Bulletproof API mail delivery with OK freemium tier
Pros
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
Cons
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
Pros
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.
Cons
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
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.
Pros
Templating for emails
API functionality
Admin interface
Cons
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.
Response from SparkPost
Hi Bernhardt, thank you for taking the to leave this review. In order to protect all of our senders against potentially bad actors or bad sending practices that would affect sending pools, we have a strong Messaging Policy that we enforce posted on our website (https://www.sparkpost.com/policies/messaging/). If you feel this does not apply to you, you can always write in to [email protected] to try and remedy the situation. Thanks again and have a wonderful rest of your week!
Best and Most Affordable SMTP Service
Great experience using SparkPost for our offices outbound email needs!
Pros
SparkPost is a great email delivery platform with an easy-to-navigate web UI and straightforward setup. Support is quick to respond (within 24 hours) and always willing to help. Service is reliable and far more affordable than a lot of competitors.
Cons
Automatic reputation monitoring is always a plus, as well as integrated deliverability testing to see if emails are being delivered to recipient inboxes. Would love to see these features added in the future!
Can't beat the price, but usability could be improved
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.
Pros
Sparkpost is very reliable for transactional email sendings, and the free plan provides unbelievable value.
Cons
Some Sparkpost features cannot be altered via the dashboard, and therefore require some API/programming knowledge to change - however this is improving.
When it works it works great
Pros
Super easy to get started. We just use this as a secondary SMTP relay. The one time use API keys for the relay seems more secure then other offerings.
Cons
Reporting and user interface isn't as good compared to SendGrid. It's just lacking the ability to search for specific messages. It's also hard at times to figure out where you need to go to find the information you need. We had several issues consistently delivering mail to specific customers, but perhaps that's because we were on the free tier.
Sparkpost has a dalily limit of 1000 sending emails, even for paid plans
Very frustrating experience, with the configuration process and with the limits to use the service. I switched to mail gun and i very happy.
Pros
Has a nice Look and feel. Deliverability rates i seems to be good. but i can't tried with my complete list of contacts because SparkPost limit account to send only 1000 emails by day, even after pay for a professional plan.
Cons
Very complicated to configure sending domains. Sub-accounts management is not user friendly
When you open a nwe account you have a limit of 1000 emails to send daily. Its ridiculous whe you manage list of 50M emails.
Response from SparkPost
Hi Julen, Thanks for your review. However, we do not restrict daily sending limits to 1000 per day on paid accounts. If we did, we'd be out of business. Some of our largest customers send 1B+ emails per day. I would suggest logging a ticket with support inside the app to help you with configuration.
Fan of Sparkpost Since It Started
When I started Work With Sparkpost I was Using Wordpress and That Time they were providing Free 200000 Emails for a Month This is huge. Means 200000 is More than enough and integration is also easy with SMTP. Now I can use Sparkpost For My Cashback Site also When there are More number of mails.
Pros
Integration Step I Liked the Most. Just Add Your Domain Verify Records & You are Ready to Go With SMTP, Easy to Setup & Now Cheaper Plans.
Cons
They Reduced the Free Emails Limit Now Also Sometime I see .in Domains are not Getting integrated it says TLD not allowed. I don't Know Why they Say so as it's a Global tld. I had to use the .net domain then. Also there is No Direct email process from dashboard
Response from SparkPost
Thanks for the kind review, Sonu! Happy Sending!
Confusing
Overall it has tied into our system great, and we have only had a few minor issues. And the nonprofit pricing is great.
Pros
I do like that the product ties into our CRM and that we can build our emails and style them through our CRM. It's nice having everything in one spot.
Cons
We do tend to go to spam a lot and when looking at Sparkpost, the lingo is very confusing unless you have someone who understands code.
Generous free plan, but not such reliable services
Sending transactional emails
Pros
The free plan was extremely generous, more than other competitions. Setup is also quick, and good documentation to get you up and running.
Cons
Sometimes, there was a very long lag to Microsoft emails (i.e. Outlook, hotmail) - where emails were delivered more than 2 days later. Emails to Gmail however was unaffected. Inspite of exchanging several emails with the customer support, the problem was not fixed.
Great Transactional E-mail service that get the job done
We use this on all our projects to handle transactional emails, this has definitely been a useful software, it's great all round but event webhooks that are domain specific would be great
Pros
Obviously its ability to send transactional emails.
It gives insight on a user's activity in-relation to the email you will have sent which make studying trends easy.
