Postmark vs Mailtrap: Side-by-Side Breakdown
With more email delivery platforms on the market than ever before, choosing the right solution for your business can be a little overwhelming. And that’s an understatement. When it comes to Postmark and Mailtrap, I’ve sent emails using both platforms, and now I’ll share my two cents on the topic.
Over the years, Postmark has proven to be a transactional email powerhouse, offering speedy delivery with high inboxing rates, and everything your dev team needs for an easy setup.
Meanwhile, Mailtrap offers reliable transactional and email marketing solutions with high inboxing rates, fast email delivery, and 24/7 expert support.
Now, I’ll go over and compare everything from their strengths and weaknesses to pricing and user reviews. In other words, I’ll cover everything you need to choose the right solution for your business.
Postmark vs Mailtrap — Quick Comparison
Feature Overview
Postmark
Mailtrap
Best For
Businesses with low-to-medium sending volume
Developer and product teams
Pricing
Basic plan starts at $15/month (no free plan)
Basic plan starts at $15/month (has a free plan)
Ease of Use
Straightforward configuration, extensive documentation
Simple interface, easy setup, pre-made code snippets
Value for Money
Great for sending transactional emails
Excellent for sending transactional and marketing emails under one pricing plan
Strengths & Weaknesses Overview
Strengths
Weaknesses
Postmark
- Fast email delivery speed
- Excellent deliverability
- Super detailed email logs (kept for 45 days)
- Reliable customer support team
- No email marketing features
- Can be pricier for high sending volumes
- 300k monthly email sends requirement for dedicated IPs
Mailtrap
- High inboxing rates
- Fast email delivery
- 24/7 customer support
- Industry-best analytics
- Not many integrations available
- Automations are still in alpha
- Support cannot be reached via phone
Postmark vs Mailtrap — Feature Comparison
Postmark
Mailtrap
Email Campaigns
- No campaign builder
- Email templates via API
- No drag-and-drop builder
- HTML editor
- No contacts management
- Drag-and-drop email editor
- Pre-designed templates
- Campaign builder and scheduling support
- Marketing & transactional email support
Automation
- Doesn’t have any marketing automations
- API for automated emails
- Support for webhooks
- Separate and custom sending streams for different email types
- Automation builder in alpha
- Webhooks for event-based triggers
- Contact management tools
- Dedicated email sending streams for transactional and bulk (marketing) emails
Landing Pages and Forms
Not available
Not available
Segmentation & Personalization
- No built-in segmentation
- Personalization available via API
- List-based segmentation
- Fields for personalization
Reporting & Analytics
- Detailed 45-day email logs
- Tracking for delivery events (e.g., bounces, opens, clicks)
- Webhooks for tracking key events
- Detailed statistics with color-coded graphs
- In-depth analytics for transactional emails
- Separate campaign performance reports for marketing
- Engagement metrics (e.g., opens and clicks)
- Performance metrics (e.g., delivered, bounced)
Integrations
- Zapier integration
- Marketer-friendly integrations (e.g., Mailcoach, Datadog)
- Useful integrations with platforms like Figma, Stripe, WordPress, etc.
- MCP agent support
- Zapier integration
- AI-powered integrations (e.g., Lovable, V0.dev, etc.)
- Official SDKs for major programming languages (e.g., Node.js, Python, etc.)
- MCP agent support
Postmark: No-Shrill Transactional Email Sending
Postmark promotes itself as ‘Fast, Reliable Email Delivery Service.’ To be honest, from my experience with the platform, it does its job by the book.
I had everything I needed to set up transactional email sending in minutes (e.g., code snippets, extensive documentation, reliable support, etc.). Once I started sending, I was quite satisfied with the deliverability numbers I’ve seen and the overall reliability of the platform.
However, Postmark doesn’t call itself an email marketing platform, so don’t expect any features for campaign sending, contact management, and similar. It’s rather an email delivery platform that’s focused on providing a top-tier SMTP/API for transactional sending.
Mailtrap: Developers and Marketers United
When I decided to give Mailtrap a go, I was satisfied with its Email API/SMTP for devs. It came with major SDKs, email templates API, and 24/7 tech support.
Since the Email Marketing suite comes in the same plan as Email API/SMTP, I also launched a few newsletter campaigns, tried out the drag-and-drop editor, segmented my lists, and the whole ordeal. Everything went smoothly, although I missed an automation builder, which is now in development.
Postmark vs Mailtrap — Pricing Comparison
Monthly email volume
Postmark Pricing (Transactional Emails Only)
Mailtrap Pricing
Key Differences
Up to 10,000 emails
$15/month
$15/month (up to 50,000 contacts)
Postmark supports only transactional emails; Mailtrap also supports marketing emails.
Up to 50,000 emails
$55/month
$20/month (up to 50,000 contacts)
Postmark is 2x more expensive but provides 45-day logs; Mailtrap offers 5-day logs at this plan.
Up to 100,000 emails
$115/month
$85/month (up to 750,000 contacts)
Mailtrap provides dedicated IPs along with the plan; Postmark lets you purchase them.
