Top 7 Mailtrap Alternatives

Over the years, Maitrap has developed a reputation as a reliable email service provider for sending, testing, and controlling emails.

However, some marketers have been clamoring for more integrations, user-friendliness, and bulk sending features. Consequently, there is a need to explore other options that better meet their needs.

That's why this article reviews the 7 best Mailtrap alternatives. 

Let’s find the right fit for you!

Top 7 Alternatives to Mailtrap

Platform	Free Options	Best For	Stand Out For	Starting Price
UniOne	Free Trial	Developers, small to medium-sized businesses, and large enterprises	Instant event notifications, high deliverability rate, webhooks, AI-powered HTML editor, click and unsubscribe tracking, 45 days of log retention, 400 days of analytics data storage	$6 / month for 10,000 emails
SMTPget	Paid Trial	Growing small and medium-sized businesses and marketing teams	Email authentication, dedicated IPs, white label services, multi-language support	$125/month for 1,000 emails per hour
Mailgun	Free Trial	Marketers, small to medium-sized businesses	Email routing, inbox placement testing, reputation monitoring, email logs, email analytics, validation, SMTP, send API	$15 / month for 10,000 emails
Sendgrid	Free Plan & Trial	Developers, Marketers, Startups, High-Volume Senders, & E-Commerce Platforms	Quick integration, SMTP service, e-mail validation, deliverability insights, dynamic insights, email statistics	$19.95 / month for 50,000 emails
Brevo	Free Plan	Small-to-medium sized businesses, SaaS companies	Email automation, customizable CRM functions	$9 / month for 5,000 emails.
iDealSMTP	None	Marketers, small to medium-sized businesses	Dedicated IPs, antispam management, white labeling, blacklist monitoring, pre-made email templates.	$40 / month for 25,000 emails
Mailjet	Free Plan	Marketers, small to medium-sized businesses	Parse API, email automation, segmentation, A/B testing, AI copy generator, real-time collaboration	$17 / month for 15,000 emails

* Note on pricing: Services mentioned in this article use different pricing schemes, which may be quite confusing. Usually, a few pricing plans are offered, based on the selection of features available. Within each plan, a user may also select a tier which is determined by the number of contacts, or, sometimes, the number of messages sent per month. Some ESPs, notably UniOne, may offer a full set of features for any plan (even the free one), and the overall price is based on the number of messages or contacts only. Still others may charge extra for certain premium features. 

These variations make it difficult to compare prices directly. Therefore, we give the pricing information for the lowest plan and tier available for each service and add a few other pricing options as an example. To evaluate your expenses for a particular product, be sure to visit their pricing page.

What is Mailtrap?

Mailtrap is an email delivery platform designed for developers and marketers to test, send, and manage emails seamlessly. It offers a robust Email API and SMTP service for delivering user-triggered emails, along with detailed analytics. 

For marketers, Mailtrap provides tools to create impactful email campaigns, ensuring effective communication and engagement with recipients.

Why Are People Switching From Mailtrap? 

Reason #1: Pretty Slow Domain Verification Process 

User reports have revealed that domain validation and security checks may take up to two days. This limitation often hinders the timely setup and usage of the API. 

Reason #2: Initial API Complexity

Many new users find Mailtrap's API to be difficult to master, which can be a barrier to entry. While it becomes easier over time, the steep learning curve can deter those looking for a more user-friendly experience from the start.

Reason #3: Insufficient Integrations

Past users have noted that Mailtrap underperforms in terms of plugins and ready-made integrations with popular CRMs and e-commerce platforms. As a result, they’ve felt the need for additional resources, and this makes it less appealing for businesses seeking efficiency. 

Reason #4: No Free Trial for Higher-Tier Plans

Another common cause for concern is the absence of a free trial period for higher-tier plans, which prevents potential users from fully exploring the platform's capabilities before committing financially.

*The above reasons were taken from public online reviews of Mailtrap users.

