SendPulse is a multichannel marketing platform founded in Kyiv in 2015, with offices now in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, and Ukraine and roughly 200,000 customers. The core product is marketing email plus chatbots, SMS, CRM, landing pages, and a course builder – the transactional SMTP relay covered on this page sits alongside those, not in front of them. That places SendPulse in the same product category as Brevo and Mailjet: a marketing-first platform where transactional sending is one channel among several, not the whole product like it is at Postmark, SMTP2GO, or MailerSend.
The free tier sends 12,000 emails per month, capped at 400 per day and 50 per hour, from up to three verified sender addresses on two authenticated domains. That is a much larger monthly ceiling than the transactional-first competitors publish for free (MailerSend at 500/month, Postmark at 100/month, SMTP2GO at 1,000/month), which is the honest selling point. The route to sending depends on which setup the account gets, and 
SendPulse’s setup doc describes two. The SMTP Test plan allows 50 emails in total, 10 an hour, from [email protected] with For development purposes only added to the subject line. SendPulse says that authenticating a domain and adding a sender address on it moves the account to the free tier; the guide does not say whether moderation applies on this path. The previous setup starts with an application form followed by profile moderation, usually up to 24 hours. SendPulse does not say which accounts get which, so a site that needs transactional email working the same day should treat the form path as a risk.
SMTP settings
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Host | smtp-pulse.com |
| Ports | 465 (SSL), 587 (STARTTLS), 2525 (fallback for hosts that block 587) |
| Authentication | Login (username and password) |
| Username | SMTP login shown under SMTP > Dashboard, or SMTP > Settings > General on the previous setup |
| Password | SMTP password shown alongside the login |
SendPulse publishes three SMTP ports covering the two common encrypted paths – 465 for implicit SSL, 587 for STARTTLS – plus 2525 as a fallback when the host blocks 587. A host that blocks all three will not reach the relay; the swaks SMTP test guide walks through the outbound-port test for that case. SMTP credentials are separate from the API credentials used by the REST endpoint at api.sendpulse.com/smtp/emails and are generated per-account rather than per-domain.
If the sending domain already carries a Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 include in its SPF record, the SPF merger folds SendPulse’s include:mxsspf.sendpulse.com into the existing string and counts DNS lookups against RFC 7208’s ten-lookup ceiling before you publish. Once the DKIM TXT record at sign._domainkey is live, the DNS auth checker reads it the way receivers resolve it, 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 | Hourly cap | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 12,000 emails/mo | 50/hr | 400/day cap. 2 sender domains, 3 sender addresses. Profile moderation on some accounts. |
| SMTP 25K | $7.85/mo | 25,000 emails/mo | 2,500/hr | 5 sender domains. |
| SMTP 50K | $14.85/mo | 50,000 emails/mo | 5,000/hr | 5 sender domains. |
| SMTP 100K | $69.85/mo | 100,000 emails/mo | 8,000/hr | Unlimited domains, dedicated IP included. |
| SMTP 200K | $114.85/mo | 200,000 emails/mo | 10,000/hr | Unlimited domains, dedicated IP. |
| SMTP 300K | $159.85/mo | 300,000 emails/mo | 15,000/hr | Unlimited domains, dedicated IP. |
| Enterprise 500K | $259.85/mo | 500,000 emails/mo | 20,000/hr | Unlimited domains, dedicated IP. |
Yearly billing is discounted 20% off the monthly rate; six-month billing is discounted 10%. Pay-as-you-go credit packs are also sold and remain valid for twelve months after purchase.
The pricing curve has one feature worth flagging up front: the step from SMTP 50K at $14.85 to SMTP 100K at $69.85 is a 4.7× price jump for a 2× volume jump. What the 100K tier buys beyond the extra volume is unlimited sender domains (up from 5) and an included dedicated IP – both real, but the site that needs 60K or 80K messages a month on a shared IP with the existing 5-domain quota lands squarely inside that cliff. The SMTP cost calculator compares SendPulse against SMTP2GO, MailerSend, Postmark, and Amazon SES at whatever monthly volume the site actually sends.
Free tier
Twelve thousand emails a month is a real free ceiling by the standards of this category – Postmark caps free at 100/month, MailerSend at 500 with vendor branding, SMTP2GO at 1,000. The 400/day and 50/hour sub-caps are the real limits for a busy site: a WooCommerce store that fires off order confirmations, shipping notifications, and password resets in the same afternoon can bump into 50/hour faster than the monthly total suggests.
Two other constraints matter. The SMTP Test plan sends only from SendPulse’s test address until a domain is authenticated and a sender address is added. SendPulse’s setup guide says this moves the account to the free plan but does not state whether moderation applies on this path. On the previous setup, the profile must be approved before sending starts. Only three sender addresses across two domains can send; a site running WordPress core email plus a WooCommerce store plus a support address is already at the ceiling.
The tier fits a low-traffic contact form, a small blog’s password reset traffic, or a WordPress dev environment where a wait for moderation is not blocking. It does not fit a store that cannot risk a day’s delay after opening the account, or a multi-brand site that needs more than two sender domains.
Paid entry ($7.85/25K)
SMTP 25K at $7.85 a month is cheap for 25,000 messages, cheaper per thousand than the equivalent tiers at MailerSend ($7 for 5,000), Postmark ($15 for 10,000), or SMTP2GO ($10 for 10,000). It also lifts the hourly cap from 50 to 2,500 and the sender-domain quota from 2 to 5 – both count for a real WordPress site. The tier has no dedicated IP (that starts at 100K), and an account reaches it only after the same domain and sender-address steps.
