Steps to select best email service provider
What is an ESP
An Email service provider (ESP) is a tool/platform that allows its users to send marketing emails at scale. Some times the term (ESP) is also used to refer to the company that provides these tools. Some examples are Mailchimp, Sendgrid, Mailgun and Omnisend.
What is an ISP
ISP stands for Internet Service Provider but in terms of email marketing ISP refers to the major email box providers: Yahoo/AOL, Microsoft(Hotmail,Outlook), Google(Gmail), Comcast, etc.
Which is the best email service provider?
Often people ask which is the best email service provider (ESP) in the market. To be honest all well known service providers manage their email servers and IPs with utmost care and all of them are equally good with only minor differences.
If you need to pick a new ESP you can follow the below approach:
- Find out which ESPs provide all of the functionality you need for your case (integration, inbuilt workflows, reporting and analytics, etc)
- Which ESPs fits in your budget for the required monthly email volume
- Check their customer reviews
Once you have finalized 2-3 ESPs which meet your requirements – sign up a free trial with them and see how well they fit in your case. You may also run some spam/deliverability tests and then pick up the one which you find best.