Up to 250,000 emails
$245/month
$200/month (up to 750,000 contacts)
Postmark scales well with the price; Mailtrap significantly increases its contact allowance.
Up to 700,000 emails
$455/month
$450/month (up to 750,000 contacts)
Mailtrap lets you have 1,000 team members, whereas Postmark offers 6 seats.
Having sent transactional emails from both platforms and even tried scaling up a bit, I can safely say that both Postmark and Mailtrap have super straightforward pricing models.
The platforms keep it simple with three plans and a slider for choosing your email sending volume.
Additionally, what I liked about Mailtrap is that it doesn’t beat around the bush with contacts and email volume. Namely, once you get past 100,00 monthly email sends, you get way more contacts than allowed monthly email sends, which can’t hurt.
But, since there’s always a but, I have to say that Mailtrap is a bit more affordable if you plan to send 1,500,000 or more emails (around $200 more affordable, to be precise). Moreover, all Mailtrap users get dedicated IPs once they get past 100,000 monthly email sends. With Postmark, you need to send 300k emails per month to be eligible for a $50/month dedicated IP add-on.
Postmark vs Mailtrap — Free Plan Comparison
Postmark Free Plan
Mailtrap Free Plan
Subscribers
No contacts support
Up to 100 contacts
Emails/Month
100 emails/month
3,500 emails/month
Automation
Not available (API only)
Via Zapier or Make
Landing Pages/Forms
Not available
Not available
Branding
No Postmark branding
No Mailtrap branding
As you can see from the table above, Postmark doesn’t really have a typical free (forever) plan, but rather a free trial. This means that you get a super limited email allowance (100 emails) and access to its SMTP/API. Personally, I used the trial to set the platform up before committing to a paid plan.
With Mailtrap, you get up to 3,500 emails/month, access to email API/SMTP, and all email marketing features. However, you can only have up to 100 contacts. What’s more, the platform doesn’t force its branding on free plan users, which I was pleasantly surprised by once I saw my first emails land in my inbox.
Postmark vs Mailtrap — Pros & Cons
Postmark
Mailtrap
- Fast delivery speeds
- Easy to use
- Extensive API documentation
- Simple pricing model
- Separate sending streams
- Cost effective for low-to-medium sending volumes
- All-in-one marketing and transactional email sending solution
- Major SDKs
- Flexible API and SMTP
- High inboxing rates
- In-depth analytics
- 24/7 tech support
- 300k emails/month requirement for dedicated IPs
- No email marketing features
- Free trial is limited to 100 emails/month
- A bit more pricier than Mailtrap for high sending volumes
- Not built for promotional emails
- Workflow builder is in alpha as of writing this article
- Limited integrations
- Initial hourly throttling of 200 emails/hour
- Lower-tier plans have restricted log retention periods
- Logs are kept for 15 days shorter than Postmark
Postmark: Transactional Email Galore
If you need an email delivery platform that can propel your transactional emails to your recipients’ inboxes quickly and reliably, Postmark is your go-to choice.
However, if you want to expand your operations or simply launch your first email marketing campaign, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
Mailtrap: Your Deliverability Powerhouse
Mailtrap promotes itself as having high inboxing rates, fast email delivery, 24/7 tech support, and in-depth analytics. After giving it a shot, I can confirm all four.
Additionally, you can send both transactional and marketing emails with it without having to pay for two separate plans. The only obvious Mailtrap downsides are that the platform has only a dozen integrations so far, and its automation builder is yet to see the light of day.
Postmark vs Mailtrap — Ratings & User Reviews
I have to admit, both Postmark and Mailtrap are quite straightforward. I’ve set both up on my demo projects and sent my first emails in ~15 minutes. To start sending, all you need to do is verify your domain, copy/paste the code snippets for your desired language or framework, and voila!
Based on the user reviews, I’ve noticed that the biggest difference between the two is that Postmark offers a more compact and organized API documentation.
However, Mailtrap shines at providing a seamless email campaign sending experience. The drag-and-drop editor is intuitive, there are some pre-made templates, and even the AI helper is actually, wait for it, helpful!
Speaking of AI, both Postmark and Mailtrap offer their very own MCP servers, allowing you to send emails from your favorite AI model or code editor.
If you’re a developer, you’ll find that the learning curve for Postmark and Mailtrap is basically non-existent. Both platforms are praised for their UX, and I’ve noticed that both devs and marketers like Mailtrap’s analytics.
And in case you’re feeling stuck, Postmark offers a super detailed manual, and Mailtrap has its own knowledge base, where you can learn everything from A to B. Feeling even more stuck? Both platforms receive praise online for responsive customer support, so don’t worry a bit.
Judging by what users have to say on review platforms, both Postmark and Mailtrap seem to nail down their deliverability. The only difference here is that I’ve seen more mentions of Postmark having faster delivery rates.
It’s clear that Postmark is dedicated to providing a terrific transactional email sending experience, but because of this, it lacks email marketing features.
So, if you want fast delivery speeds and high inboxing rates for your transactional emails without any extra features, go with Postmark.
Need to send both transactional and marketing emails, even at the same time, without compromising your deliverability? Don’t look further than Mailtrap.
