Email API, SMTP & Marketing Features

Whenever you seek for electronic mail platforms, the possibilities are that each Google and YouTube provides you with greater than two dozen outcomes. Amongst them, you’ll doubtless see the Mailtrap Electronic mail Platform.

The platform is well-known in the neighborhood for its excessive inboxing charges and quick supply, receiving reward on the preferred user-review platforms. However, does it maintain true to its ads and what its person base says about it?

Over at GetResponse, as we depart nothing to probability, we obtained collectively to place this electronic mail platform to work and see the way it delivers in motion, so you possibly can determine whether or not it’s match for your corporation.

1. TL/DR—Our Mailtrap evaluate summarized

After spending hours and hours analyzing round 100 Mailtrap opinions and testing out the platform and its options, listed below are our findings.

All in all, the platform is well-received by its customers and appears to assist them ship transactional and bulk emails at scale. Individuals appear to have the ability to combine it simply with their functions and initiatives, which we confirmed as properly. And, in the event that they get caught, Mailtrap’s customer support appears dependable and prepared to assist.

In fact, it has some downsides. It’s not one of the best in relation to marketing automation, it has restricted integrations, and you’ll’t attain its assist workforce through cellphone.

Lengthy story quick, right here’s a bit of desk to your comfort so you may get a greater concept of what Mailtrap is all about:

2. How we reviewed Mailtrap

Earlier than we dive in, a fast disclaimer: the purpose of this evaluate is to not put Mailtrap in a nasty highlight or place our product as the higher choice. Badmouthing different electronic mail platforms shouldn’t be how we do it at GetResponse.

Our objective is to provide you an in depth and, most significantly, unbiased breakdown of Mailtrap so you possibly can see whether or not it’s appropriate to your use case or not. As a reader of our weblog, we recognize you and assist your efforts to develop a profitable enterprise. We’re right here to assist, not get in the way in which. 

And, since each workforce on the market has totally different wants and necessities to get their job accomplished effectively, why not take into account all alternate options that may provide options we don’t?

So, brace your self for a trip, it’s not going to be a brief one.

For this text, we’ve examine 100 Mailtrap person opinions and analyzed every of them to get a consensus of what folks consider the platform. This manner, we felt we’d have most success figuring out the way it helped them obtain their objectives, what a few of its benefits and drawbacks are, and so forth.

In fact, we didn’t low cost out for this evaluate, so we requested our procurement workforce for a bit of Mailtrap subscription. This manner, we might use all of the platform’s options to the fullest and see how the paid customers really feel. And don’t fear, we didn’t neglect in regards to the free plan.

So, what you have got in entrance of you is the results of analyzing and fairly some hours of testing by our workforce of promoting specialists who put Mailtrap to work.

3. Fast overview: What’s Mailtrap?

Mailtrap is a contemporary electronic mail platform for builders and product groups. It gives a RESTful electronic mail API and SMTP service centered on excessive deliverability and quick supply.

Together with electronic mail API and SMTP, you additionally get many electronic mail advertising options you need to use to create campaigns and get them off the bottom.

In different phrases, the platform offers you the deliverability tools to ship each transactional and bulk emails.

4. Pricing – How a lot does Mailtrap value?

The free trial lasts perpetually, permits you to ship as much as 3,500 emails/month or 150/day, and retailer 100 contacts. To register an account, you don’t want to offer your bank card particulars, and you’ll merely log in through Google, GitHub, or Workplace 365 accounts. 

What’s the draw back?

Though you possibly can ship a good quantity of transactional emails with the free plan, you might be restricted to solely 100 contacts. Furthermore, the free plan accounts can solely have one person and don’t permit workforce members.

What if the sending limits are exceeded on the free plan?

In case you’re a free person and also you ship greater than 3,500 emails in a single month or go over the every day restrict of 150 emails per day, your emails will likely be rejected and never despatched.

