Checklist Before Switching to a Professional SMTP

Great, you want to switch to an Email Service Provider. With them, you can send faster and reach higher deliverability (less blocked emails or spam).

Email Service Provider’s will ask you 3 things

1. Where did you get all your subscribers? If you didn’t build your own list, or you took it from another department in your company or a friend, they will refuse to send your emails
2. They will test your list by sendinga few hundred emails first and not your entire list to verify that:
   1. Your bounce rate (undelivered emails) is lower than 5%, or similar
   2. Your unsubscribe rate is lower than 3%, or similar
3. Update your DNS records to add a SPF record and/or DKIM. These are authorizations you give them to send on your behalf. All other email services require people to do this.

Why are they asking for all that?

These professional SMTP providers work hard to be white listed and propose high deliverability. They want to make sure your lists don’t give them a bad reputation.

The industry considers that 20% of legitimate emails don’t ever reach their destinations. Emails are often blocked even before reaching the mailbox. They are casualties of the war on spam.

Which Email Service Provider to pick?

• SendGrid: 1 free month for any plan (coupon code: wysija)
• Elastic Email: first 5000 emails free, no commitment

Why are their prices so different? Usually, the more you pay, the better the service.

Disclaimer: Wysija is an affiliate of these companies. Other SMTP providers are available. Simply make sure that they specialize in “bulk” (newsletters) and not “transactional” (notification emails). For example, Postmark is a transactional provider.