Every mailer WP Mail SMTP supports, compared (pros and cons)

WP Mail SMTP is the most popular way to fix WordPress email, and the first real decision it asks you to make is which mailer to send through. That single choice decides your free sending limit, how much setup you face, and, more than anything, whether your order confirmations and password resets actually land in the inbox. So it is worth getting right, and the plugin’s own ranking is not the whole story.

One thing to know before we start: WP Mail SMTP is made by Awesome Motive, the company behind WPForms, and Awesome Motive also owns SendLayer, the mailer the plugin calls its “#1 recommended” option. SendLayer is a fine service, but that top placement is a related-party recommendation, not an independent verdict, so I have left it out of the rankings and judged every option on the same evidence. Where I cite deliverability numbers they come from independent testers (mainly EmailToolTester and Mailtrap, 2025 to 2026), not from the providers themselves, and every price was checked on June 14, 2026.

The full supported list

As of the plugin’s documentation (updated May 8, 2026), WP Mail SMTP supports 17 named mailers plus a generic “Other SMTP” option: SendLayer, SMTP.com, Brevo, Amazon SES, Elastic Email, Gmail/Google Workspace, Mailgun, Mailjet, MailerSend, Mandrill, Microsoft Outlook/365, Postmark, Resend, SendGrid, SMTP2GO, SparkPost, and Zoho Mail.

Most work in the free plugin, but three are Pro-only (Pro is $99/year list, often discounted to around $49 on promo): Amazon SES, Microsoft Outlook/365, and Zoho Mail. Resend and Mandrill were added in recent releases, so confirm their tier in your plugin version.

Outside WP Mail SMTP: Cloudflare Email Sending

Cloudflare now has its own outbound mail path, Email Sending (public beta). It is not one of the 17 built-in mailers above. If your domain already lives on Cloudflare, you can send WordPress transactional mail through that API instead of picking a relay in WP Mail SMTP. Flarepipe Email is one WordPress plugin that wires it up; it replaces the usual SMTP-plugin path rather than sitting inside WP Mail SMTP. Full costs, caveats, and who it suits: Cloudflare transactional email for WordPress.

At a glance

Mailer	Free tier	Entry price	Setup (1 easy, 5 hard)	Best for	Key limitation
SendLayer	200-email trial	$5/mo (1,000)	2	Simple WP transactional	Vendor-owned; no free tier; 3-day logs
SMTP.com	30-day trial (50k)	~$25/mo (50k)	2	Established relay	No free tier; restrictive refunds
Brevo	300/day (permanent)	$9/mo (~5k)	2	Marketing + transactional	300/day cap; mid deliverability
Amazon SES	3,000/mo for 12mo	$0.10/1,000	5	High-volume / AWS	Sandbox + steep setup; Pro-only
Elastic Email	100/day (after verify)	$19/mo (50k)	3	Budget testing	Worst deliverability (59.5%)
Gmail / Workspace	Free (low limits)	Free	4	Very low-volume personal	Hard daily limits; fiddly OAuth
Mailgun	100/day free	$15/mo (10k)	3	Developers; EU/US regions	Overage bills; declining deliverability
Mailjet	6,000/mo (200/day)	$9/mo (8k)	2	Small marketing senders	Deletes queued excess; branding
MailerSend	500/mo (card required)	$7/mo (5k)	2	Clean low-cost transactional	Free tier slashed; card required
Mandrill	Demo only	$20/block + Mailchimp	4	Existing Mailchimp users	Forces paid Mailchimp
Outlook / 365	Free (with M365)	M365 sub	4	M365 organizations	Pro-only; OAuth complexity
Postmark	100/mo (testing)	$15/mo (10k)	2	WooCommerce transactional	Free tier testing-only; US hosting
Resend	3,000/mo (100/day)	$20/mo (50k)	2	Modern dev stacks	No independent deliverability data
SendGrid	60-day trial	$19.95/mo (50k)	3	Enterprise / Twilio	Suspensions; shared-IP risk
SMTP2GO	1,000/mo (permanent)	$15/mo (10k)	2	Best all-round WP value	Dated UI; 200/day free cap
SparkPost (Bird)	Developer tier only	Contact sales	4	Enterprise high-volume	Opaque pricing; not for SMB
Zoho (ZeptoMail)	10,000 trial (1mo)	$2.50/10,000	3	Cheap transactional	Pro-only; slow approval
Other SMTP	Depends	Free	1	Unsupported providers	Least secure; stores password

Deliverability at a glance

Sorted best to worst by independent inbox-placement testing. These are third-party tests (EmailToolTester, Mailtrap, GlockApps) with different seed lists and dates, so treat any single score as one data point, not a ranking.