Nevertheless, even the fundamental paid plans offer you a hefty sending allowance, beginning with 10,000 emails per thirty days and as much as 50,000 contacts. In fact, there may be additionally a slider that lets you choose the variety of emails you wish to ship month-to-month, providing you with further room for flexibility and scaling.

It’s additionally vital that you may ship limitless emails per day, with the hourly restrict beginning at 600 emails, though it may be raised.

So how a lot will it value me precisely?

Mailtrap provides its customers 4 totally different plans:

• Free
• Fundamental
• Enterprise (hottest)
• Enterprise

Let’s say that you just wish to ship 10,000 emails per thirty days to the identical variety of contacts. In that case, you’ll pay simply $15 per thirty days. However, in the event you plan to ship 100,000 emails/month, you possibly can both select the Fundamental ($30) or Enterprise ($85) plans, relying on how superior options you want.

Mailtrap Value Record

• Free: You may ship as much as 3,500 emails out of your app/mission and a restricted variety of advertising emails since you possibly can have solely 100 contacts. However, not less than, your emails gained’t have Mailtrap branding.
• Fundamental: The starter pricing plan permits you to ship between 10,000 and 100,000 emails, and retailer as much as 50,000 contacts. Nevertheless, it lacks some superior options like devoted IPs and retains your electronic mail logs just for 5 days. The largest draw back is that you just’ll be capable of contact the client assist workforce solely through electronic mail, Monday by Friday.
• Enterprise: Being priced at $85/month for 100,000 emails and as much as 750,000 contacts, this plan sits proper within the golden center. It contains every part from the fundamental options, like in-depth analytics, to superior stuff, comparable to devoted IPs, SSO, and precedence 24/7 assist that you may contact through reside chat. Moreover, bootstrappers and indie hackers get a 35% lifetime low cost for this plan.
• Enterprise: The plan for customers who want to ship 750,000 emails per thirty days or extra, whereas having all of the options Mailtrap can provide.

Observe that in the event you’re a giant sender, you possibly can discuss to Mailtrap’s gross sales workforce and agree on customized pricing. You’ll additionally get a deliverability supervisor, onboarding help, limitless person seats, and extra.

5. Mailtrap’s on-line opinions

To offer you a good and unbiased evaluate of Mailtrap, we’ve gone over virtually 100 opinions on G2.com.

Based mostly on our analysis, we’ve discovered that Mailtrap has largely constructive opinions and is fairly well-received by the neighborhood.

How does Mailtrap assist?

In the case of sending transactional emails and bulk emails through a flexible API and SMTP, Mailtrap appears to knock it out of the park with excessive inboxing charges and quick supply.

Right here’s a treemap that summarizes the constructive remarks from customers who have been requested how Mailtrap helped their companies.

As you possibly can see, most customers acknowledge Mailtrap’s electronic mail deliverability options, developer expertise, and its knowledgeable assist.

And the way did Mailtrap assist its shoppers obtain their objectives? As an illustration, a consumer from the FinTech {industry} remarked that Mailtrap ensured quick and dependable supply of their KYC emails, account notifications, and different vital user-triggered messages:

One other person mentioned that they use Mailtrap to ship excessive volumes of transactional emails and that they keep a clear separation from their bulk infrastructure. We’re guessing they obtain this utilizing the platform’s separate sending streams, however extra on that later.

Then, there’s a person who says they use the platform to trace whether or not their emails have been delivered or not:

Principally, Mailtrap appears to be a dependable and versatile transactional electronic mail service not just for small-to-medium-sized companies but additionally high-volume senders.

What do customers like about it?

Mailtrap customers suppose it’s an reasonably priced instrument that has an intuitive setup with responsive buyer assist. In addition they recognize its deliverability, main SDKs, and clean integration, amongst different issues.

Right here’s a cool little bubble chart that summarizes a number of the person impressions:

Many customers level out how Mailtrap’s SMTP is simple to combine and that it reliably delivers their transactional emails. As an illustration:

In fact, the platform’s buyer assist workforce has acquired a number of reward as properly:

What do customers dislike about Mailtrap?

