The transactional email has a special role to play in application-based businesses. Email marketing was earlier focused on a lot on promotional emails, such as newsletters and offers. Now transactional email has got a boost by web-based and mobile applications to deliver notifications, subscriptions, and updates.
It is the tool that communicates with the subscribers, to increase customer base and to generate more revenues. Due to this reason, they have become popular, and are used extensively for online marketing and business branding.
Transactional emails are highly engaging. They claim the high open rates in the industry, and increases engagement with the recipients. These emails are thrice more effective in creating engagement as compared to commercial emails. Transactional emails serve as a marketing tool that can yield greater returns, provided that the companies capitalize on them effectively.
The potential of transactional emails can’t be overestimated. They are important for the growth of the businesses, as well as to notify the customers and clients about the status of their orders. Transaction emails are classified as welcome emails, event reminders, booking, or order confirmation, password reset, and many more.
The most important benefit of these emails over the conventional mailing system is their deliverability rate. You will need to integrate marketing tactics into the transactional emails, to offer exclusive marketing messaging in your email communications channel.
Top 10 Best Transactional Email Service To Take Your Customer Engagement to the Next Level – SMTP Transactional Email Services Compared (2022)
1) SendInBlue
SendInBlue enables you to send around nine thousand emails per month, without any charge for an unlimited time. This is the unique selling feature of this tool. Users of this service can use it for both transactional emails, as well as normal email marketing campaigns, transactional SMS messages, and marketing automation.
The service offers many eye-catching features such as A/B testing for emails, deliverability, drag-and-drops email builder, advanced reporting, optimized email marketing campaign, affordable pricing, overall product quality, and good reporting.
The company was formed in the year 2012. It provides cloud-based digital advertising tools to more than 80000 developing firms all across the world. In addition to it, the service offers a free of cost dedicated IP address for customers, who send over 350,000 emails a month.
2) Amazon SES (Simple Email Service)
If you want an affordable email service, then Amazon SES is available at an unbeatable price. This service is available at only $0.10 for every thousand emails. It is quite affordable, and scalable for businesses. It enables users to use an AWS SDK or the SMTP interface or Amazon SES in the application.
Sendy is one of the tools that you can help you get this service at a low cost. This tool is a self-hosted interface that makes use of the Amazon SES Application Programming Interface to send emails. It is a “pay-as-you-go” service. It implies that you need to pay as por your use.
The service enables you to send 62,000 emails per month for absolutely free of cost. After this free limit, there is a charge of $0.10 for every thousand emails. If the emails also include attachments, then you will be required to pay $0.12 for every GB.
3) SendGrid
SendGrid is unquestionably the leader in the transactional email service space. This service is neither the affordable nor the costliest option. Some of the highly attractive features of these services are incredible email analytics, easy integration using a dead simple Application Programming Interface, 24/7 live assistance, and their repute for giving good deliverability rates.
SendGrid is a remarkable cloud-based SMTP email transactional service. It offers a trusted platform that enables users to send as well as receive bulk emails. In place of sending transactional emails, Send Grid service enables you to create effective email marketing campaigns for your business.
You get a wide range of integration options to begin sending emails. Users of this service get comprehensive real-time feedback and analytics reports on every email that is sent. SendGrid provides a good balance of essential features.
4) MailJet
MailJet is one of the highly flexible as well as accessible SMTP transactional email service. It majorly aims toward online marketers and application developers. This service aids in sending notifications as well as transactional emails to the users. Users of this service are provided with the facility to use dedicated IP addresses.
There is no doubt that it is the cheapest option available in the market, but it is not up to the mark in areas of service, support, and features. Mailjet takes pride in offering a sophisticated support system. The trusted, 24*7, and fast, approach of the service of the ticketing system catches the attention of users.
This service comes with a sturdy system to ensure that your emails bypass the spam filters. Using the smart mechanism of this service, users can track the delivery, rejections, and bounce rate of the emails.
5) Mailgun
Mailgun is another affordable and effective top SMTP transactional email service provider on the list. This tool offers very basic analytics to its user. However, many people find its setup to be quite overwhelming.
The pricing mechanism of the tool is simple. It is not overly expensive or competitive. The customer service of this company takes a long time to respond to attend and resolve queries.
This service features a sturdy email sending infrastructure that comes with an SMTP integration and a RESTful API that aids in sending bulk emails to the users. The pricing mechanism of this tool is based on “a pay-as-you-go service”.
A user gets around 100 email validations and 10,000 emails free of cost every month. The cost of 500 email validations and 20,000 emails per month costs $9 per month.
6) Postmark
Postmark is another expensive transactional email service in the market. Its charges are nearly ten times the charges of Amazon SES. The main reason for this high price is its best level software, and hardware and software. Due to which it offers heightened security of data to its users. Postmark offers highly transparent services that make them trustworthy to users.
Postmark is an ideal SMTP transactional email service that provides delivery for transactional emails, and applications at lightning speed. Postmark has several SMTP Servers distributed all across the globe to ensure the fastest delivery of emails.
The pricing structure of this email service is quite simple. The basic plan comes at $10 / month for ten thousand emails. For any additional email, it needs to pay $1.25 for every thousand emails.
7) GetResponse
GetResponse is one of the best transactional email service providers meant for businesses especially for bloggers and users who host webinars. This email service offers sophisticated webinar reminder sequences and webinar invitations.
This email service system is used by several popular users that include Neil Patel, and Hilton Hotels. Some of the important benefits that you are assured to get from this email service are segmentation to offer geographically relevant content, language personalization, and more.