Mailer	Independent inbox placement	Source
SMTP2GO	95.5%	EmailToolTester 2026
Postmark	93.8%	EmailToolTester 2026
MailerSend	86.8%	EmailToolTester 2026
SendGrid	82% / 61%	EmailToolTester 2026 / Mailtrap 2025
Brevo	79.8%	EmailToolTester 2026
Amazon SES	77.1%	Mailtrap 2025
Elastic Email	59.5%	EmailToolTester 2026
Mailgun	26%	GlockApps Q1 2025
SendLayer, Resend, SMTP.com	No independent data	Not yet tested by a neutral lab

The mailers, one by one

SMTP2GO

The best all-round value for a WordPress site, and the one I would start most people on. Its free tier is genuinely usable (1,000 emails/month, 200/day, no credit card, no expiry), and it topped EmailToolTester’s 2026 inbox-placement test at 95.5%, holding that even on shared IPs. Paid starts at $15/mo for 10,000, with global sending regions if you need EU data residency. Cons: the dashboard looks dated, and the free tier’s 200/day cap can be tripped by a traffic spike.

Postmark

If your store’s transactional email has to land, this is the one. Independent testing puts it at the top (93.8% on EmailToolTester 2026, first place in Mailtrap’s March 2025 study), and it keeps transactional and marketing on separate streams so a newsletter blast cannot drag down your receipts. It also publishes its time-to-inbox data publicly, which almost nobody does. Cons: the free tier is testing-only (100/month), hosting is US-only, and templating is plain rather than drag-and-drop.

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

The best pick if you want a real free tier plus light marketing in one tool: 300 emails/day forever, up to 100,000 contacts, no credit card. It is EU-based, which helps with GDPR. Cons: the 300/day cap is shared between marketing and transactional and is rough for bursts, free-tier mail carries a “Sent with Brevo” line, and independent deliverability was middling (79.8% on EmailToolTester 2026), so it trails SMTP2GO and Postmark for critical mail.

SendLayer

Easy and cheap, and the plugin’s house recommendation, with the conflict of interest noted above. Setup is genuinely simple (its Quick Connect flow inside WP Mail SMTP wires up DNS in about two minutes), every paid plan includes a dedicated IP, and it starts at $5/mo for 1,000 emails. Cons: there is no permanent free tier (just a 200-email trial), Starter keeps logs only 3 days, overage auto-upgrades you to the next plan (which can surprise your card), and no neutral tester has published a deliverability figure for it, so its “98%+” claim is unverified.

Amazon SES

The cheapest way to send at volume, at $0.10 per 1,000 emails, and rock-solid infrastructure, but you earn that price with real setup work. New accounts start sandboxed (200/day, verified addresses only) and need a manually reviewed production-access request, you configure DKIM, SPF, DMARC, and bounce handling yourself, and a credit card and SSL are required. Independent inbox placement sat at a respectable 77.1% (Mailtrap 2025). Pro-only in WP Mail SMTP. Best for technical or high-volume senders already on AWS.

Gmail / Google Workspace and Microsoft Outlook/365

Both let you send through an account you already trust, with good deliverability at low volume, and both now use OAuth (the Pro plugin’s One-Click Setup makes this far less painful than the manual route). The catch with each is sending limits: consumer Gmail caps around 500 recipients/day and Workspace around 2,000, and a mailbox is not built for bulk. Outlook/365 is Pro-only, and Microsoft is winding down basic SMTP auth (disabled by default from the end of 2026, full removal announced for 2027), so the dedicated OAuth mailer is the forward-looking way in. Best for low-volume sites already living in Google or Microsoft.

MailerSend

A clean modern option with a visual template builder a non-developer can use, decent independent deliverability (86.8%), and a cheap $7/mo Hobby tier. Cons: the free tier was cut to just 500/month in late 2025 and now requires a credit card.

Mailjet

A generous-looking 6,000 emails/month free, with collaboration features, but read the fine print: the free tier caps at 200/day and then queues the overflow for three days before permanently deleting it, which is exactly what you do not want happening to a password reset. Best for small marketing sends, not bursty transactional mail.

Mailgun

Strong API and docs, and a useful EU/US region choice for data residency, aimed at developers. Cons: the free tier is 100/day and now includes one custom sending domain, overage bills can balloon, and independent inbox-placement scores have been sliding (GlockApps tracked it down to 26% in early 2025, though methodology differs between testers).

