What to look for in a transactional SMTP service
Sending multiple emails a day typically isn’t a problem when you’re trying to reach a handful—or even dozens—of people. Google’s gmail, for instance, caps email delivery at 500 per day, and many shared hosting services impose email delivery limits. That’s more than enough for most personal use. But when you need to send transactional emails or email marketing campaigns to hundreds or thousands of people a day, those limits can be crippling.
There are many options for sending bulk email, but with cloud-based SMTP services from Mailgun, you can send transactional emails to as many customers as you like—as often as they interact with your site or trigger an email response—without needing to support your own SMTP server. Mailgun’s transactional email services offer easy integration and easy setup.
Email servers vs. SMTP services
Sending transactional messages over your own email server is an option, of course. But sending hundreds or thousands of emails in one day can be a technical challenge, and bulk emailing using your own email infrastructure could eat up significant developer time and require additional servers.
Even companies that might use their own email servers forgo the hassle and expense of managing their own transactional email services for the ease and reliability of an SMTP service. Mailgun offers both an SMTP relay service that can be set up in seconds and a flexible email API for developers who want more control and customization over their email delivery and email marketing services.
Delivery you can count on
Sending transactional messages and marketing emails won’t do much good if those emails have a high bounce rate or are consistently snagged by spam filters. How can you know for sure how many messages will actually make it through? You could try testing your server first, but without robust tracking in place, it’s nearly impossible to know how your transactional emails will be handled by the recipients’ email provider. Cue the panic.
The right email service should be able to increase not only the number of transactional messages you send but also your email deliverability success. Mailgun uses domain name authentication and an email address validation API to reduce spam complaints and lower bounce rates. And for customers who crave the highest delivery rates possible, our managed email delivery solution combines one-on-one support with proactive monitoring.
Increasing value from transactional messages
The best email marketing doesn’t feel like bulk email. It views transactional email, like an account status update, abandoned cart enticement, password reset, or order confirmation, as part of the larger marketing effort. The strongest transactional messages are highly relevant, responsive, and personalized. With Mailgun, you can run and analyze A/B tests, and review specific events, like click-throughs, on every transactional email that’s sent. Those robust, real-time analytics with open and click tracking can help you drive the effectiveness of your transactional messages higher and higher every time you hit send.
Sign up today
Get started with transactional SMTP service
Try out our free plan and start optimizing your email delivery rates through the best SMTP services on the market today.
Check out our plans to bundle together features for better deliverability. For businesses that send over 100,000 emails.
Other features
Explore beyond SMTP
Mailgun has a variety of features for companies in need of Transactional SMTP services.