I Tested 6 Postmark Alternatives: Here’s What I Found

Let’s not kid ourselves, Postmark is a great email service in almost every regard. However, if you’re reading this, the chances are that it doesn’t fit your needs anymore, and you’d like to switch it up a little bit.

Luckily, you’ve come to the right place! I’ve interviewed our very own deliverability experts whose opinions are based on the latest state of the industry and years of experience, took their recommendations, tested every platform I mention in this article, and these are the results!

Disclaimer: The references to software ratings, available features, and pricing were valid at the time of writing this article, but could be subject to change in the future.

Best Postmark alternatives: a snapshot

Click on a platform name to jump ahead to the detailed review.

• Mailtrap is the best Postmark alternative for product companies with large sending volumes looking for high deliverability and industry-best analytics.
• Mailchimp is most suitable for small businesses on a budget who need both email marketing and transactional messaging features.
• Mailgun is a solid choice for experienced developer teams since it’s, as its creators say: ‘made by developers, for developers.’
• SendGrid offers an email marketing suite and SMTP/API services with rich documentation, but has customer support locked for high-tier plans.
• Amazon SES is a great Postmark alternative for experienced developers who are already in the AWS ecosystem.
• Brevo is for businesses that want to send transactional emails and do multi-channel marketing.

Here’s a back-to-back free plan and pricing comparison of each Postmark alternative:

Postmark alternatives comparison criteria

Before we get into actual Postmark alternatives, let me share the criteria I’ve used to come up with the list.

I’ll describe the aspects I’ve benchmarked, provide the comparison tables I came up with, and more. This way, you get a 100% unbiased review with no sponsored links or content, just results from many hours of testing.

Email infrastructure

A solid email infrastructure is the backbone of every email service provider out there, and it consists of deliverability, reliability, and scalability.

Deliverability

Every email that doesn’t reach your recipient’s inbox costs you $0.11, so deliverability, or the platform’s actual ability to have your emails land in the main inboxes instead of going to spam or promotion folders, is crucial.

For example, to have your emails hit the mark, Postmark has strict sending policies in place, uses worldwide data centers, provides separate streams, dedicated IPs as add-ons, and a few other bits and bobs. 

So, I’ll compare what other providers offer in this regard and what they do to help you reach your recipients’ main inboxes.

I’ll also provide you with deliverability rates some of the providers on this list achieved on our recent deliverability tests we performed using free plans, same templates, and shared IPs. Here are the results:

If you feel like exploring this further, feel free to check out the article we’ve prepared for you on the topic of email deliverability comparison. ⬅️

Reliability

When we’re talking about reliability, we’re talking about whether an email service provider is able to consistently deliver your emails without any major hiccups. Additionally, an ESP shouldn’t face delays or downtimes and should offer transparent monitoring of these issues.

For instance, SendGrid advertises a 99.99% uptime, and I was able to see whether this is actually true by visiting its status page. 

Scalability

Scalability is the ESP’s ability to grow with your business, that is, to allow your business to grow without facing bottlenecks, degraded campaign performance, or other major issues.

To be scalable, an ESP should offer some of the following:

• High sending throughput
• Cloud-based infrastructure
• Dedicated IPs or streams
• 24/7 customer support
• Email deliverability consultations

Separate sending stream

As you already know, Postmark offers dedicated sending streams, which you can use to send user-triggered and bulk emails separately.

Now, true separate sending streams are quite rare nowadays, so, on this list, you’ll only see a couple of ESPs that offer them, while the others provide you the tools to separate your streams.

Here’s a quick breakdown of each:

Pricing comparison

To help you decide whether an ESP from this list is more affordable to you compared to Postmark or not, I will break down:

• Different pricing plans and features they bring to the table
• Price per sent email compared to Postmark
• Key pricing differences between each provider and Postmark

And here’s a table for you to get a brief idea of the Postmark alternatives pricing:

Transactional email sending

To help you send transactional emails easily, that is, welcome emails, password resets, etc., Postmark offers an SMTP server with pre-made snippets and a flexible email API. 

So, in this article, I’ll list ESPs that offer similarly rich documentation and APIs that support integration with major programming languages. In case you’re an API heavy user and need a plethora of integration options, here’s a breakdown of supported libraries for each provider:

Marketing email sending

Marketing email sending is quite a different story from transactional, since you’re sending campaigns instead of user-triggered messages. Currently, Postmark doesn’t offer this functionality.

In case you’re transitioning because of that, I’ll list some ESPs that can help you optimize your email marketing funnel, namely:

• Manage your contacts
• Track performance metrics
• Perform A/B testing
• Automate workflows

Essentially, these are just the features you can use to grow your business via email marketing.

AI, automations, integration

AI in email marketing

AI in email marketing has stopped being a gimmick a while ago. For example, Postmark offers MCP servers, with which you can prompt your AI assistants to send emails, use templates, track performance metrics, or even manage whole campaigns in your stead.

Moreover, ESPs have started integrating AI for audience segmentation, generating subject lines or even email content itself. 

So, I’ll make sure to point out useful AI tools I tried and tested throughout the reviews.

Integration

Although Postmark doesn’t offer many integrations, it has several useful ones, like the one with ActiveCampaign, its parent company. You can use it to get some basic email marketing functionality, then pair Postmark with Mailcoach or Craft Campaign to take your campaigns further.

However, if you’re looking for advanced integrations, I’ll be mentioning ESPs on this list that offer them.

Email design

Coding email designs has long been a thing of the past. Most ESPs nowadays offer some of the following features to make your email creation process as seamless as possible:

• Drag-and-drop editor – A solid drag-and-drop email builder lets you arrange your email according to your preferences, tweak the layout, preview mobile and desktop versions, and more. Everything without having to go anywhere near your HTML code editor.
• Email templates – If an ESP doesn’t offer its own native templates, it at least provides an integration for them. For this article, I checked not only how many template options you get for each ESP but also how good-looking they are.
• Sandbox mode – With a sandbox mode, you can safely test your emails before sending them, without worrying that you’ll spam your recipients. So, instead of sending out your emails beforehand, you can just inspect them, see how they fare with spam, and more. 

User experience

An ESP should make your life easier, not harder, especially if you’re transitioning from another solution. That’s why, when writing these reviews, I always ask myself the following questions:

• Is the platform user-friendly? Is it oriented towards marketers or devs?
• How can I reach the platform’s customer support, and when are they available?
• Do I get any migration help if I’m coming from another service?
• Can I consult with the platform’s deliverability experts?

To sum it up and answer these questions, here’s a nice little table for you:

Wrapping up

I hope you enjoyed this comparison of Postmark alternatives, the rest of the article can be found on Mailtrap blog!