Resend

The nicest developer experience here, built around React Email, with a generous 3,000/month free tier. Cons: it is young (founded 2023), the free tier caps at 100/day, and no neutral tester has published a deliverability figure, so treat the good reputation as anecdotal.

SendGrid

Battle-tested, ubiquitous, and compliance-heavy, which suits enterprise teams already on Twilio, but it is a hard sell for a small site now: the permanent free tier is gone (60-day trial only), independent deliverability has fallen (61% in Mailtrap’s 2025 study, with a fifth of test emails going missing, though EmailToolTester’s own multi-round test put it higher at 82%, a reminder that scores vary by methodology), and its automated, hard-to-reverse account suspensions are a widely reported headache. Users also report Microsoft throttling its shared-IP traffic.

Elastic Email

The cheapest headline price, and the clearest one to avoid for real mail: it came last in EmailToolTester’s 2026 test at 59.5%, with placement swinging between 41% and 79% depending on the shared-IP pool, and the free tier only sends to real recipients once you verify your account. Fine for throwaway testing, risky for anything that matters.

Mandrill (Mailchimp Transactional)

Mature and reputable, but the most expensive way in for a small site: it has no standalone free tier and requires a paid Mailchimp Standard or Premium plan on top of $20 email blocks that expire monthly with no rollover. Best for teams already paying for Mailchimp.

SMTP.com

One of the oldest relays around, with a long ISP track record, but no permanent free tier (a 30-day trial), and a refund policy users describe as restrictive. Entry pricing is roughly $25/mo for 50,000 emails, and no current independent deliverability figure exists for it.

SparkPost (now Bird)

Enterprise-grade infrastructure with excellent analytics, suited to very high volume, but since the MessageBird acquisition the branding is confusing and the pricing is opaque (mostly contact-sales now). Not a fit for a small WordPress site.

Zoho Mail (ZeptoMail)

Extremely cheap at $2.50 per 10,000 emails, pay-as-you-go with no monthly subscription, and a transactional-only focus that tends to help deliverability. Cons: Pro-only, account approval can be slow (users report up to a month), and credits expire after six months.

Other SMTP

The generic fallback for any provider not on the list. It works with anything and is quick, but it stores a plain username and password (less secure than token-based mailers), many hosts block SMTP ports, and WP Mail SMTP itself says it should not be your first choice.

Honest recommendations

• Best free option for a low-volume site: SMTP2GO. A real permanent free tier and the best independent deliverability of the group. Brevo is the better pick if you also want light marketing and can live with its branding.
• Best for WooCommerce / transactional reliability: Postmark, for top deliverability and stream isolation, with SMTP2GO the cheaper close runner-up. For AWS-savvy high-volume stores, Amazon SES is cheapest if you will do the setup.
• Best for least setup hassle: if you already use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, the Pro One-Click Setup is the smoothest path. Among relays, SendLayer’s Quick Connect and Brevo’s no-card signup are the easiest. Just know that skipping DNS authentication to save time costs you deliverability later.
• What I would avoid for a small site: Elastic Email’s free tier (worst deliverability), SendGrid (no free tier, suspension risk), Mandrill (forces a paid Mailchimp plan), and Mailjet’s free tier for transactional mail (it deletes queued overflow).

After you pick one, verify it actually works

Here is the part almost everyone skips. Every mailer above has a “send test email” button, and WP Mail SMTP has its own Email Test, but a passing test only proves the message left your server, not that it reached an inbox or passed authentication the way the receiver judges it. A success there means the mailer accepted the message (an SMTP 250 or API 200), which is a completely different event from landing in someone’s inbox.

That gap matters because SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are all evaluated by the receiving mail server, not by you, and DMARC in particular needs alignment: SPF or DKIM has to pass and the authenticated domain has to match the From address your recipient sees. A test button cannot tell you whether that alignment holds at Gmail or Outlook. And the stakes went up in 2024 and 2025, when Google and Microsoft both moved from junking non-compliant mail to outright rejecting it, so a setup that “worked” last year can fail today without any bounce you notice.

So once you have configured your mailer, do not trust the test button as proof. Check what the receiver actually sees: run your domain through a free deliverability scan that reads your SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MX and tells you, in plain English, whether your setup is genuinely aligned, not just whether mail left the building. That is the only way to know your WP Mail SMTP setup actually finished the job.

Prices and limits were checked June 14, 2026 and change often; re-verify on each provider’s own page before buying. Deliverability figures are independent third-party tests (EmailToolTester, Mailtrap, GlockApps) and vary by methodology, so treat any single score as one data point.