Clearly, folks just like the platform and largely have constructive issues to say. However, as with every part in life, even for Mailtrap, it’s not all milk and honey.

A number of the most typical unfavorable remarks I’ve observed in regards to the platform are that it has easy automations, no A/B testing, or that its analytics aren’t deep sufficient for superior advertising, which you’ll be able to see from the bubble chart beneath.

To some extent, feedback about its primary automation builder are to be anticipated, since Mailtrap is a platform centered on offering providers to builders.

However, if it’s geared in the direction of builders, why do some customers have a difficulty with its documentation? Nevertheless, if it’s up to date usually, it will possibly cross as a minor situation.

Now we have additionally seen some remarks about the truth that Mailtrap’s servers are based mostly within the US, which may be a difficulty if you wish to adjust to regional laws. However, we’ve additionally discovered that Mailtrap is compliant with GDPR, so there’s that.

Some customers even have a difficulty with the free account having a restrict on the variety of emails you’ll be able to ship (3,500 emails/month).

Whenever you take a look at the large image, customers didn’t just like the lack of electronic mail advertising options, and that that they had to make use of their very own options for integrations, automations, and A/B testing. Nevertheless, Mailtrap is a service geared for builders, so we’ve determined to chop them some slack right here.

Person opinions’ abstract 

Based mostly on our breakdown of Mailtrap opinions, customers appear to like it, however, after all, it has its downsides. General, it’s nice for sending transactional emails, it’s intuitive, and it will possibly provide help to preserve observe of your deliverability, even enhance it.

Nevertheless, in the event you’re a complicated electronic mail marketer who must automate multi-step journeys or combine your app or mission with a CRM, you might need to look elsewhere.

Moreover, if you wish to use Mailtrap as a free answer, you would possibly discover it a bit restricted in options, because it has reside chat with buyer assist and devoted IPs reserved for paid plans.

To sum it up: the platform nails transactional emails, however falls quick in relation to high-end electronic mail advertising or offering free customers with the superior service they’re in search of.

6. In-depth software program evaluate

Now, it’s time for us to share our key takeaways after sending emails with Mailtrap and rigorously testing the platform. Our common impression is that the software program is fairly simple to make use of, even for junior builders and non-tech-savvy entrepreneurs.

The interface is intuitive since there are pre-made code snippets to save lots of you a while organising transactional emails. However, launching campaigns follows the standard industry-standard workflow, so it’s a breeze, particularly in the event you’ve used related providers earlier than.

Nevertheless, area authentication must be accomplished manually, even in the event you’re utilizing a well-liked supplier like GoDaddy, which may be a difficulty for some. Fortunately, it doesn’t take a lot time, and Mailtrap is fast to confirm your area.

Right here’s what the entire strategy of sending emails with Mailtrap appears to be like like. 

The Signal-up course of

Signing up is seamless, since, like I’ve mentioned, you need to use your Gmail, GitHub, or Workplace 365 accounts. 

Then, issues get a bit difficult since you must manually add the DNS information offered by Mailtrap to your area supplier. There isn’t an choice to do it robotically, as with some electronic mail service suppliers, so that you must do it by hand.

Luckily, Mailtrap gives a bunch of tutorials on their web site, each within the type of step-by-step articles in addition to movies, in the event you’re extra of a visible learner. As an illustration, there’s a useful information for every of the most important area suppliers out there, which is a pleasant contact.

When you add your area, you’ll simply must fill within the compliance kind with some primary sender data, which has change into an {industry} customary these days. This solely took a few minutes to finish, and we noticed the Verified badge subsequent to our area, which meant it was prepared to begin sending emails.

