MailerSend is the transactional sibling to 
MailerLite, built by the same team but operated as a separate product for wp_mail()-shaped traffic: password resets, order confirmations, form notifications, receipts. It is not a marketing platform – no campaign builder, no contact-list manager – which puts it in the same product category as Postmark, SMTP2GO, and SparkPost.
The free tier covers 500 emails per month with a MailerSend footer on the outgoing messages, one-day log retention, and one verified domain. The branding removes at Starter ($35/month for 50,000 emails). The Hobby tier in between ($7/month for 5,000 emails) is priced for a hobby site or a small WordPress install that outgrows the 500/month free ceiling but does not need Starter’s volume or its removed footer.
SMTP settings
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Host | smtp.mailersend.net |
| Port | 587 |
| Encryption | STARTTLS (TLS 1.2 or 1.3) |
| Authentication | Login (username and password) |
| Username | SMTP username generated in the dashboard |
| Password | SMTP password generated with the username |
MailerSend publishes only one SMTP port, 587, with STARTTLS. A host that blocks outbound 587 will not reach the relay – the WordPress email troubleshooter has the outbound-port test for that case. SMTP credentials are separate from API tokens and are generated per-account (not per-domain) under Domains > Manage > SMTP > Generate new user; the resulting username and password work for any verified domain on the same MailerSend account.
If the domain already carries a Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 include in its SPF record, the SPF merger folds MailerSend’s include into the existing string and counts the DNS lookups against RFC 7208’s ten-lookup ceiling before you publish. Once the DKIM CNAMEs at ms1._domainkey and ms2._domainkey are live, the DNS auth checker reads MailerSend’s records the way receivers resolve them, so a stale nameserver or a mistyped selector shows up before real traffic does. After that, verify with swaks that messages authenticate correctly.
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Volume | Log retention | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 500 emails/mo | 1 day | MailerSend footer on messages. 1 domain, 1 seat, 100 API requests/day. Overage $1.50/1K. |
| Hobby | $7/mo | 5,000 emails/mo | 1 day | 1 domain, 5 seats, 10 templates. Overage $1.50/1K. |
| Starter | $35/mo | 50,000 emails/mo | 7 days | Branding removed. 10 domains, 250 templates, 50 webhooks. Overage $1.30/1K to 100K, tapering to $1.00/1K at 1M. |
| Professional | $110/mo | 50,000 emails/mo | 30 days | Dedicated IP add-on. Unlimited domains and templates. Overage $1.30/1K to 100K, tapering to $0.60/1K at 1M. |
Starter and Professional scale on the same slider: $35 covers Starter up to 50,000; $68 at 100,000; $162.50 at 250,000; $325 at 500,000; $600 at 1,000,000. Professional starts at $110 for 50,000 and reaches $1,000 at 1,000,000 with the lower per-message overage. Annual billing is offered at a discount on Hobby, Starter, and Professional.
For a like-for-like comparison, SMTP2GO offers 1,000 emails/month free with no branding, and Starter at $10/month for 10,000. MailerSend is priced above SMTP2GO at every tier, with a tighter free ceiling (500 vs 1,000) and vendor branding on the free tier that SMTP2GO does not stamp. The SMTP cost calculator compares MailerSend’s Starter and Professional tiers against SMTP2GO, Postmark, Mailgun, and Amazon SES at whatever monthly volume the site actually sends.
Free tier
500 emails a month, one-day log retention, one verified domain, one user seat, 100 API requests per day. No credit card and no expiry. The MailerSend footer stays on the outgoing messages – useful for a developer test account, less useful for anything a site’s real customers will see. Every paid tier from Hobby up includes SMTP and API access on the same connection paths, so the integration path a paying customer would use is the same path a free-tier site uses; only the volume, branding, and log window change.
The tier fits a low-traffic contact form on a personal site, an evaluation account for testing a mailer plugin’s MailerSend integration, or a WordPress dev environment. It does not fit a small business site that runs a WooCommerce checkout at any real frequency – 500/month works out to roughly 16 messages per day averaged, and the MailerSend footer on outgoing order confirmations reads as unprofessional in that context. Sites in that range belong on Hobby or Starter from the start.
Hobby tier
$7/month, 5,000 emails, one-day log retention, one domain, five seats, ten templates. The footer stays on the messages at Hobby too – it clears at Starter. Hobby’s positioning is narrow: a site that has outgrown the free 500 but does not yet need Starter’s 50,000, its removed branding, or its seven-day logs. That is a real slice of small WordPress installs, and the price is competitive at the low end of the mid-tier category.
WordPress integration
For the step-by-step install order (verify the sending domain, generate SMTP credentials or an API token, wire the mailer plugin, first test send), see MailerSend plugin for WordPress. The section below is the plugin-path comparison; the how-to is the setup walk-through.
The WP mail config generator takes a MailerSend SMTP credential pair or API token and returns a paste-ready block for the plugin below, so the choice becomes which mailer, not which fields to populate.
Three paths:
MailerSend official plugin – The 
MailerSend SMTP plugin connects via SMTP with the credentials from Domains > Manage > SMTP. Roughly 2,000 active installs at the last count, tested against WordPress 6.9. Pick it when MailerSend is the settled choice and the site does not need the surrounding features other mailer plugins ship.
WP Mail SMTP with Other SMTP – WP Mail SMTP does not ship a dedicated MailerSend mailer, but its Other SMTP option reaches smtp.mailersend.net:587 with the same generated credentials. Pick it when the site benefits from WP Mail SMTP’s plugin-side logging, fallback, and per-sender routing on top of MailerSend’s own reporting.
Generic SMTP – FluentSMTP and Post SMTP also reach smtp.mailersend.net:587 with the same generated credentials. FluentSMTP is the pick for a site that wants a free, open-source mailer with cleaner per-address routing than WP Mail SMTP’s free tier. Post SMTP is the pick when a bounced send needs to page an operator through Chrome, Slack, Teams, or SMS. See the WordPress mailer plugin list for the full comparison.
Assessment
MailerSend is a well-built transactional platform priced at the middle of the category. The rationale for reaching for it: the dashboard is genuinely nicer than most competitors’, the SMTP and API paths are stable, the free tier exists as a real evaluation option (rather than a 30-day trial), and the MailerLite team’s operational track record on the marketing side transfers to reliability on the transactional side. Sites that place a value on the operator experience – the analytics view, the domain-verification flow, the email-log detail – tend to land on MailerSend and stay there.
The cases where MailerSend is not the right fit are also predictable. If the priority is the cheapest usable free tier for a small WordPress site, SMTP2GO at 1,000 free messages a month with no branding fits better than MailerSend’s 500-with-branding. If the priority is deliverability at high volume and the site can absorb the price step, Postmark is purpose-built for that. If the site is on AWS and cost is the primary consideration, Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000 messages is cheaper than MailerSend at every tier.
If the site has an EU-resident data policy, MailerSend does not currently publish an EU-region endpoint the way Mailjet does; that alone rules it out for some operators.
For everything else – the typical WordPress site that wants a well-built transactional platform, is comfortable at $7 or $35 a month, and does not need the very lowest price – MailerSend is a reasonable pick.
For the broader setup that places MailerSend inside the WordPress email stack, see the WordPress email setup guide.
Pricing verified September 2026 against mailersend.com/pricing. SMTP settings and DNS records verified against MailerSend’s help documentation.