 

1. UniOne - Best for Transactional Email Services

UniOne is the best Mailtrap alternative for organizations looking to send marketing and transactional emails.

Its robust HTTP API allows users to send up to millions of emails per hour with an impressive 99.88% delivery rate. The sevice delivers emails within an average of 5 seconds.

But UniOne doesn't just chug out emails.

It also provides tools to track how emails perform in recipients’ inboxes by monitoring vital metrics like open rates and bounce rates. The transactional email service offers advanced webhook notifications that alert campaign managers whenever recipients receive, open or click emails, raise spam disputes, or take other pertinent email actions.

Unlike Mailtrap, which is just testing out its email marketing solutions in beta mode, UniOne already allows users to set up required triggers for sending automated emails based on these actions. As such, it helps to boost cross-sales, up-sales, user retention, and customer development.

To test all these features and more, UniOne offers new users a 4-month free trial period. Compared to Mailtrap, which restricts the free trial period to lower-tier plans, UniOne free plan users can enjoy all the features.

Try UniOne Free →

Pros 

Scalability — robust infrastructure that delivers emails within 5 seconds on average.

Customer-centric support — comprising detailed documentation and fast responses to customer queries 24/7. 

Competitive pricing plans — UniOne offers fair pricing options without hidden costs, starting at $6/month for 10,000 emails monthly. 

GDPR compliance — strict adherence to legal requirements for data protection and privacy.

99.88% deliverability rate — ensuring that emails reach intended recipients effectively.

45-day log retention — keeping records of all email events for up to 45 days after sending. 

Cons

Needs more email templates — users have expressed a need for more predesigned templates tailored to various industries. 

 

Visual concerns — although they don’t impact functionality, past users believe improving some visual aspects may improve the user experience.  

Free Plan

Duration: 4 months.

Email allowance: 6,000 emails per month.

Paid Plans

Paid plans are based on the number of emails sent per month:

 

• $6/month: for up to 10,000 emails.
• $11/month: for up to 20,000 emails.
• $25/month: for up to 50,000 emails.

 

*Pricing information retrieved from UniOne in October 2024.

 

2. SMTPget - Best for Fast Email Delivery

SMTPget is an email marketing SMTP server service best known for its fast email deliveries and user-friendly interface. The platform is probably the second-best alternative to Mailtrap due to the ease with which new users can start their email marketing campaigns. 

Unlike Mailtrap, many SMTPget users have expressed their satisfaction with how easy it was for them to set up their servers.

The platform offers white-label servers and dedicated IP addresses that allow users to manage their sender reputation without any interference.

However, while Mailtrap offers a perpetually free plan, SMTPget offers a 3-day paid trial option that mandates new users to pay $50 to use some of its features for just three days. According to users, SMTPget needs to improve on its pricing tiers to make them more affordable.  In addition to the Trial SMTP plan, SMTPget offers three more pricing tiers: Standard, Business, and Premium SMTP.

Pros 

Quick setup — users can access SMTPget's dedicated server a few minutes after processing their payments.

Fast email delivery — emails get delivered within a few seconds.

100% white-label servers — for rebranding and using email servers under custom identities.

Dedicated IP —  users can manage their reputation without external influence.

Client compatibility — works with major email clients like Microsoft Outlook and Max Bulk Mailer.

Cons

Slow customer service response times – user reviews show that SMTPget's customer service team takes a bit too long to respond to queries and complaints. 

Inconsistent server connections — SMTPget could benefit from improving the reliability of its servers as some users report intermittent connection problems.

No free trial option  — instead, SMTPget offers a 3-day paid trial, which costs $50 to enjoy some of the platform’s features. 

Pricing

Free Plan

No free plan, but users can sign up for a paid ($50) 3-day trial with 250 emails per hour quota and a subset of features like mail tester reports, whitelisted IP,  SPF, DKIM, DMARC, RDNS, and basic support.   