Some of the not so good features of this service are that it is not an omnichannel ESP, and users do not get AMP support for their emails. The unique selling point of this service is that it provides 1.5-hours of consultation on the email marketing strategy. It is completely free of cost.
8) Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a world class provider of transactional email service that provides more than six billion emails that are sent in every week. The company was formed in July 2018, and its share is computed to be 24.2%. CNN is the most famous client of this service.
Following are the benefits of this service:
- Instagram, Facebook, Google Remarketing integration allows users to place advertisements as well as record customers
- member rating to figure out potential VIP customers;
- instinctive interface
Following are the limitations of this service:
The service offers two channels such as pop-up sign-up forms, and emails. The absence of other channels makes it inadequate to develop stronger scenarios.
There is no support for AMP
The unique feature of this service is the ability to forward emails and share them with friends, along with an attachment of notification emails
9) Moosend
Moosend is one of the cheap SMTP transactional email service providers that comes with a drag and drop email building service. It helps in designing the transactional emails quickly. It has a massive deliverability rate of 98% that makes it one of the best email services to combat spam filters.
Moosend service enables you to generate an email blast and tracks them on a real-time basis. The service provides advanced level analytics reports for all transactional emails sent by a business. The mail service provides an outstanding tracking system that enables you to analyze how much time is incurred in sending the mails, and how much emails get opened.
Moosend is free of cost for around a thousand subscribers. Users need to pay $8 per month for the next thousand subscribers. All the plans provide unlimited campaigns and emails each month.
However, some users can find their interface simple and pleasant. The analytic of this email service is also very remarkable.
10) Constant Contact
Constant Contact was formed in 1995. It boasts about 5.1% of the total share of the email marketing automation forte.
Some of the benefits of this service include:
- unlimited emails at a fixed price;
- robust A/B testing
- Ability to integrate with Shopify. Users are provided with the functionality to upload their contact base via this platform;
- to offer enhanced credit security, users can log in with their PayPal account
The disadvantage of this service is that there is no trial package. Users get free service for only the first month. No AMP support is provided for emails.
Its unique feature is the remarkable ability to share the emails with the Facebook business page.
Assess this service based on various factors such as coding ability, patience, and budget to find out how well this service serves you.
11) SendPulse
SendPulse is one of the popular email marketing services that can send transactional emails to the list of business subscribers and also track the emails to figure out bounce rate, open rate, and click rate of the emails.
In addition to transaction email service, it also provides SMS marketing service to its customers. The service comes with a pleasant and cleaner user interface. It makes it an ideal platform for startups firms to begin with.
The documentation and API of the service are quite vast. Along with it an extensive variety of webhooks and integrations are also provided to effortlessly connect the service. Another lucrative feature of this service provider is that as the size of the business increases, the service proves to be affordable to the business.
Email Services / Providers Features Matrix
Moosend
- generate an email blast and track them in real-time basis
- designs transactional emails quickly
- massive deliverability rate of 98%,
- provides advanced-level analytics reports for all transactional emails
SendPulse
- integration of Facebook Ads
- unlimited emails at a fixed price
- Share your emails to the Facebook business page
- no trial package
- pop-up un-subscription notifications;
MailGun
- affordable
- sturdy email sending infrastructure
- offers very basic analytics
- comes with an SMTP integration and a RESTful API to send emails in bulk
- pay as you go service
MailJet
- highly flexible as well as accessible service
- useful for online marketers, and application developers
- enables sending notifications as well as transactional emails
- facility to use dedicated IP addresses
- sturdy and sophisticated support system
- trusted, 24*7, and fast, approach
Constant Contact
- offer 5.1% of the total share of the email marketing automation forte
- unlimited emails at a fixed price
- robust A/B testing
- ability to integrate with Shopify
- users can login with their PayPal account to get enhanced credit security
Postmark
- expensive transactional email service
- heightened security of data
- highly transparent services
- Provides SMTP Servers distributed globally to ensure the fastest delivery of emails.
Mailchimp
- Instagram, Facebook, Google Remarketing integration
- member rating to figure out potential VIP customers;
- instinctive interface
- only two channels such as pop-up sign-up forms, and emails
- here is no support for AMP
GetResponse
- Facebook Ads
- advanced statistics
- landing pages
- email template builder is less intuitive
- Reporting that lacks detail.
Sendinblue
- integration with WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, WordPress, and Magento
- dedicated IP addresses that provide higher deliverability of emails
- Customer Relationship Management
- send time optimization
- the free plan only permits three hundred emails per day
SendGrid
- 7.1% share in email marketing niche is 7.1%
- advanced search facility
- integration with WordPress CMS,
- does not provide all the micro tools to develop a trending email
- A/B testing that runs up to six different variations
Amazon SES (Amazon Simple Email Service)
- most affordable
- a transactional email provider by world’s biggest internet retailer “Amazon.com”
- no integration with the ESP
- import emails into Simple Email Service as “HTML email template”
- all incoming emails are synchronized with Amazon AWS
- Users get the facility to send the first 62,000 transaction emails completely free.
- mailbox simulator
Final Verdict
When it comes to choosing a transactional email service, there are no ‘one sizes fits all’. Each of these transaction email services has got its pros and cons. You need to decide which features are beneficial for your business and evaluate these services on that basis. If you are looking for an affordable option then Amazon SES could be the ideal option for you. If you want a sophisticated tool, then go for SendGrid or SendinBlue.
There is no universal transactional service provider that meets the needs of all types of businesses effectively. However, all of these transactional email services do almost everything that a business would need. Look at the weaknesses and strengths of these tools, and compare their costs, to make an informed selection of the best email system for your business.