15+ Free SMTP Server | Best SMTP Service Providers in 2021

Q: ❗ What are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records?

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.

Details: Last Updated: 03 May 2021

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

Name	Key Feature	Link
Elastic Email	• Learn from your reports and get smarter. • Test and improve for better results.	Learn More
Sendinblue	• This is a tool that helps you to automate your marketing messages. • It provides detailed statistics of your mails.	Learn More
SendPulse	• Sending Messages through the SMTP Relay • Email Effectiveness reports	Learn More
SMTP2GO	• Avoid arbitrary throttling • Stay out of spam folders	Learn More
SMTPProvider	• It allows you to view the delivery report with ease. • It offers security through an SSL connection.	Learn More

1) 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.

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.

2) Sendinblue

Sendinblue 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.

Features:

You can add your Facebook account and launch Facebook Ad from the Sendinblue 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.
Sendinblue 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

3) SendPulse

SendPulse is an SMTP service provider that allows you to send transactional emails to your list of subscribers from the website, CRM, and other third-party applications. It is a multi-channel platform. You can leverage the presence of multiple marketing tools in a single system.

SendPulse allows you to get email automation, performance evaluation metrics, multiple communication channels like email, SMS, Facebook messenger, etc.

Features:

Sending messages is free in this SMTP Relay software
Email Effectiveness Reports
This free SMTP server offers a dedicated IP address that adds additional value to the sender's website reputation.
Receive information to your system about email status as delivered, undelivered, opened, and clicked.
SPF and DKIM records help transactional emails to avoid landing in a spam folder.
Detailed reports allow you to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of your email marketing.

Pricing plans: Three pricing plans

Basic (Free) gives 12,000 emails per month,
Pro ($59.99) gives 100,000 emails per month.
Enterprise ($219.88) 500,000 email per month.

4) 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.

5) 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.

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)

6) GreenArrow

The GreenArrow Engine provides an infrastructure that helps sending email for maximum delivery, throughput, and reporting. It allows you to target subscribers in your Mailing lists who match a set of requirements.

Features:

This free SMTP relay service offers high-performance delivery
Provides insights that increase deliverability.
Allows flexibility to make your integration goals possible.
You can select On-Premises or Cloud
Deliverability optimized emails
Provides technology that scales to grow your business.

Pricing Plans: Two pricing plans:

$600 (Standard), $800 (Pro)
$1,000 (Enterprise)

7) Mandrill

Mandrill is an email API specifically developed for Mailchimp users. You can use it to send data-driven emails, including personalized and e-commerce messages. It helps you with email campaigns by a custom solution using API. This tool automatically converts HTML into a text version.

Features:

You can send mail from more than one domain with a single mandrill account.
Fast and personalized transactional emails using API or SMTP.
It allows you to add one or more dedicated IP addresses.
This tool provides customized email tracking options.
You can connect custom emails from your CRM or database.
This SMTP server allows you to tag emails depending on the sender and template.
You can generate reports based on multiple criteria.
Mandrill enables you to send emails using CSS and HTML.

Pricing plans: Three pricing plans

$9 (Essentials) 50,000 emails per month.
$14 (Standard) 100,000 emails per month.
$299 (Premium) 200,000 emails per month.

Link:https://mailchimp.com/features/transactional-email/

8) Mailjet

Mailjet is an SMTP service provider that enables you to track transactional and marketing emails via SMTP, API, etc. You can create responsive emails using email builders. It helps you to convert your company's email data into segments.

Features:

You can integrate it with the current server configuration.
You can get all the information you need from the comprehensive documentation.
This free SMTP relay service provides analytics to monitor your results and optimize performance.
Helps you to create responsive emails in minutes
Provides a comprehensive and intuitive email editor
Emails compatible with all screens
Collaborate and comment in real time

Pricing plans: Three pricing plans:

$9.65 (Basic) 30,000 emails per month.
$20.95 (Premium) 30,000 emails per month and additional features,
Enterprise (Customized offer).

Link:https://www.mailjet.com/

9) Mailgun

Mailgun is a popular SMTP service provider. They offer powerful APIs to send transactional emails. It is easy to use tool which you can integrate with a WordPress website, whether you have an eCommerce store or a membership website.

Features:

Mailgun offers an easy to scale SMTP service to send your marketing and transactional emails.
Helps you to manage email delivery for high-volume emails
You can send an email with just a few lines of code
Email API for application-driven emails
This SMTP server offers a Powerful API, which helps you send, receive, and track emails.

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.

Link:https://www.mailgun.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.

Features:

It provides API for sending emails.
This tool 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/smtp-service

11) TurboSMTP

TurboSMTP is another leading SMTP service provider that allows sending newsletter campaigns directly to your user's inbox. This SMTP service provider offers multi-language customer support 24/7 via email, support ticket, phone, and live chat.

Features:

Compatible with various Mail Clients
Advanced dashboard
Provides clean email list
Send transactional emails and newsletters via API
Offers secure and reliable servers
Provides email delivery tracking
Open and click tracking in real time
Deliverability support
Management of bounces, spam reports, and subscriptions
Flexible and custom plans

Pricing plans: Three pricing plans:

$ 14.95 per month (Basic)
$ 79.95 per month (Professional)
Enterprise (Custom price).

Link:https://www.serversmtp.com/

12) 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. This SMTP service provider helps you to keep your customers updated by sending automated emails.

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/

13) SMTP

SMTP provides powerful email delivery services that enable you to send and track high volume emails effortlessly. You can integrate this tool with your email marketing campaign and CRM for sending bulk emails. You can also integrate it with WordPress.

Features:

Custom and secure business email
Email Relay API
Email list validation
Security and management controls
Offers scalable infrastructure
Send follow up emails with the help of web or mobile.
Helps you to manage all the email delivery services
Standard customer support

Pricing plans: Four pricing plans,

$25 for 50,000 emails per month,
$80 for 100,000 emails per month
$300 for 500,000 emails per month.

Link:https://www.smtp.com/

14) SparkPost

SparkPost is a predictive email intelligence platform. It helps you to optimize email performance with unprecedented data visibility. You can use this tool to monitor Email campaigns and manage the responses.

Features:

Provide you with SMTP cloud server that is used for email sending.
This free SMTP relay service contains one dashboard that gives you detailed logs and statistics related to your email activity.
Real-time delivery modifications
Offers flexible reporting
It helps you to drill specific email sending instantly
Proactive alerting and actionable insights
Sparkpost provides unlimited bandwidth.

Pricing plans:

$30 (Starter)
$75 per month for the premier plan
Enterprise plan.

Link:https://www.sparkpost.com/powermta/

15) 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. This SMTP service provider has an automation technology which helps you to automate your certain email marketing tasks.

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 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

16) Inboxroad

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

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/

17) SendGrid

SendGrid 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.

Features:

This free SMTP server 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: Two pricing plans:

Essential ($14.95), Pro ($89.95)
Premier (Custom).

Link:https://sendgrid.com/solutions/email-api/smtp-service/

FAQ:

❓ What is an SMTP?

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.

⚡ Why do you need an SMTP Service?

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

🚀 What is the Can-Spam Act?

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.

🏅 What is Send Time Optimization (STO)?

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.

👉 How to select an SMTP Provider?

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.

⚡ What is email deliverability, and why is it important?

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.

❗ What are SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records?

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.