Paid Plans

• Standard SMTP plan: $125/month for 1000 emails/hour.
• Business SMTP plan: $165/month for 2000 emails/hour. 
• Premium SMTP plan: $225/month for 3000 emails/hour.

 

*Pricing information retrieved from SMTPget in October 2024.

 

3. Mailgun - Best for Scalable Email Delivery

Mailgun is a reliable email sending platform that helps users perform, track, and optimize their email campaigns. Known for its robust API capabilities and detailed analytics, Mailgun offers marketers an easy way to optimize their email outreaches. 

It provides extensive webhooks and API access for users, making it a more versatile solution for companies that need advanced email management and integration capabilities.

New users can test Mailgun out for free, limited to just 100 emails per day and 1 custom domain. While this can have some impact, teams on a tighter budget might seek more generous alternatives like UniOne, which lets them enjoy 6000 emails/month for four months. In addition to the free plan, Mailgun also offers Basic, Foundation, and Scale price tiers depending on a company's expected number of emails.

Overall, Mailgun is praised for its powerful API, reliable email delivery, and detailed analytics. However, it has significant issues with customer support, service interruptions, and a costly pricing model for high-volume users.

Pros

Email logs — up to 30 days of log retention.

Effective spam prevention — informs users early about any chances of emails getting into the spam folder. 

Bounce and unsubscribe management – helps users manage bounced emails and unsubscribes easily.

Cons

Insufficient analytics features — users report that the analytics dashboards fall short of vital email performance metrics.

Declining customer support — some customers complain of slow response times. 

Expensive higher-tier plans— compared to more affordable options, the higher-tier plans are quite expensive. For example, UniOne charges just $25/month for 50,000 emails, while Mailgun charges $35/month for the same. 

Pricing

Free Plan

• Free plan – with a daily sending cap of 100 emails. 
• Free 30-Day Trial – with unlimited access to high-tier features. Mailgun offers a free 30-day trial on all pricing plans.  

Paid Plans

• Basic plan 

• $15/month for 10,000 emails 

No daily email limit, monthly email overage options, RESTful email APIs and SMTP relay, 1 custom sending domain, 1 API key, email analytics and reporting, 1-day log retention, and 1 inbound route. 

• Foundation plan 
• $35/month for 50,000 emails
• $75/month for 100,000 emails

Includes all basic plan features plus full access to RESTful email APIs and SMTP relays, email template builder and API, tracking, analytics, webhooks, 5 days log retention, 1-day message retention, and full access to inbound routing. 

• Scale plan

• $90/month for 100,000 emails

• $400/month for 500,000 emails
• $700/month for 1,000,000 emails

Includes all foundation plan features plus SAML SSO, 5,000 email validations, dedicated IP pools, send time optimization, live phone & chat support, 30 days log retention, up to 7 days message retention, and schedule and send analytics reports. 

 

*Pricing information retrieved from Mailgun in October 2024.

 

4. Sendgrid - Best for Multi-channel Campaigns

Twilio SendGrid is an HTTP API and SMTP service built by developers for developers and advanced marketers. Since Twilio and SendGrid merged, the platform has been noted for its advanced automation features across multiple channels, including email, WhatsApp, SMS, and more.

While its robust features make it ideal for large outreach goals, teams with smaller needs can also try it out for free to familiarize themselves with the features. Twilio SendGrid offers a free plan that allows marketers to send 100 emails per day with no commitment.

Users can calculate their email marketing ROI using SendGrid's ROI calculator app. With over 100 billion emails sent to different customers every month, SendGrid also has a decent email deliverability rate.

SendGrid's tested 5-minute onboarding time, exceptional services, and cross-platform integration make it one of the best alternatives for multi-channel campaigns.