Electronic mail API/SMTP

Mailtrap’s main promoting level is its electronic mail API and SMTP providers constructed for developer groups. In case you’re a high-volume sender and in the event you’re constructing for scale, velocity, and superior performance, you’ll want the API. However if you’d like a easy, but suitable, answer, go together with the SMTP. 

No matter which one you select, the very first thing you’ll discover is that you may select between Transactional and Bulk streams. These are Mailtrap’s devoted streams, which let you ship each user-triggered and bulk emails on the identical time with out noticing a drop in your deliverability charges.

It’s additionally price noting that these separate streams are true separate streams, which means they use their very own IP addresses, domains, and infrastructure to ship emails. This implies you’ll see larger deliverability charges than streams that use a shared infrastructure however isolate sender reputation on the IP stage by devoted IPs.

Shifting on from technical jibber-jabber, when you select your required sending stream, you’ll see a display screen together with your SMTP and API credentials. So, to begin sending emails, all that you must do is copy/paste them into your configuration, or use one of many code samples offered by Mailtrap, which makes integration tremendous simple. 

In case you plan to go the API route and automate your electronic mail supply, you’ll be happy to know that Mailtrap’s electronic mail API provides many different options in addition to sending. For instance, you possibly can design, edit, and host templates, handle contacts, join webhooks, and extra.

As soon as we began sending some transactional emails, we observed that the majority of them landed straight into the principle inbox, in a well timed trend at that, too. Furthermore, we first despatched them on the free plan, which means we didn’t have entry to devoted IPs, warm-up, and different deliverability options, however we nonetheless achieved excessive inboxing charges, which are literally there by design, similar to Mailtrap advertises.

We have been additionally in a position to activate monitoring for opened emails and clicks, which confirmed up as statistics in a separate dashboard, which we cowl a bit later within the article. 

You can too hook up Mailtrap’s MCP server to your IDE to ship emails or just clean out your workflow. We’ve tried it out in Cursor for desktop and it labored like a attraction.

So, does Mailtrap Electronic mail API/SMTP service get a sure or a no from us? In line with the way it fared on our checks, it’s a sure. We don’t like the truth that devoted IPs are locked to the Marketing strategy and that there’s an preliminary hourly sending restrict for brand spanking new plans, nevertheless it did every part as promised. 

General, in the event you’re a developer, we expect that you just’ll take pleasure in Mailtrap, no matter your expertise. Nevertheless, in the event you’re on a finances and want devoted IPs or a number of customers, or want a plethora of integrations, you would possibly wish to look elsewhere.

In-depth analytics

Monitoring the efficiency of your emails by observing key metrics like spam, bounce, open charges, and many others., has all the time been vital for adhering to all of the email marketing laws and regulations.

Furthermore, with the 2024 addition of Google and Yahoo authentication changes, in addition to 2025 Microsoft bulk-sender regulations, having some electronic mail analytics is a non-negotiable.

In the case of Mailtrap, the platform does a fairly stable job with its analytics dashboard. You get helicopter-view dashboards and drill-down reviews the place you possibly can observe all a very powerful metrics for all domains or streams collectively, or individually, as you like.

We additionally preferred that we have been in a position to see stats for all main mailbox suppliers, together with Google, Google Workspace, iCloud, Microsoft, and others. 

Moreover, we turned on shade coding, which informed us how every electronic mail efficiency metric is doing based mostly on Mailtrap’s pre-determined numbers.

We additionally dug by electronic mail logs after sending our check emails to see the place they went, their standing, template variables, and different technical particulars. Though the logs are fairly detailed, we don’t like the truth that they’re saved just for 3 days on the free plan. And if you’d like Mailtrap to maintain them for 15 or 30 days, you’ll need to subscribe to the platform’s Enterprise or Enterprise plans.

We might additionally like to say that you may share your Google Postmaster Instruments with Mailtrap’s deliverability workforce. This manner, you possibly can relaxation straightforward, since they’ll observe the dashboards for you, let you realize if one thing is off, and counsel the wanted fixes.

