Are your WordPress emails going missing? Contact forms vanishing? Vital notifications never arriving? These email delivery problems can be a major headache for website owners.
At WPBeginner, we get around 445 – 470 new email subscribers per day and send multiple messages every single week across all our brands. With that said, we know a thing or two about sending emails reliably.
In this SendLayer review, we’re going to see how this popular SMTP service provider compares to the competition. We’ll be looking at its features, support, and pricing, to see if it’s the right SMTP service provider for your WordPress website.
SendLayer Review: Why Use It in WordPress?
If you’re like most users, then you have likely run into the problem of WordPress not sending emails. This usually happens because your WordPress hosting server isn’t configured to use the default PHP mail() function. However, email service providers like Gmail and Outlook also use sophisticated tools to reduce email spam, and messages sent by WordPress often fail these tests.
With that being said, your emails may get sent to the spam folder, even if your server is configured correctly.
That’s where SendLayer comes in.
SendLayer is a SMTP email service and API that helps your emails land safely in the receiver’s inbox, and not in the spam folder.
SendLayer seamlessly connects with WordPress, so you can use it to reliably send all kinds of emails, including WooCommerce store receipts, confirmation emails, shipping notifications, password reset emails, and more.
In addition to WordPress, SendLayer works with platforms like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Drupal, HelpScout, and many others.
Each time it sends an email, SendLayer creates a detailed log so you can see whether the message was delivered successfully, along with its view, open, and click-through rates.
This email tracking can help you see what’s working and what’s not working, so you can continuously improve your email marketing to get more clicks and conversions.
SendLayer has a free trial that can send up to 200 emails. However, if you want to send more emails then you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan.
SendLayer Review: Is It The Right SMTP Service Provider for You?
Did you know that email marketing boasts a significant ROI compared to other marketing channels?
With the right right SMTP service provider, you can be confident that customers and users will receive your purchase confirmations, receipts, password reset, and other important emails. This will keep your business running smoothly and improve the communication between you and your audience.
With that in mind, in this SendLayer review we’ll see if it’s the right SMTP service provider for your WordPress blog.
1. Support for 1000+ Platforms, Apps, and Programming Language
SendLayer works with multiple platforms including WordPress, WooCommerce, Magento, and more. If you can add SMTP details to the platform, then you should have no problems using it with SendLayer. In fact, SendLayer integrates seamlessly with 1000+ platforms.
You also don’t have to worry about the programming language you use to build your website or application. No matter whether you use PHP, Python, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, or some other language, SendLayer will have no problems sending your emails with SMTP.
2. Easy to Setup
There are dedicated WordPress SMTP plugins that allow you to easily send emails using a simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP).
However, installing an SMTP plugin like WP Mail SMTP is just the first step. You’ll also need an SMTP email provider that’s built for maximum deliverability, reliability, and scalability, and SendLayer is the perfect choice.
With SendLayer, it’s easy to setup SMTP. In fact, if your content management system or platform supports API credentials, then you can simply copy/paste this information into your website. This means you can start sending emails via SMTP without having to write a single line of code.
If you’re using WordPress and WP Mail SMTP, then you can simply go to the plugin’s settings and select the SendLayer mailer.
After that, just enter the API key that SendLayer creates automatically when you authorized your domain.
To help you find this key, WP Mail SMTP even shows a link that you can follow.
After adding the key, we recommend sending a test email to make sure everything is working.
With that done, you’re ready to send emails using SMTP.
3. Improve Email Deliverability With Ease
This SendLayer review won’t be complete without talking about how it improves your email deliverability rates.
SendLayer makes it easy to authorize your domain name, so email servers recognize you as a verified sender. This will stop providers such as Google and Outlook flagging your messages as spam.
Unlike some other mailing services like Sendinblue, you don’t need to set up a subdomain for your website.
SendLayer adds the subdomain to the sender domain’s DNS records automatically. This means you don’t need to add an additional subdomain when registering your domain, saving you a ton of time and effort.
4. Optimized for Performance
Sending lots of different emails can put your WordPress hosting server under pressure. With SendLayer, you can send millions of messages reliably, using a system that was designed and optimized specifically for email marketing.