Great email event filtering tool
It offer an adequate amount of free monthly e-mails for large services.
Cons
The API for getting events for emails sent doesn't have an option to set different endpoint for different domains.
I can't view contents of an email sent, it'd be great if it stored an actual copy of the email being sent
It can be slow to send messages at times.
Response from SparkPost
Thanks for your review and your feedback! We have passed along your suggestion to our product team. Would you be willing to chat with them for further feedback?
Full-featured API-first ESP with great support
Pros
We love the ability to integrate our own software stack at will (e.g. through the maintained sparkpost-python package or Webhooks) and have SparkPost just provide a solid general purpose interface. The reports section in the dashboard gives us everything you expect. Onboarding was great as well as customer service which we contacted on different occasions and always got back to us in a timely manner with a helpful response. This company and employees clearly know their (tricky) business. Hope the A/B testing feature graduates from their "labs" and finds it's way into the stable product API. Received a great merch t-shirt for filling out one of their developer surveys (now everyone on the team wants one...). No matter whether you fall under the generous free plan (100k) or need to scale really hard - a lot of other services will impose strict limits on your budget when you start sending a million or more emails per month. Simple summary: We're happy users and can recommend to everyone. Rock on!
Cons
Would be great have access to more detailed billing stats. The missing piece really is solid "email templating" but then you have to understand that SparkPost is not in the market for that and give you the tools (expose API endpoint for that) to instead integrate your own solution.
Great, generous offerings for users grandfathered into their 100k free plan
Pros
I switched to SparkPost from Sendgrid because of their more generous free plan back in 2016, and found it easy to drop in replacement code/API snippets to transition to SparkPost
Cons
All good things must come to an end and the 100k/month tier is no longer offered! Good while it lasts, though one wonders if the now grandfathered plan will one day end.
Response from SparkPost
Glad you're enjoying the service! We do not plan on un-grandfathering anyone who took advantage of the 100K free plan back in 2016. But we do want you to be successful, so hopefully your business will grow and you'll be sending a lot more than 100K emails/month eventually. Best of luck and Happy Sending!
Can't be trusted
Their new nickel-and-diming approach speak to new management or bad prioritization, squeezing every dime they can out of their customer base instead of focusing on the product. The product is getting worse while the prices are going up. And if they lied about past agreements, they're likely to do it again. I'd go elsewhere if I were you.
Pros
SparkPost is easy to integrate and easy to use, and used to offer great customer service before this year.
Cons
I signed up for a free account two years ago, to manage the email needs of our small non-profit. The account was advertised as "Free Forever." Later when they changed the pricing tiers, I received an email saying: "When you signed up, we promised that if we ever changed the terms of our 100K free plan, we would continue to honor the original plan for the life of the account. I would like to reaffirm this promise." This week they reneged on their promise, forcing small companies into exponentially more expensive pricing plans, despite explicitly promising never to do that.
Don't use for Wordpress
It was great until it went to complete garbage. The lack of communication about the suspension and then their unwillingness to help resolve the issue, is ultimately what resulted in such a terrible review. And now I get to spend more time moving clients to another service at my cost.
Pros
The service is easy to set up and makes sending email, but the cons, which you'll see below make this service unfit for sending emails from Wordpress.
Cons
I have been using SparkPost for a long time and use it to send comment and form notifications from Wordpress. So maybe a few dozen emails per month. Today when I logged into my account I found it was suspended. I emailed their support team and they emailed back with a suspicious link and asked me to explain why I sent an email with that link in it. This was the only information they gave me. My best guess was that it was from a spam comment on my Wordpress site, which would have been a notification to me personally. I said this and asked for more details to help look into the issue further, but they rejected that response and said they couldn't help any further and would stand by their suspension. So now I'm locked out of my account and need to figure out a way to find out, which domains I need to move away from their service.
Worst Customer Service Ever
An email sending service that was free
Pros
SparkPost is, in theory a very nice and slick email delivery service. They offer a fair amount of free emails each month. When it's working, it's great.
Cons
SparkPost will prompt you to add a credit card to cover any overages outside of your free amount. This seems fair, and I decided I didn't want emails not being sent should I ever exceed the free allotment, so I tried to add a card.
It failed. I tried another one. It failed. I tried a third. It failed.
Baffled I gave up and tried again a few days later. Same problem.
I began to worry that my account wouldn't be secured and that emails might go unsent. I emailed their customer support to ask if they could help. They asked me to double check that I'd entered my address correctly. Fine. I confirmed I had.