On the whole, Mailtrap’s analytics dashboards tick all fashionable checkboxes and might fare fairly properly among the many {industry}’s greatest. They’re complete and intuitive, and present all statistics that you must adjust to the most recent laws and establish or troubleshoot points affecting your electronic mail efficiency.

Electronic mail advertising and campaigns

Moreover an electronic mail API and SMTP for builders, Mailtrap additionally provides numerous options for entrepreneurs. 

Nevertheless, similarly to MailerLite, earlier than creating your first marketing campaign, you first must confirm your area. Fortunately, as we’ve talked about already, this doesn’t take an excessive amount of time with Mailtrap.

The marketing campaign builder is tremendous easy, which is usually a good or a nasty factor, relying on what you’re in search of. In case you’re in search of a minimalistic answer to ship common electronic mail advertising campaigns, then look no additional. However if you wish to ship RSS, auto-resend, A/B cut up, or different sorts of campaigns, you would possibly wish to look right into a extra superior answer.

You begin by getting into your required marketing campaign title, electronic mail topic, from title, and different vital particulars. The standard stuff, proper? 

You then transfer on to picking whether or not you wish to begin your design from scratch or based mostly on a number of the primary electronic mail templates Mailtrap provides. We went with a template and used the drag-and-drop editor to make it in keeping with our liking.

The drag-and-drop builder comes with the standard options: design on the left, parts on the correct. You can too preview how your electronic mail appears to be like on cell phones, in darkish mode, on totally different resolutions, and many others. 

Additionally, an excellent minor factor, however we appreciated the truth that the one-click subscribe button was added robotically to our bulk emails. This manner, you possibly can relaxation assured you don’t break this vital regulation imposed by most mailbox suppliers.

Against this, the AI options the drag-and-drop electronic mail editor provides are stable, however don’t anticipate a miracle. You may generate buttons, headings, even textual content and pictures, which may be useful if you’d like some concepts, however as with all issues AI, not an end result.

Thus far, the marketing campaign builder has labored flawlessly. We tried out the drag-and-drop editor, the AI instruments that got here with it, performed round with totally different parts, and many others. Nevertheless, once we needed to check out the HTML editor, we couldn’t get again to the design display screen. As an alternative, we might solely preserve enhancing the one template we’ve made. This is likely to be a difficulty for some, however you possibly can go previous it by creating designs upfront on the devoted Electronic mail Templates web page.

Ultimately, we created a brand new template, performed round with the HTML editor, and have been fairly glad with it. We additionally customized it a bit with person information and previewed it. Nevertheless, whereas previewing it for various units, we realized it doesn’t have the dark-mode preview function just like the drag-and-drop editor, which was a nuance, so to talk. 

Once we moved on with the design and selected our Viewers, that’s, the recipients, or name it as you’ll, we have been introduced with a abstract of our marketing campaign. On this web page, you possibly can edit the marketing campaign particulars, design, recipients and make any fixes earlier than hitting the Schedule Marketing campaign button.

Nevertheless, we should notice that though you possibly can schedule your electronic mail campaigns for as much as two weeks upfront, you possibly can’t do it for various time zones. You’re solely locked to the time zone you might be in, however we came upon you possibly can go round this by shortly altering the time zone within the person settings.

Additionally, one of many greatest downsides to Mailtrap’s electronic mail advertising capabilities is that it doesn’t present any options for A/B testing. This implies you’ll need to resort to utilizing separate instruments for this or analyze the outcomes of various campaigns your self.

To sum up our impressions concerning Mailtrap’s electronic mail advertising options, right here’s a pleasant little desk for you:

Record administration 

For a platform that’s geared in the direction of builders, Mailtrap provides contact administration performance that meets just about all {industry} requirements.

You may import your contacts in CSV, and in the event you don’t have one, the platform provides a template you need to use to make it a bit simpler for you. When you import them, you possibly can handle their particulars by defining Fields (e.g., title, state, nation, and many others.), which can be used for personalization. 

