If you are a blogger, running a small-to-medium business, then you may want to save the cost wherever possible. And email would be one of the items where you can save few hundred dollars per year.
There are three types of email service you need as a blogger/website owner.
- Transactional – to send emails about events, transaction, order notification, digital assets, etc.
- Marketing emails – newsletter, promo, blog post, etc.
- Hosted emails – to send and receive emails. (you need this if you are on VPS like DigitalOcean or Linode, etc.
Email Provider
FREE Transactional email provider
Transactional email reliability is essential as you want to ensure your visitor, a customer receives intended emails on priority. It could be anything including the following.
- Digital assets – if you are offering PDF, eBooks, docs or any files through email as I use through Thrive Leads.
- Site’s activity – if you would like to notify your users when they change the password, register an account or notify on comments.
- Order – to notify for order completion, invoice, thank you letter.
Now you may have an idea why you need this so let’s see the list of FREE transactional email service provider.
1. Mailgun
Get 10,000 emails every month in FREE without providing a credit card. You can integrate Mailgun with your favorite application/framework like PHP, Java, Net, Python, Node.js, Ruby, etc.
You must verify the domain ownership before starting sending an email, and the whole setup took less than 15 minutes for me.
It has all the following basic features you need and excellent reporting.
- Email validation
- Batch sending
- Personalization with recipient variables
- Scheduled delivery
- SMTP or API
- Spam complaint handling
- Bounce handling
- Detailed logs & analytics
2. SendGrid
SendGrid is one of the most popular email platforms used by a giant like UBER, Spotify, Yelp, etc. In the free plan, you get 12,000 emails per month.
You can integrate and deliver your emails through SMTP or API, and it supports all primary programming platform like curl, node.js, ruby, python, go, PHP, Java & c#.
3. Mailjet
Mailjet is one solution to transactional & marketing emails, and they provide 6,000 emails per month. As standard, you can integrate Mailjet with SMTP or API, and it has extensive tracking reports where you can analyze how your emails performing including delivery status and open/click rate.
5. Sendin Blue
Get 9,000 emails free every month but keep in mind Sendinblue logo is displayed under free plan. SendinBlue provides real-time statistics to analyze your email performance including delivered, bounced, opened, clicked.
You can also integrate SendinBlue with WordPress, PrestaShop, Magento & Drupal.
I hope one of the above transactional emails satisfies your requirement.
FREE Marketing email provider
Do you intend to send a newsletter to your audience? Email is one of the best ways to have consistent traffic to your website, and if you don’t collect the emails, then you should think about it.
If you are looking to play around with marketing email platform or have less number of subscribers then following would be a good deal in FREE.
1. MailChimp
One of the most popular platforms to send the beautiful email to up to 2000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month in free. MailChimp offers all the features you may need from designing your email, tracking the performance and integrating with your favorite store like Shopify, woo commerce, Magento, etc.
Email editor is drag-n-drop, so you don’t need to touch the code.
2. Mailerlite
Send unlimited emails to up to 1000 subscribers with Mailerlite in the free plan. Design your email in minutes with a drag-n-drop editor or choose from existing templates. Free plan gives you all the features including tracking reports, click maps, autoresponders, RSS campaigns, A/B split testing, etc.
3. Campayn
Campayn offers to send an email to 500 contacts with 20,000 sending limits in the free plan. The free plan got basic reporting but not bad to start with. You can import the list from other online mailing list and responsive email in minutes.
4. TinyLetter
TinyLetter is a personal newsletter platform for those who don’t need all the business features like MailChimp. It’s utterly free service by MailChimp, and you will like it if you are looking for a simple email newsletter service.
5. Sendin Blue
Sendin Blue would be an excellent alternative to MailChimp where you can store unlimited contacts and send 9,000 emails per month in free. You can design mobile-friendly email and get real-time reporting about who open, click, bounce, etc.
6. Soundest
Send 15,000 emails in free every month with Soundest. Starting a campaign is easy with their easy editor, responsive emails, scratch card & personalization. You can integrate Soundest with Privy, Justuno, OptiMonk, Nosto, Shopify, Magento, Prestashop, etc.
7. Mailjet
Mailjet would be a good alternative to Sendin Blue which allows you to send 6,000 emails per month in free. Mailjet is an all-in-one solution where you create beautiful emails, send to your audience and optimize with report & analytics.
8. FreshMail
FreshMail offers up to 2000 emails to around 500 subscribers every month in free. FreshMail let you create different types of a campaign based on your needs. Some of the features include;
- Autoresponders
- A/B test
- Text messages
- One-time only
- URL-based
- Scheduled
- Ready-made templates
- Analytics
FREE Hosted email provider
You may not need this if you are on shared hosting like SiteGround because email is managed by them. However, if you are on VPS like Linode, DO then you need someone who can host your emails.
1. Zoho Mail
Host your emails with Zoho to send and receive to your @yourdomain.com. In the FREE account, you will get 5 GB per user mailbox & docs storage. You can host one domain, and the great news is there are no ads.
You can access emails on your mobile devices (IOS & Android) and has some of the following features.
- Multi-level folders
- Drop-n-drop interface
- Rules & filters
- Threaded view
- Anti-spam and anti-virus
- CRM integration
2. Pawlmail
Host your custom domain email with Pawnmail and get 2 GB storage is FREE. You can access your emails on the web, desktop or mobile email clients.
I hope above free email solutions save you a few dollars. Let me know which one you use and your experience.
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