Pros

Multichannel Support — helps to send messages via email, WhatsApp, SMS, and more, a feature Mailtrap lacks

Template Customizations — users particularly praise SendGrid's more advanced and flexible template customization options

5-minute onboarding — detailed documentation on how new users can send their first email within 5 minutes

Cons

Pricey for smaller projects — compared to Mailtrap, user reviews reveal that the paid plans are quite expensive for smaller teams

Few email design templates —  offers limited email template options

Slow support response times — some users claim it took a while before they got a response from the support team

Pricing

Free Plan

• Free plan – with 100 emails/day
• Free 30-day trial – with 40,000 emails 

Paid Plans

• Essentials plan 

• $19.95/month for 50,000 emails 

• $34.95/month for 100,000 emails

Among the features offered are analytics and deliverability optimization, 2 event webhooks, a dynamic template editor, and 1 additional teammate. 

• Pro 100K plan 
• $89.95/month for 100,000 emails
• $499/month for 700,000 emails
• $1,099/month for 2.5M emails

Includes analytics and deliverability optimization, dedicated IPs, sub-user management, single sign-on (SSO), 5 event webhooks, 2,500 email validations, up to 1,000 additional teammates, and dynamic templates editor and testing option. 

• Premier plan (Custom Pricing)
• For emails more than 5M+.

Includes analytics and deliverability optimization, dedicated IPs, sub-user management, single sign-on (SSO), 5 event webhooks, 5,000 email validations, 1,000 additional teammates, dynamic template editor and testing option.  

 

*Pricing information retrieved from Sendgrid in October 2024.

 

5. Brevo - Best for All-in-one Marketing Solutions

Brevo was a standalone email marketing service back when its name was Sendinblue. However, it is now an all-in-one hub containing a marketing, sales, conversations, customer data, and messaging API platform.

The hub offers a free plan that allows new users to send 300 emails per day while growing businesses can send 5000 emails per month on the starter plan. E-commerce pros with higher needs can either check out the business or enterprise pricing plans starting at $18/month.

Brevo's email marketing features help users craft personalized campaigns and highly targeted messages to their customers via WhatsApp, SMS, and email. It also offers a landing page feature that provides well-designed templates for driving traffic and generating leads.

For its transactional email, SMS, and WhatsApp messaging functionality, Brevo offers developer guides, SDKs, and API libraries that make setting up a breeze. There are also transactional email templates that promote personalization. And while a 99% delivery rate still puts it behind tools like UniOne with their 99.88%, Brevo is still a good enough Mailtrap alternative for all-in-one marketing solutions.

Pros

SMS marketing — for launching SMS campaigns

Automated workflows — for follow-up emails, reducing manual effort

AI support —  for easier email content creation

Cons

Branded emails — emails have Brevo’s logo in the footer

API usability – developer reports reveal that Brevo's email testing APIs are less developer-friendly

Tricky pricing structure  — Brevo's pricing structure is a bit tricky to understand as it is a hub containing different tools

Pricing

Free Plan

Duration: Free forever

Email allowance: 300 emails/day

Paid Plans

• Starter — $9/month for 5,000 emails
• Business — $18/month for 5,000+ emails
• Enterprise — custom price for tailored solutions

 

*Pricing information retrieved from Brevo in October 2024.

6. iDealSMTP - Best for Bulk Emails

iDealSMTP specializes in SMTP relay and bulk email-sending services. The platform's dedicated IP functionality and capacity to deliver emails within a few seconds make it popular among affiliate marketers with large email lists.

Although it doesn't offer a free option for new users, it does have a wide range of pricing plans to cater to diverse users with both low and high email volume demands. To keep email campaigns running, iDealSMTP offers vital spam management services and IP rotation.

