4 Best Mailtrap Alternatives and Competitors in 2024

Mailtrap is a powerful email delivery platform designed to help growing businesses improve their email sending, testing, and deliverability capabilities. It shows your emails' current performance through in-depth analytics and key stats (e.g., spam score, HTML/CSS verification with popular email clients, etc.), enhancing your email infrastructure performance and campaign strategy in the long run.

However, you might be looking for an effective Mailtrap alternative that offers similar capabilities without some of its limitations. This guide will explore 4 of the top alternatives to Mailtrap for email testing in dev environments. We will also discuss their key features, which email service has free plans, and whether they're a scalable solution for boosting your email marketing campaigns.

Read on to know more.

1. MailWizz

MailWizz Main Features

All-in-one Self-hosted Email Service

MailWizz is a good alternative to Mailtrap due to its self-hosted nature as an email service. This allows users to better control their email infrastructure since they'll have more freedom in terms of customizations. Because it’s self-hosted, you’ll have excellent deliverability rates. MailWizz also integrates with any SMTP server and with all known SMTP providers.

Developer-friendly Email Testing Tool

MailWizz offers several tools for setting up an effective and reliable email infrastructure. It allows you to set up several delivery servers (SMTP servers or known email providers) to send emails and effectively reduce bounce rates, feedback loop servers for receiving spam complaints, and more. The platform also has a powerful API, which you can integrate into your system to send transactional emails (e.g., password resets, order confirmations, etc.).

Robust Third-party Integrations

The platform provides several third-party integrations with different software services, including email providers like Amazon SES (SMTP/API), SendGrid, etc. It also supports integrations with virtual private server (VPS) platforms such as Linode and Amazon Web Services (AWS). While Amazon's other AWS services are free for the first year, you'll be billed after the trial period.

Price

MailWizz offers the following one-time license plans:

• Regular – The Regular plan starts at $74 and is recommended for startups, SMBs, and marketing professionals. It gives unlimited access to all email marketing features, email verification add-ons, top-notch support for six months, and email testing tools. You can also access the platform’s email templates and tools to send transactional emails through API.
• Extended - The Extended plan costs $275 and is ideal for businesses using MailWizz as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. It includes everything from the Regular plan plus priority support.

Why Choose MailWizz over Mailtrap

MailWizz is an effective Mailtrap alternative due to its diverse features for email delivery and other features, such as unlimited subscribers and email sends. It has an easy-to-use interface and is a better email delivery platform for sending transactional emails. Also, the platform only requires a one-time fee for its paid plans, making MailWizz a cost-effective solution for email marketing and the perfect tool for small businesses.

2. Constant Contact

constantcontact.com

Constant Contact Main Features

Versatile Email Designs

Constant Contact excels as a great alternative to Mailtrap mainly because of its diverse number of email templates, which includes a mix of primary and advanced designs. You can also create your design from scratch and utilize the 'Brand Your Email' feature, which automatically generates an email template based on your website's logo and colors.

Comprehensive Social Media Management Tools

Constant Contact offers social media management features. It allows you to post on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn with one click by connecting your accounts on the platform. It also has tools for ad management on Facebook and Instagram, as well as post scheduling features.

Event Management Features

One of Constant Contact's unique features is event management. The platform lets you manage event registrations, tickets, and invitations. It also offers tools for event promotion, like sending emails and creating social posts to reach more audiences. You can also process online ticket sales; bear in mind, however, that this feature costs 5.4% + $0.80 per ticket sold or transacted.

Price

Constant Contact has the following pricing plans:

• Lite – The Lite plan starts at $12 monthly and is ideal for small businesses and marketing professionals. It includes a 12x-contact monthly email send limit and access to the platform’s drag-and-drop editor, email templates, CRM, and other email services. It also has tools for social media marketing, event management, and app integrations.
• Standard - The Standard plan starts at $35 monthly and is great for growing businesses and marketing teams needing pre-built email flows, contact segmentation, and real-time analytics. You'll have a sending volume of 12x the number of contacts and the ability to send test emails via A/B subject line tests.
• Premium - The Premium plan costs $80 monthly and is excellent for enterprises needing advanced automation and segmentation features. It gives you revenue reporting, SEO recommendations, and access to Google Ads Manager. You'll also be given a monthly limit of 500 SMS messages.

Why Choose Constant Contact over Mailtrap

Constant Contact is an excellent alternative to Mailtrap when prioritizing event marketing and SMM tasks over email testing features. The platform has high email deliverability rates based on some reviews and personalized email template creation through 'Brand Your Email'. Constant Contact's SMM tools also help grow your email lists through social media.

Cons of Constant Contact

Compared to Mailtrap, Constant Contact has limited tools for email testing. The platform doesn't have features for spam testing, but you can do A/B testing for email campaigns. Despite its expensive pricing plans, Constant Contact lacks advanced automation features; its niche feature, event management, also has costly fees.

3. Mailgun

mailgun.com

Mailgun Main Features

In-depth Email Analytics

Mailgun's email campaign analytics tools allow you to view key trends in your email traffic, including clicks, opens, and other engagement metrics. You can track top-performing email content, check segmented user data for customer behavior patterns, and more. Advanced features such as log retention can also help you see error codes on email elements.

Robust Email Validation Tools

One key feature that makes Mailgun an ideal alternative to Mailtrap is email validation. It allows you to verify users in your email lists and check for invalid emails, which can cause low engagement rates. Mailgun checks email addresses directly with mailbox providers and uses their cached data to verify email addresses on your list efficiently.

