What SMTPs do you use for cold email marketing?

[ForgeSMTP]

I have started using it

Oh nice. How well is it converting right now?

 

[Aditya_singh]

I use BSS server Send unlimited emails allow spam But they Charge 250$ per month Anyone Recommended Other Server For this type of services ?

 

[SofiaMatt]

For cold email marketing, we prioritize SMTP providers known for high deliverability, robust security, and compliance with anti-spam regulations. Some of the best SMTP services we use include:

• SendGrid: Great for scalability and detailed analytics.
• Amazon SES: Highly reliable with competitive pricing and strong reputation management.
• Mailgun: Offers powerful APIs and excellent deliverability controls.
• SMTP2GO: Known for excellent customer support and real-time monitoring.
• Gmail/Google Workspace SMTP: For smaller volumes and trusted IP reputation.

We always combine these with best practices—warm-up sequences, list hygiene, proper authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC), and personalized content—to ensure maximum inbox placement and minimal risk of being flagged as spam.

 

[Micky345]

yes

 

[Backlink Guru]

I’m also exploring email marketing and currently using [your SMTP provider]. The biggest challenge I face is deliverability and avoiding spam filters. Conversion rates vary, but usually around [your rough %] from opens to clicks.

 

[Howk]

1. We use Sendinblue for our email marketing.
2. We are facing some issues with deliverability and inbox placement rates.
3. Our conversion rate for cold email marketing is around 2% for mail opens, 1% for link click-throughs, and 0.5% for sales.

 

[DIAMOND CREST]

Currently using Mailazy + custom VPS setup. Biggest pain point? Deliverability dips randomly, even with clean lists. Cold email CTR hovers around 3–5%, with conversions depending heavily on offer quality and warm-up. Always testing though it’s a numbers game.

 

[GermanCPA]

In my experience I find MailerQ a bit complicated to setup but it's by far scalable than the other MTAs and faster than PowerMTA.

Postal is my favorite these days because of many reasons, a very nice clean interface than powerMTA and you can track everything and generate SMTP credentials in seconds on your verified domain. In minutes you would be creating 100s of SMTP credentials so far you've got all your domains or client's domains registered or authorized in postal. You can group IPs into poolsand determine which user you want to assign an IP pool too or which are authorised to send emails with those IPs. These way you can classify spammers into a spammed to death pool that they deserve. And assign clean IPs to the good guys. Webhooks, spam and antivirus protection, lightweight.and what not..

People don't talk about Postal that much but it's a pretty powerful beast optimized for database too as it uses MariaDB and can be compatible with litespeed and redis server environments.

As with conversion insights, most often it's not the SMTP or mailer that determines conversion rates as long as your IPs and domains and SMTPs are clean. What you want to check for conversion rates is your email sale copy and the target audience resonance. Are you sending to the wrong audience? Is the list dead? Is your email subject line worthy of my two seconds, let alone read your entire message in your email? Are you obviously too salesy...

These are the questions that you want to find your way around to make a bank.

Postal doesn't really seem to have target domain based config options. Stuff like PowerMTA or Kumo have, ie.

max-smtp-out 1
max-msg-per-connection 1
max-msg-rate 2/m

 

[code API]

Postal doesn't really seem to have target domain based config options. Stuff like PowerMTA or Kumo have, ie.

max-smtp-out 1
max-msg-per-connection 1
max-msg-rate 2/m

Postal has domain based configuration but you have to add it in the panel and verify your sending domains using DNS. I find this easier to manage in the tab and for non-developers it doesn’t require programming or reading a bunch of codes.

You cannot do that from inside the postal configuration file.

 

[GermanCPA]

Postal has domain based configuration but you have to add it in the panel and verify your sending domains using DNS. I find this easier to manage in the tab and for non-developers it doesn’t require programming or reading a bunch of codes.

You cannot do that from inside the postal configuration file.

Yeah, but I meant the target domains, ie. @gmail.com and so on and Postal does not seem to have any options for throttling/limiting that.

Also, PowerMTA has rollup (Kumo seems to have this as well, but allegedly automatically), like

mx *.mail.protection.outlook.com o365.rollup rollup-by-ip
mx *.mail.eo.outlook.com o365.rollup rollup-by-ip

->

<domain o365.rollup>
max-smtp-out 1
max-msg-per-connection 1
max-errors-per-connection 10
max-msg-rate 2/m
max-connect-rate 2/m
...
</domain>

Which would mean that all private domains hosted on Outlook mx servers would be grouped into one target group which is really necessary.

So it seems Postal relies on the mailer software to do that and there's literally no "public" mailer software that does that.

 

[code API]

Yeah, but I meant the target domains, ie. @gmail.com and so on and Postal does not seem to have any options for throttling/limiting that.

Also, PowerMTA has rollup (Kumo seems to have this as well, but allegedly automatically), like




Which would mean that all private domains hosted on Outlook mx servers would be grouped into one target group which is really necessary.

So it seems Postal relies on the mailer software to do that and there's literally no "public" mailer software that does that.

It does that. You should check the configuration file. In some cases, you will need to check their documentation and GitHub repository to see this details.

All custom config are not readily available immediately when you install postal. And this does include the tuning for sending limits and MariaDB optimization for sending, workers, etc.

 

[GermanCPA]

It does that. You should check the configuration file. In some cases, you will need to check their documentation and GitHub repository to see this details.

All custom config are not readily available immediately when you install postal. And this does include the tuning for sending limits and MariaDB optimization for sending, workers, etc.

I tried to find that but wasn't successful. The docs don't provide anything and clicking on random files in Github also led to nothing.

For me, it doesn't seem these things are an "out of the box" thing for Postal so I stick to PowerMTA which is great (except the bounce management) because it's so easy to understand (I tried Kumo but its hardcore).

 

[far00q_arif]

Hi everyone!

I recently joined BHW to learn, share some insights and gather statistics on the current state of email marketing
for you all.

I would like to know;
1. What SMTP are you currently using for your email marketing?
2. Where are the problems you are facing with your current solution?
3. What is the conversion rate for your cold email marketing, based on mail opens, link click-throughs, and sales if any?

I look forward to your responses, thanks.

1. If you are talking about Cold emailing, then most major ESPs do not allow you to send emails and can block or terminate your account, possibly without even notifying you. For sure, the best setup is to build your environment and play the way you like.

2. The most common problem is that the IPs and domains get exhausted, so you have to pause or change them, or rotate them.

3. If you have a well-maintained setup, then you can get up to 30% open rate with 2%-3% click rate and that's an ideal rate.
Sales depend on the data you have. Sometimes openers' data does not give you sales because it does not belong to your niche.

 

[johnstonesliver]

i used postfix with combinattion of PHPlist , Listmonk and Mautic.

with gradual warm up i came up to 4000 Email/Hours

worked well up to 35% opening rate - considering data was from Ice Age


thinking to move to postal and and try out.

and looking for better marketing tool the phplist/listmonk/mautic are.

for campaign management they are ok, but looking for something where i have pace settings per smtp and better lead management possibility.

i found Acelle but i dont know if its as good as it looks.

if anyone has any experience with acelle or knows any alternatives (preferably open source or self hosted) glad to hear about that

 

[pacholl]

Most people now use reliable ESPs or custom SMTP setups with proper domain warming and authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC); main issues are deliverability and inboxing. Conversion varies a lot, but targeting + personalization usually matters more than the SMTP itself.

 

[Nexa Seo Agency]

Most use amazon SES or mailgun: biggest issues are deliverabilty and inbox placement.