SMTP is a vital component for a website or internet-based app. It handles lots of things regarding the mail delivery on your website. For instance, if you have an online service that requires a user account to use, you need SMTP to deliver email confirmation to the newly registered users. The role of SMTP is even more crucial for e-commerce sites as you will need a reliable email delivery service to handle email delivery related to the transaction such as payment confirmation, receipt delivery, and so on.
Some frameworks and content management systems, such as WordPress, have a default function to handle mail delivery. But oftentimes, its functionality depends on the configuration on the server you use. For instance, WordPress has a default function, called wp_mail, to handle mail delivery. This function uses the send_mail function belongs to PHP. If your PHP is not configured properly, the WordPress’ wp_mail function won’t work.
Another usage example of SMTP service is when you have a large number of email subscribers and want to send a bulk email to the subscribers.
We have collected some of the best SMTP services you can use to handle the mail delivery for your website or app. Here is the list.
1. SendGrid
On the top list, we have SendGrid. SendGrid might is better known as an email marketing tool just like Mailchimp and MailerLite. In case you didn’t know, SendGrid also offers a cloud-based SMTP service that you can use to handle email delivery on your website or app. SendGrid offers a feature-rich mail API you can integrate with your service. If you use WordPress, you can easily integrate SendGrid with an SMTP plugin like Post SMTP or WP Mail SMTP to replace the WordPress’ wp_mail function for more reliable email delivery. Especially if you use plugins like WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, and Elementor.
2. Mailgun
Mailgun is a great service for app or web developers who need to send emails to users, yet have no their own mail server. You can use SMTP to send transaction emails — which is great for e-commerce sites — running an email marketing campaign, and so on. Mailgun comes with real-time email tracking and analytics feature to learn the performance of your mail delivery. It also comes with detailed logs to diagnose email delivery issues. If you use WordPress, you can also integrate Mailgun effortlessly with WP Mail SMTP.
3. SMTP.com
SMTP.com is an old player in the mail delivery service. According to the description on its website, this service has been around for about 20 years. It braves enough to guarantee a 98 percent mail delivery rate with the server uptime of 99 percent. SMTP.com is great for handling transaction emails for e-commerce sites.
4. Pepipost
Pepipost is another great SMTP service you can rely on to handle email delivery on your service. It is designed for developers who have no mail server to handle mail delivery for the apps they develop. If you use WordPress, you can also integrate Pepipost with your WordPress site more easily with WP Mail SMTP plugin.
5. Amazon SES
Amazon SES is a part of the AWS (Amazon Web Service). You can also use it to handle the email delivery on the app/website you develop. Amazon SES is a scalable SMTP service. Amazon SES also supports email receiving to allow you to interact with your customers. In Amazon SES, you only pay for what you use. In addition to handling transaction emails, Amazon SES can also be used to send bulk emails and run large-scale marketing campaigns.
6. SMTP2Go
You can also use SMTP2Go to handle the email delivery for the app or website you are developing. Some features offered by this service are visual reports to make it easy for you to learn what is actually happening to every email you sent, robust testing to test your emails against major spam filters, and the ability to see how your emails appear on major email client apps.
7. Postmark
Postmark is another SMTP service you can rely on to handle the email delivery on your website or app. This service has servers spread around the world to ensure faster email delivery. Your emails are automatically routed to the nearest server. Postmark allows you to use tags to easily identify similar messages using the Postmark web page or API.