WordPress integration
For the step-by-step install order (check which setup the account has, verify the sending domain, copy the SMTP credentials from the dashboard, wire the mailer plugin, first test send), see SendPulse plugin for WordPress. The section below is the plugin-path comparison; the how-to is the setup walk-through.
SendPulse does not publish an SMTP-only WordPress plugin. Its WordPress plugin catalogue covers the marketing side (a newsletter subscription form, a popup builder, web push, a WooCommerce sync, a live-chat/chatbot embed) – none of those routes wp_mail(). The transactional relay is reached through a general mailer plugin, either on a native API mailer or in “Other SMTP” mode.
Three paths in practice:
WP Mail SMTP with Other SMTP – WP Mail SMTP does not ship a dedicated SendPulse mailer, but its Other SMTP option reaches smtp-pulse.com:587 with the SMTP credentials copied from the SendPulse dashboard. Pick it for WP Mail SMTP’s setup wizard, or for the Pro tier’s logging, backup connection, and per-sender routing on top of SendPulse’s own reporting.
A mailer plugin’s SendPulse mailer – Post SMTP and YaySMTP each ship a native SendPulse mailer in the free plugin. Both send to SendPulse’s API at api.sendpulse.com with the Client ID and Client Secret from Settings > API > Client credentials rather than the SMTP credentials, so a host that blocks outbound SMTP does not stop them. SendPulse’s API docs say SMTP sending only works after the SMTP account is activated, so native API sending also requires an activated SMTP account. Post SMTP is the pick when a failed send needs to reach an operator through its mobile app, Chrome extension, or Slack; Teams and SMS alerts are Pro.
Generic SMTP – FluentSMTP has no SendPulse mailer, so it reaches smtp-pulse.com:587 with the same credentials. It 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. See the WordPress mailer plugin list for the full comparison.
SendPulse publishes a MailPoet-specific setup guide, but MailPoet is a newsletter/campaign plugin, not a wp_mail() mailer. For transactional email a generic mailer plugin is the right layer.
Assessment
SendPulse’s transactional SMTP tier is a side-product of a marketing platform, and the pricing reflects that. At the low end it is cheap – $7.85/month for 25,000 messages is competitive with or below the transactional-only specialists, and the 12,000-a-month free tier is larger than any of the transactional-first competitors publish. If a site already runs SendPulse for marketing email or chatbot flows, adding transactional to the same account for free (or for $7.85 at 25K) is a reasonable operational choice.
The cases where SendPulse is not the right fit are also predictable:
- An account that gets SendPulse’s application form waits for its moderators, usually up to 24 hours, and SendPulse does not say which accounts get the form. That is a risk for anyone who needs transactional email working the same day the account is opened. SMTP2GO lets new accounts send within an initial quota of 1,000 emails per day. Once the quota is reached, SMTP2GO
assesses the account and queues messages over the limit until the review ends. Postmark 
reviews each new account by hand, in under 24 hours on weekdays, and until approval sends only to domains verified in the account. - The steep step from 50K ($14.85) to 100K ($69.85) means a site sending 60K to 90K transactional messages a month is paying $69.85 for volume it does not use. MailerSend at $35 for 50K and $68 at 100K on a smoother slider is priced more evenly through that range.
- A site that needs a US-resident sending endpoint should look elsewhere – SendPulse’s SMTP relay resolves into AWS’s Frankfurt region and the platform describes its transactional infrastructure as EU-based. If EU hosting is a requirement, that is a plus, with one caveat: SendPulse’s DPA also lists Google LLC (US) as a sub-processor for data storage and analytics, so a strict EU-only policy should read that list first. If the site’s data policy requires US residency, it rules SendPulse out.
For a WordPress site that already runs SendPulse for marketing email, or one that values the 12,000-a-month free ceiling and can live with a possible moderation wait, SendPulse’s transactional SMTP tier is a defensible pick. For a site that is choosing a transactional relay in isolation, needs it working the same day, and expects to send no more than 1,000 emails that day, SMTP2GO is a better fit: new accounts can send within that initial daily quota before SMTP2GO assesses the account.
For the broader setup that places SendPulse inside the WordPress email stack, see the WordPress email setup guide.
Pricing verified 29 September 2026 against sendpulse.com/prices/smtp. SMTP host, ports, DKIM selector, and SPF include verified against SendPulse’s SMTP knowledge base (sendpulse.com/knowledge-base/smtp). Setup paths and moderation wording read 5 November 2026 against SendPulse’s SMTP setup doc.
Corrections
- 2026-11-05: an earlier version said SMTP2GO and Postmark activate SMTP immediately once the sending domain is verified. SMTP2GO starts new accounts on a daily quota, and Postmark sends only to domains verified in the account until it approves the account.
- 2026-11-05: an earlier version said a manual approval of up to 24 hours applied to every account before SMTP would authenticate. SendPulse documents that step on one of two setup paths and says it usually takes up to 24 hours.
- 2026-11-05: an earlier version listed Post SMTP under generic SMTP and implied WP Mail SMTP’s logging and routing are free. Post SMTP 4.0.2 ships a native SendPulse mailer, and WP Mail SMTP keeps those features in Pro.
- 2026-11-05: an earlier version said the WP mail config generator took a SendPulse SMTP credential pair and returned a block for the plugin. The generator does not cover SendPulse.