Email is a cornerstone of business communication, essential for sharing crucial information with employees, candidates, clients, partners, and prospects. The volume of emails sent daily, which has now surpassed 300 billion and continues to grow, underscores the vital importance of email deliverability tools. It’s one of the most critical factors for maximizing ROI from your email efforts.
Today, we’re taking a closer look at email deliverability, including the latest policies impacting it and the best tools for developers to build and maintain effective email capabilities within their applications. By understanding these changes and tools, you can confidently navigate the email landscape, ensuring you have the insights needed to optimize your in-app email capabilities and increase your business’s success.
Recent updates from major email service providers have made email deliverability a hot topic. As of February 1, 2024, Google implemented stricter policies, including a hard spam rate threshold, strong authentication requirements, and mandatory one-click unsubscribes for bulk emails. Yahoo has introduced similar measures. These changes curb spam and protect users but pose challenges for businesses relying on bulk email.
These new regulations significantly impact deliverability rates for those not adhering to best practices. However, companies and developers prioritizing compliance and quality in their email strategies can maintain reliable delivery.
Understanding the difference between transactional and contextual email sending is crucial for developers integrating and maintaining email functionalities within their applications. Transactional emails, or mass and bulk emails, are automated messages sent to many recipients, such as newsletters and promotions. In contrast, contextual sending involves emails sent directly from users’ go-to email service providers, fostering high-quality, conversational experiences (one-to-one or one-to-few) that recipients are more likely to receive and engage with.
Email APIs are among the best email deliverability tools for developers aiming to optimize deliverability. These APIs enable seamless integration with users’ preferred email services, ensuring high deliverability and engagement by leveraging familiar, trusted platforms. Email APIs support best practices by offering strong authentication protocols and tools for managing unsubscribes, bounces, and engagement metrics, making them indispensable for developers focused on enhancing email deliverability.
Several key features and capabilities are essential when choosing an email deliverability tool to ensure your emails consistently reach their intended recipients.
Here are the critical attributes that define a great email deliverability tool and how an email API can help:
By focusing on these features and leveraging the capabilities of email APIs, you can choose an email deliverability tool that enhances your email marketing efforts, ensures your messages reach their audience, and ultimately drives better results for your business.
We’ve compiled a list of the best email deliverability tools available today to help you navigate the latest standards and ensure your emails reach their audience. These tools will optimize your email campaigns and keep you ahead in this ever-evolving landscape, making your job as a developer easier and more efficient.
Best for: Developers building and maintaining in-app contextual email
The Nylas Email API ensures nearly 100% email deliverability by enabling users to send messages directly from their email addresses rather than a shared domain or IP address. This reduces the risk of emails being marked as spam and increases engagement. Unlike other email APIs, Nylas allows users to send, receive, and manage their entire inbox within your application, with full CRUD capabilities to reduce context switching and increase productivity. It offers a developer-friendly interface and comprehensive documentation, making integration straightforward.
Key features of Nylas for email deliverability:
Nylas is the ideal choice for developers seeking a reliable, secure, and comprehensive email API that enhances productivity and ensures exceptional email deliverability.
Pricing: Nylas offers a full-service API platform with an email, calendar, and contacts API. Customers can choose from 3 pricing tiers:
Talk to an expert to choose the best plan for your team.
Best for: Developers building transactional email capabilities
SendGrid offers developers a transactional email API to help ensure high deliverability and reliable email performance. While contextual APIs like Nylas connect directly to users’ email accounts for a more conversational email experience, transactional APIs support large-scale outreach beyond rate limits. Many teams use both APIs to deliver a unified experience.
Key features of SendGrid for email deliverability:
Pricing: Free plan includes partial functionality for up to 100 emails per day. The Essentials plan starts at $19.95 per month for 10,000 emails. The Pro plan starts at $89.95 per month.
Best for: Developers building transactional email capabilities and needing personalized support
Mailgun provides a transactional email API for sending, receiving, and tracking emails, making it suitable for developers managing high-volume email campaigns. It offers features for maintaining high deliverability rates and detailed analytics to optimize email performance. For developers looking for additional support, Mailgun offers deliverability services for an extra fee.
Key features of Mailgun for email deliverability:
Pricing: Free plan includes partial functionality for up to 100 daily emails. Paid plans start at $15 per month.