Scalable Deliverability Services

Mailgun offers an exclusive deliverability service that guides you through smart strategies for organically increasing email deliverability. This program includes a dedicated technical account manager, priority onboarding, and other key features. It also gives you access to tools that increase email infrastructure performance, like inbox placement testing and email validation.

Price

Mailgun offers these pricing plans:

• Free – The Free plan is for users who want to try the platform’s core features. It includes limited access to the platform’s REST API and SMTP relay service. You’ll also access their basic email analytics, tracking, and webhooks. You can send up to 5,000 emails a month with Mailgun’s Free plan.
• Foundation - The Foundation plan costs $35 monthly and is for SMBs. It includes everything from Free, plus up to 50,000 monthly email sends, full access to the platform’s RESTful email APIs for email delivery, and ticket support. It lets you access their email template builder and inbound routing tools to automatically parse and extract data from inbound emails.
• Scale - The Scale plan starts at $90 monthly and is for growing businesses with increased monthly email sends and validation needs. It includes everything from Foundation, including more monthly email sends (100,000), 5,000 email validations, dedicated IP pools for sender reputation, and live phone and chat support. You'll also get 30 days of diagnostics log retention and 7 days of message retention
• Enterprise - The Enterprise plan is for large businesses with custom email sending and validation needs. It contains everything from Scale, including custom monthly email sends and validations, priority support and onboarding, and proactive account monitoring. You'll also get priority access to the platform's new features. To learn more about this plan, contact Mailgun's sales team.

Why Choose Mailgun over Mailtrap

Unlike Mailtrap, Mailgun offers more diverse tools for real email sending. For comparison, Mailtrap is often used as a testing environment that captures SMTP traffic in a virtual inbox for testing and debugging purposes. Mailgun also has higher email deliverability rates than Mailtrap, making it a great email marketing software alternative.

Cons of Mailgun

Mailgun doesn't have a user-friendly interface and may require a steep learning curve. It has steep pricing plans; the platform charges based on the number of emails sent, which isn't ideal for users who send a high volume of emails. Also, Mailgun only allows up to 30 days of log retention and is available on the Scale plan, which costs $90 monthly.

4. MailerLite

mailerlite.com

MailerLite Main Features

List Management Features

MailerLite doesn't limit users to their preferred number of email lists. Its robust segmentation filters allow users to group subscribers according to their location/time zone, activity, and whether they clicked on one of your email campaigns. You can also set rules on lists for establishing targeted campaigns.

Powerful Drag-and-drop Editor

What makes MailerLite a good alternative to Mailtrap and other email marketing software is its drag-and-drop editor. It has a user-friendly interface and offers many content elements (e.g., testimonials, image carousels, etc.) so you can create responsive emails. You can also set up dynamic content, which shows content blocks that you only want to appear to specific subscribers.

Excellent Email Deliverability

According to several reviews MailerLite has excellent email deliverability compared to its competitor tools. The platform has favorable deliverability rates to popular email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Price

MailerLite offers the following pricing plans (estimated at 500 contacts):

• Free – The Free plan is for users who want to try out the platform’s key features. It allows you to send 12,000 emails monthly and store up to 1,000 subscribers. It gives access to key email marketing features, like the drag-and-drop editor, email automation builder, and reporting tools. You’ll also get 24/7 email and chat support for the first month, make signup forms, and create up to 10 landing pages for free.
• Growing Business - The Growing Business plan is for marketing professionals and e-commerce businesses needing to create personalized landing pages and email content. It offers everything from Free, plus unlimited monthly email sends, multivariate testing, 24/7 email support, unlimited templates, and e-commerce features such as the ability to create targeted emails and sell digital products.
• Advanced - The Advanced plan is for growing businesses looking for advanced automation and contact segmentation features. It includes everything from Growing Business, plus 24/7 live chat and email support, unlimited users, a custom HTML editor, advanced automation tools, segmentation, smart sending, and an AI writing assistant. You'll also get access to email popup forms and Facebook integration to grow your email list further.
• Enterprise - The Enterprise plan is for large businesses with over 100k subscribers. It has everything from Advanced, including a dedicated success manager, IP and email deliverability consultations, and priority onboarding and training. Your account will also get audits and performance improvements. For this plan, you’ll need to contact MailerLite’s sales team.

Why Choose MailerLite over Mailtrap

MailerLite is one of the better Mailtrap alternatives due to its drag-and-drop features, automation tools, and email templates. It has superb list management tools, which allow you to effectively target specific subscribers based on certain conditions. The platform is also cheaper and has a more user-friendly interface.

Cons of MailerLite

Compared to premier email marketing services like ActiveCampaign, MailerLite lacks advanced automation, CRM tools, and spam/design testing. It lacks features for comprehensive reporting and has a slow account verification process for business accounts.

Conclusion

Mailtrap is a popular email delivery and testing service that checks crucial factors in your email infrastructure to improve deliverability. However, the platform's features are mainly geared towards email testing and lack tools for email marketing.

Constant Contact is one of the better Mailtrap alternatives if you want an all-around email marketing, event management, and social media management solution for your business. You can consider Mailgun and MailerLite if you want more tools for real email sending, automation, list management, analytics, and deliverability.

However, if you prefer a self-hosted email marketing software with several email testing features at an affordable price point, consider trying MailWizz. The platform has tools for email marketing, is developer-friendly, and only has a one-time license fee, making it the best alternative to Mailtrap.

Are you curious about how MailWizz can boost your deliverability rates? Check out our full set of features and see how they improve your email campaigns today!