They replied and asked me to make ABSOLUTELY SURE I was entering it correctly. I reiterated that I was absolutely, 100% sure, and sent a screenshot of my address from my online bank account to prove it.
They wrote back and told me that I needed to be sure my address ABSOLUTELY correct.
Frustrated, I phoned my bank to see what I could do. My bank checked my transactions and discovered that they'd *approved* every one, but SparkPost had then *reversed the authorisation*.
I informed SparkPost of this, that there was a problem with *their* system. Their response: "I'm sorry to hear you are still unable to pass the system's address verification. We have the address verification in place to prevent fraudulent charges."
A bureaucratic nightmare!
If this is how they are if you're trying to GIVE them money, imagine how they must be with other problems!
Response from SparkPost
We are terribly sorry we couldn¿t get this resolved, it is an edge case limitation within our current payment infrastructure in the UK and we are actively looking to get this addressed so everyone can take advantage of the SparkPost service. We appreciate the feedback.
Sparkpost - solves key email challenges
Pros
This software has a focused feature set and executes it flawlessly and consistently. We utilize this feature to notify key stakeholders about real-time marketing effectiveness and new SQLs. The volume we send is high, and this program has met every challenge, without needing us to constantly babysit it.
Cons
I haven't found a thing to dislike, and I'm pretty picky about the software our agency uses (see my other reviews).
Perfect for sending transactional mail using WordPress
Great sending volume for price.
Pros
I can send tons of emails that are delivering direct to inbox from CF7.
Cons
I can only send from integration and not from the Spark Post dashboard, which is understandable.
Poor service
Pros
None anymore, better services are available.
Cons
They'll happily terminate your service with no notice after 5 years of custom.
Response from SparkPost
Hi Adam, I'm sorry to hear about your experience. In order to protect all of our senders against potentially bad actors or bad sending practices that would affect sending pools, we have a strong Messaging Policy that we enforce posted on our website which prohibits affiliate marketing, and which is why you were suspended. (https://www.sparkpost.com/policies/messaging/). If you feel this does not apply to you, you can always write in to [email protected] to try and remedy the situation.
Worst service ever
F’ing the worst
Pros
Pretty easy to set up, but had to use subdomain name for outgoing mail, not a fan.
Cons
Got flagged due to spam for having a link for acuity scheduling in a follow up sequence without even sending more than 4 test emails to myself. Then got kicked off completely and when asking for explanation the reponse was:
“We are sorry that we cannot divulge any information. Good day.”
Our main tool to send emails!
Adore it!
Pros
I love that they have great documentation, low prices and high quality services! (good email reputation)
Cons
They do not offer the possibility to send many emails from their website, only via code.
A good tool with poor criteria and bad customer service
Pros
Easy to use and implement, the tool works good.
Cons
They can suspend your account without previous notification or warning, clear information about suspension is not offer until you take a ticket and ask them. The account might be suspended even you have followed their own recommendations. And if that was not enough you can't cancel your account while this is suspended.
Response from SparkPost
Hi Luis, thank you for taking the time to let us know about your experience! In order to protect all of our senders against potentially bad actors or bad sending practices that would affect sending pools, we have a strong Messaging Policy that we enforce posted on our website (https://www.sparkpost.com/policies/messaging/). If you feel this does not apply to you, you can always write in to [email protected] to try and remedy the situation.
I love SparkPosr!
I have increased my clientele and made ads for my husbands business too! It’s so awesome to have full control of advertisements and jot have to pay someone else to design them!
Pros
I create advwrtisments, announcements, and memes on SparkPost. I love all of the features and ideas that come preset.
Cons
It can be a little bit tricky to maneuver on my phone for some of the features.
Best Design tool available
Pros
The ease of use is best part of this software. We can create post through mobile using their app under 10 minutes. I have experience using softwares like Canva, Designr and may more . They are all on computer but on mobile.
The templates available enable the user to get more Ideas and adapt the same for their use.
Multiple font options available make the creativity to next level.
Cons
they should include the undo option in the mobile app.
Worst customer service!
Customer service suspended my account before I had the time to start using their service. I was in the configuration phase and they gave a plain lie as reason: "We have carefully reviewed your account sending history" when this makes no sense since there was no email sent apart from one test email.
Pros
They have a free plan for you to try and the interface is user-friendly.
Cons
Worst customer service that will lie to your face.
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.