SparkPost

Bulletproof API mail delivery with OK freemium tier

Kommentare: I use the SMTP integration to send administrative alerts from my web servers. I appreciate the reliability of deliverability for these critical messages. I prefer to offload the responsibility of sending email from my web servers so they can do the job of hosting. The other benefit I get is that my SPF and DKIM settings can be static for all domains I host instead of tying my sending IPs to my hosting IPs, which have the possibility of changing. I can also easily whitelist delivery of my admin alerts to make sure I receive critical information instead of it accidentally being sent to spam.

Vorteile:

API delivery is super simple and offers SMTP server-based injection Easy to set up DKIM and SPF Freemium tier meets my needs for basic services Admin panel offers great reporting Lots of technical guidance on effective bulk sending

Nachteile:

There are other services that offer higher send limits with their free tier, but SparkPost purports to have better deliverability. This seems a fine tradeoff for the lower limit at the free level since I don't come close to hitting my cap.

Good service to make sure your emails will arrive where they should

Vorteile:

I never had the problem of an email not arriving or getting into the spam folder after installing Sparkpost. It has an easy to install WordPress plugin that makes sure all emails that are sent by the website get sent via Sparkpost. Before installing Sparkpost we had several clients complaining that filled in contact forms would land in their spam folder but we haven't had the problem after installing Sparkpost. It is also very cheap to use. For our use-case we haven't even gotten above the free threshold.

Nachteile:

It can be a hassle sometimes to activate a domain for sending, requiring altering the DNS of the website. You can also activate it via an email address associated with the domain but this doesn't always work great either. After a domain has been added to another account it can't be added or transfered to a different account afterwards without the old account deleting the domain. We had this problem with one client for which we couldn't activate Sparkpost because it had been installed by another party before and we didn't know who this was so we couldn't ask them to remove the domain from Sparkpost.

Not a service you want to rely on

Kommentare: I can only warn anybody who relies on their mail being sent to use sparkpost.
We used sparkpost for more than two years. It seems that several months ago they added some automated abuse detection which flagged our account. We only use sparkpost to send transactional mail to our customers and do not send unsolicited marketing mails or similar.
When our account got suspended we couldn't reach anybody to fix this for hours. After finally getting into contact our account got activated again and we just received a standardised "Sorry" E-Mail and that's it.
We haven't had the resources to switch out our mail provider and now after 6 weeks our account got suspended again. After not being able to reach somebody for hours, the person we got in contact with only told us that some other department was responsible for account suspensions. This service absolutely terrible and you definitely do not want this as a critical part in your architecture.

Vorteile:

Templating for emails API functionality Admin interface

Nachteile:

Service reliability. We got suspended not once but TWICE. And couldn't get into contact with the right customer support person. Our whole business relies on messages/orders being sent, so this is really frustrating. Asynchronous nature of API. When you send a message you always receive an "200 OK" Status Code. To get to know if a message got successfully sent you need to query another API.

Good, but some features hard to view

Kommentare: We inherited the tool from another product team, and it is very integrated, so hard to remove - but also does work well in the sending of our automated emails. There is very little down time which is great. We wish the filtering was less cumbersome/sensitive and that there was a larger window for seeing past emails than 10 days.

Vorteile:

I like that it is integrated with our systems - it does work smoothly and the analytics are helpful for reviewing open, close, bounce, etc rates.

Nachteile:

I found that the standard 10 day window to see past emails too short - especially when we have a 14-day subscription warning - I can never see the emails we sent when customers write in to ask about it. This is something we can upgrade, but it seems expensive for 4 extra days of view. The filtering capability is also VERY fickle, and it feels very cumbersome to search for emails, domains, sent days. etc.

Can't beat the price, but usability could be improved

Kommentare: The Sparkpost team is clearly committed to improving their product, and they care about their customers. For anyone who's happy to use the API for configuration, using Sparkpost is a no-brainer.

Vorteile:

Sparkpost is very reliable for transactional email sendings, and the free plan provides unbelievable value.

Nachteile:

Some Sparkpost features cannot be altered via the dashboard, and therefore require some API/programming knowledge to change - however this is improving.