Best for: Developers building transactional email capabilities, fast
Postmark offers a transactional email API that prioritizes fast and reliable email performance, ensuring high deliverability rates. It helps developers quickly deliver transactional emails, robust authentication protocols, and detailed analytics to monitor and improve email performance.
Key features of Postmark for email deliverability:
Pricing: The free developer plan includes partial functionality for up to 100 emails per day with optional add-ons like dedicated IPs starting at $50 per month per IP and DMARC monitoring starting at $14 per month per domain.
Best for: Developers requiring advanced analytics for transactional email
SparkPost is a cloud-based email service provider offering email delivery solutions. Its cloud-based SMTP service enables companies to send bulk emails with high deliverability rates. Additionally, SparkPost offers an API platform that allows developers to build custom applications for sending and tracking emails.
Key features of SparkPost for email deliverability:
Pricing:
Best for: Developers needing a cost-effective email solution for transactional sending
Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a cloud-based email service designed to help developers send and receive emails from any application. It simplifies the process of sending large volumes of emails, offering a variety of integration methods and robust deliverability features.
Key features of Amazon SES for email deliverability:
Pricing: Amazon SES offers a flexible free tier with up to 3,000 message charges per month for the first 12 months. After that, it charges $0.10 per 1,000 emails sent or received. Additional costs include $0.12 per GB for attachments, $24.95 per month for dedicated IP addresses, and $1,250 for the Deliverability Dashboard.
Good for: Developers needing a cost-effective email solution for transactional sending
Netcore Email API, previously known as Pepipost, is a cloud-based email delivery service designed to help businesses send notifications, newsletters, updates, and other transactional emails. The platform supports SMTP and HTTP API integration options, providing flexibility for different technical needs.
Key features of Netcore for email deliverability:
Pricing: Netcore offers a free plan for up to 25,000 monthly emails. Paid plans start at $25 per month for up to 150,000 emails, with scalable options for up to 2,000,000 emails at $445 monthly.
Good for: Marketers needing a transactional email solution with collaboration features
While Mailjet offers an email API that supports both transactional emails, it’s known for its email builder and marketing features. It is suitable for marketers and teams that need effective collaboration tools and reliable email delivery; however, it has limited integrations compared to more developer-focused tools.
Key features of Mailjet for email deliverability:
Pricing: Mailjet offers a free plan for 6,000 monthly emails (200 emails per day limit). The Basic plan costs $9.65 per month for 30,000 emails, and the Premium plan starts at $20.95 monthly.
Good for: Marketers and small to medium-sized businesses needing an all-in-one email marketing solution
Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) offers an email marketing platform with tools for creating, sending, and analyzing marketing and transactional emails. It is well-suited for marketers needing an integrated email and SMS campaign approach. Additionally, Brevo offers a transactional email API, making it a valuable tool for developers looking to integrate email functionalities into their applications.
Key features of Brevo for email deliverability:
Pricing: Sendinblue offers a free plan for up to 300 daily emails. The Starter plan starts at $15 per month for 20,000 emails. The Business plan starts at $65 per month and includes additional features such as A/B testing and advanced statistics. The Enterprise plan is custom-priced and includes dedicated support and a dedicated IP address.
Selecting the right email deliverability tool is essential for developers looking to optimize their in-app email communications and maintain high engagement rates. While each tool we’ve reviewed has strengths, Nylas stands out as the most comprehensive choice for contextual email. The Nylas Email API helps developers build native email integrations, ensuring nearly 100% email deliverability. It allows users to send messages directly from their email addresses, thus improving and maintaining their sending reputations.
Additionally, Nylas offers a calendar API and a contacts API, making it a versatile platform beyond email deliverability.
Explore how Nylas can elevate your email strategy and leverage its unique strengths by connecting with an expert and finding the plan that best suits your needs.
This blog post explores how to improve email deliverability. We look at ways to check your email deliverability and ways to ensure your emails are reaching your user’s inbox.
Understanding email authentication is important for ensuring the reliable delivery of your emails. Discover how email APIs can help establish this trust.
Erin is a content marketing professional at Nylas, where she creates digital assets that connect the organization to individuals. Before Nylas, she spent eight years working in public relations specializing in corporate communications strategy, B2B/B2C writing and editing, executive thought leadership, and other storytelling. In her free time, she enjoys volleyball, karaoke, and baking.
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