Simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) is a fast, easy way to send email messages from one mail server to another.
When you use a personal email address to send bulk marketing campaigns or transactional emails to a lengthy contact list, you can bump up against send rate limits, get flagged as spam, or have to awkwardly blind carbon copy your mailing list on every email message.
In that case, SMTP relay, in which a third party sends email to multiple recipients over its own mail servers, may make sense. The sender address is the same and the email content is absolutely secure, but by sending the marketing or transactional email through a partner’s server, you can increase your email delivery rate without the hassle, costs, or security concerns associated with maintaining your own mail server. It’s a lot better than trying to push everything through a consumer email address, such as Google’s gmail.
Cloud-based SMTP relay isn’t the only option for sending email to multiple recipients without getting an error message or having to read the fine print of your account details. You can also use an SMTP API. Anyone with an API overview under their belt knows that APIs – which allow two applications to talk to each other – can be both powerful and customizable.