In this way, you can boost your website’s speed and performance, while making sure your users never have to wait for a password reset notification, purchase confirmation, receipt, or any other important email.
5. Detailed Email Logs
SendLayer creates a detailed log for every email it sends, and displays this information in your online dashboard.
These email logs contain the timestamp, recipient, and details about each event. In this way, you can see whether a specific email was sent and delivered successfully, or if there was an error along the way.
Most of the time, these logs will confirm that the message arrived safely in the user’s inbox. However, if there is a problem then SendLayer’s logs will help you spot these issues early so you can fix them as quickly as possible. This is particularly important if you run an online store or sell digital downloads online, as customers often use emails to track their purchase.
6. Built-in Email Analytics
By monitoring user engagement, you can see what’s working and what isn’t. You can then adjust your approach to improve your open and click-through rates.
With that in mind, SendLayer comes with built-in email tracking and analytics. By default, it places a small image inside your emails to record the open rates, and adds tracking links to all the URLs inside the message.
This allows SendLayer to track and display the engagement on individual emails including the open rates, click-through rates, bounce rate, unsubscribes, and more. It will then show all this information inside the SendLayer dashboard.
You can also filter the email records by status and recipient. This makes it easy to spot trends, patterns and potential problems, and find the exact information you need, no matter how much data SendLayer collects.
7. API Email Relay
Older XML-based APIs require a lot of bandwidth. Instead, SendLayer sends emails through an API based on JSON input, which needs fewer resources.
You can also have multiple API connections, as SendLayer doesn’t limit the number of active API keys and the number of requests you can make.
8. Community and Professional Support
As highlighted in this SendLayer review, this popular email marketing platform can improve your email deliverability rates. It’s designed with ease of use in mind, but sometimes you may have questions or need some extra help.
If you prefer to research yourself, then SendLayer has in-depth online documentation.
There’s also a SendLayer blog where you’ll find detailed guides on how to use the service.
Here, you’ll also find best practices, tips, and general advice on how to grow your email list.
All the premium SendPlayer plans include professional support.
Simply log into your SendLayer account and complete a quick form, and the customer support team will get back to you as soon as possible.
SendLayer Review: Pricing Plans
If you want to try before you buy, then you can create a SendLayer account and send up to 200 emails for free. However, if you want to send additional messages or unlock more powerful features, then you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan.
No matter what plan you buy, you’ll get access to all the SendLayer features. This includes open and click tracking, support for 1000+ platforms, and improved email deliverability.
However, there are some key differences between each plan:
- Starter. For $5 per month, you can send up to 1,000 emails every single month. You can also use SendLayer with up to 3 sender domains, and see the email logs for the previous 3 days. That being said, Starter is an affordable plan for blogger and startups.
- Business. Priced at $15 per month, Business allows you to send up to 5,000 emails every month, and use SendLayer with 5 sender domains. This plan also retains email logs for 15 days. If you’re looking to grow your small business website, then SendLayer Business is a great option.
- Growth. If you have a big email list, then Growth can send 10,000 emails every single month. Priced at $25 per month, this plan also comes with a 30 day email log. With its generous email limit, the Growth plan is perfect for established brands, websites, and online marketplaces.
- Scale. Do you need to send more than 10,000 emails per month? SendLayer also offers a bespoke Scale plan that’s custom tailored to fit your needs.
SendLayer Review: Is it Worth It?
To wrap up this comprehensive SendLayer review, we’re confident that it’s the best SMTP service provider. It integrates seamlessly with 1000+ platforms to make sure your messages arrive safely in the user’s inbox, and not in the spam folder.
If you run a smaller blog or website, then you can sign up to the free plan and send 200 emails. However, if you want to build an email list and send more messages, then you’ll need to upgrade to a premium plan.
The Starter plan can send up to 1,000 emails every single month, so it’s great choice for bloggers, startups, or anyone who is just starting to do lead generation.
If you have a bigger email list, then Business allows you to send 5,000 messages every single month. Finally, established brands and websites may want to look at the Growth plan, which raises that limit to 10,000 emails per month.
We hope this SendLayer review helped you decide whether it’s the right SMTP service provider for you. You can also check out our guide on how to increase your blog traffic, or see our expert pick of the best web push notification software.
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Syed Balkhi
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