SparkPost is one of the new players in the SMTP and transactional email service market. Born in 2014, it became popular quickly and recently took advantage of the user migration from Mandrill: long story short, on February 25th, Mandrill sent users a two-months notice that the service would have merged in MailChimp itself as an add-on, with a price increase. Since then, SparkPost is offering competitive prices to users who leave the Mandrill+Mailchimp combo.
SparkPost user interface looks a lot like Mandrill much loved one: smooth, easy to understand and backed by the main menu on the left screen. Using it is simple: you can send messages through SparkPost’s servers from you traditional email app, or you can profit from its API to send emails from your internal software. Indeed, a self-generated API provides relay access for which it’s possible to apply a range of IP and Webhooks policies. For security reasons, SparkPost allows you to you tweak each API key’s permissions, with a whitelist of IP addresses. SPF and DKIM setup is smooth.
Unlike the majority of transactional email services, SparkPost offers a full template creator included. It allows designing HTML templates with variables you can store with email subscribers info. Variables and conditions are something you’ll love: they permit to replace something in your template when a customer does a particular action, customizing your emails automatically.
Analytics are graphical, exhaustive and lists over 40 different metrics about your campaigns. A global and account suppression list feature is available. A 24/7 support team via phone and email is ready to use. If you need more, an Elite program will offer you a dedicated technical account manager.
The SparkPost pricing scheme is attractive and based on sliding scale. The first 100,000 emails you send in a month are free of charge, but after that you will have to upgrade to a paid account: 999,000 emails for a price of $24.99, 1 Million emails for a price of $199.99 /month and you can ask for a custom plan.
Conclusion
SparkPost offers a full-featured email sending experience, letting you customize and automate your messages as you need. You’ll save time and money while sending better emails.
| Usability: 8 /10 | Speed: 8 /10 | Features: 8.5 /10 | Support: 7.5 /10 | Pricing: 7.5 /10 |
As leofflerg points out you can’t trust them not to suspend you without warning. One of our client’s account was suspended because someone sent a spam link to them using their site’s contact form.
The client tried contacting their compliance team, not really being very technically savvy, they didn’t understand where the spam they were being blamed for came from. After all they didn’t send the spam.
As an agency manager, I reached out to Sparkpost’s compliance once my client notified me of the situation. I just got an automated response saying
Hello,
Thank you for your interest in SparkPost. We strive to offer the very best email service, and to that end, we maintain a strict anti-abuse messaging policy.
Because we cannot offer you the high deliverability you would expect from SparkPost, we must decline to provide our services. We wish you the best in your future business endeavors.
Respectfully,
The SparkPost Compliance Team
So then I tried the head of business development, Beverly Clarke. She connected me with the account manager, Tim Tran. Who politely informed me
I have taken a look at https://www.blacktvfilmcollective.org/ and overall looks fine to me. I would continue to try to communicate with our Compliance team and follow their guidance. It would help to figure out how to prevent these links from appearing in your emails or how your system handles outbound email.
I told him about the non-response we were getting from compliance, to which he replied…
I don’t see terminated on your account just yet. But if that’s the only response they’re giving you, we regretfully have to part ways at this point.
It’s some perverse form of digital victim blaming. My client was the victim of contact form spam, and Sparkpost is punishing them for not having done a good enough job of protecting themselves. It doesn’t seem to matter at all to Sparkpost that the client didn’t send the spam or that the recipient of the email was the party they were blaming for sending.
I feel like I have egg on my face for recommending SparkPost to my clients after today. I can’t in good conscious recommend anyone use their service and by proxy this plugin.