Pros

Bulk email services — dedicated mass email delivery service for sending large volumes

Email scheduling — iDealSMTP allows more control of email campaigns by letting users schedule emails for set times

White labeling — allowing agencies and service providers to offer services under their own brand

Cons

Late customer service responses – user reports reveal that iDealSMTP’s customer response team takes a while to respond to queries

No email testing tools – while it has other features to keep a sender's spam score low, it does not have dedicated email testing tools like Mailtrap does

No free plan — users have to pay first before using the services

Pricing

Free Plan

No free plan

Paid Plans

• Plan-25K: $40/month for 25,000 emails
• Plan-100K: $75/month for 100,000 emails
• Plan-1M: $365/month for 1,000,000 emails
• Plan-10M: $1649/month for 10,000,000 emails

 

*Pricing information retrieved from iDealSMTP in October 2024.

 

7. Mailjet - Best for Affordable Email Campaigns

Mailjet is known for its innovative features and user-friendly interface, along with the generous offerings on its free plan. It almost matches other cost-effective email marketing products like UniOne with a free plan that allows users to send 6,000 emails per month.

Apart from affordability, Maijet's advanced automation and segmentation capabilities have also earned it a reputation for creating seamless, personalized marketing campaigns. Multiple users praise it for allowing them to customize their emails and preview them before sending them. Furthermore, the addition of the AI copy generator has made the email creation process even simpler.

Rather than just helping customers send large volumes of emails, Mailjet goes one step further to help them reach more customers. Its email validation tools help clean the contact lists for higher open rates and lower spam scores. Indeed, it is a worthy Mailtrap alternative.

Pros

Generous free tier — with many great features like automation, email editor, and pages

Intuitive interface – easy to navigate and use

A/B testing — eliminates the guesswork by helping marketers test different email versions simultaneously

Cons 

Limited template selection — only a few template designs are available for customizing emails

Fewer metrics for analytics — compared to Mailtrap and other services like UniOne, its analytics dashboard could offer more detailed data

Account bans — some customer opinions show that Mailjet occasionally bans and closes down customer accounts for unclear reasons

Pricing

Free Plan

Duration: Free forever 

Email allowance: 6000 emails/month

Paid Plans

• Essential plan 

• $17/month for 15,000 emails 

• $37/month for 50,000 emails

Includes all features from the free plan plus unlimited contacts, online customer support, 500 email previews/month, and more. 

• Premium plan 
• $27/month for 15,000 emails
• $105/month for 100,000 emails
• $470/month for 500,000 emails

Includes all Essential plan features plus advanced statistics, marketing automation, dynamic content, A/B testing, landing pages, 2000 email previews/month, real-time collaboration on templates, priority support, and more. 

• Custom plan – pricing upon request.

Includes all Premium plan features plus a dedicated technical account manager, dedicated IP strategy, IP performance monitoring and management, activity logs, and many more custom options. 

 

*Pricing information retrieved from Mailjet in October 2024.

 

Conclusion

Choosing the right email service depends on your specific needs. For example, Mailtrap excels at its collaboration tools and free forever plan, making it ideal for development and testing. On the other hand, UniOne offers a generous 4-month free plan, high deliverability rate, and robust SMTP infrastructure, making it a proper alternative for transactional and marketing emails. Assessing your priorities — be it budget, features, or ease of use — will help you make the best decision for your business.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What are the best free alternatives to Mailtrap? 

Some of the best free alternatives of email service providers (ESPs) to Mailtrap include UniOne, Mailjet, and Brevo. Compared to Mailtrap’s free plan, which allows users to send just 1000 emails per month, UniOne and Mailjet allow users to send 6,000 emails every month. 

Does Mailtrap actually send emails?

Yes, Mailtrap can send emails to your recipients via its own dedicated inftastructure. However, you need to own a domain and add it to Mailtrap. For testing purposes, you can use a demo domain to send emails to the account owner's email address and explore the platform's features.

What is the difference between Mailtrap and Mailgun?

Unlike Mailgun, Mailtrap does not offer a pay-as-you-go plan. However, Mailtrap provides a 1000-emails Free Forever plan, allowing users to test and evaluate the service without any expenses.