You can too create lists on the devoted web page, the place you possibly can filter your contacts by many alternative variables, comparable to subscriber standing or the phase they’re in.

Talking of segments, if you wish to goal your viewers extra particularly, you are able to do so by basing it on the Fields you beforehand created and the occasions like clicks or opens. As an illustration, in the event you have been to, let’s say, attempt to drive larger conversions, you possibly can ship a focused marketing campaign to subscribers who’ve clicked on a promotional hyperlink in your earlier campaigns.

Integrations

So far as integrations go, they don’t seem to be Mailtrap’s strongest function, to say the least. Extra exactly, the integrations web page presently has round 20 of them, if we exclude the SDKs listed there.

Although we now have to say that the featured integrations may be tremendous helpful, since they embody Zapier, which helps you to join Mailtrap to a plethora of apps in just some clicks, or Make, which you need to use for superior automations.

There are additionally many integrations with AI-powered instruments, comparable to Lovable or Retool, to call a pair. These may be useful in the event you’re a vibe coder or if you wish to make an app with none earlier coding expertise.

Automation

Mailtrap’s automation builder can also be one in every of its weak hyperlinks, which is smart because it got here out of beta not too long ago. Presently, you need to use it to make:

• Welcome sequence emails
• Onboarding prompts from profile adjustments
• Occasion-driven follow-ups
• Phase-based campaigns

You can too set off occasion flows by sending API calls, which is a pleasant contact to convey your transactional and advertising efforts collectively. 

Nevertheless, though it’s easy in comparison with what a number of the rivals have to supply, we admit that it will get the job accomplished, particularly in the event you’re in search of a easy instrument. You’ve obtained your standard triggers like ‘contact created’ or ‘contact faraway from listing,’ actions like ‘ship electronic mail’ or ‘unsubscribe contact,’ and guidelines comparable to time delay and conditional cut up. All of that is packed in a fairly customary format that may be simply navigated and used with out a lot analysis.

You can too observe the efficiency of your automations within the Reviews tab inside the automation builder. It will mean you can see metrics for every step of your sequence, such because the variety of recipients who’ve accomplished every motion, clicks, opens to your emails, and many others.

However, in the event you want superior automations that may information your buyer by each step of your advertising funnel or that may be related to different platforms and instruments, you must most likely take a look at some different choices in the marketplace.

Buyer assist

Lastly, we come to buyer assist, which Mailtrap promotes as one in every of its top-selling options. And, we now have to say, they’ve earned each proper to take action. That’s, if the net person opinions are to be trusted. 

Specifically, out of 100 opinions we’ve analyzed, just about all of them reward Mailtrap’s buyer assist workforce. Take, for instance, this small-business proprietor who says they’ve acquired assist for organising transactional emails into their website.

Nevertheless, it’s not all roses and daisies. Specifically, you possibly can contact the platform’s buyer assist solely through electronic mail in the event you’re on Free and Fundamental plans, they usually’ll be accessible solely Monday by Friday. However in the event you improve to Enterprise plans or larger, you’ll be capable of attain them through reside chat as properly, and even get precedence assist. Oh, and there’s no cellphone assist.

However in the event you can reside with these minor obstacles, we imagine that Mailtrap’s buyer assist will show dependable.

Can we suggest Mailtrap?

As we attain the top of the article, we sincerely hope that we’ve offered you with sufficient data on whether or not Mailtrap is the correct answer for your corporation.

To sum it up, if you’re in search of a versatile API/SMTP service with excessive deliverability charges and also you don’t want superior automations, you must give Mailtrap a go! 

However, in the event you want superior automations, integrations to CRM platforms, or analytics for multi-step journey electronic mail advertising, we suggest giving a number of the alternate options a go.

Don’t know the place to begin? Be happy to take a look at our list of the best newsletter software, which could have some platforms that can tick some advertising packing containers for you.