail) is a method for authenticating email. It enables receivers to know that the email which was sent to them is authorized by the domain author.
  • DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) is a protocol for email authentication. It is specifically designed to give email owners the ability to safeguard their domain from unauthorized use.
It is also important to set SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for your email accounts to avoid spoofing and spam.

Here is how you can set up a free SMTP server using Gmail:

  • Step 1) Make sure you are using 2-factor authentication on the Gmail account you are using to set up the SMTP server
  • Step 2) Then, set up App password and choose Other as the option
  • Step 3) Once the App password is configured, you can now authenticate and use the free SMTP server
  • Step 4) Now, go to your website or application on which you want to set up the SMTP server
  • Step 5) Now, set the following settings to complete the process:
    • SMTP Server: smtp.google.com
    • Authentication: Yes
    • Secure Connection: TLS or SSL
    • Username: Your Email Id
    • Password: The App password you just configured
    • Port Number: 587 for TLS authentication and 465 for SSL authentication
  • Step 6) Save the settings and add the account to complete the process


Best Free SMTP Service Providers for Testing

Name Key Feature Link
👍 SMTP • Easy deliverability of transactional emails
• It uses email API for deeper integration.		 Learn More
Elastic Email • Learn from your reports and get smarter.
• Test and improve for better results.		 Learn More
SMTP2GO • This software automatically handles domain name.
• It shows full details of the emails you have sent.		 Learn More
Mass mail software • It provides easy to use message editor
• This application gives you easy to read mail statistics		 Learn More
Mail Marketer • Allows you to track and analyze your emails.
• Offers built-in email templates.		 Learn More
You Might Like: