Overview
What is SparkPost?
The SparkPost Email Delivery Platform is built to help businesses deliver more value. Its features include real-time analysis of email delivery and customer engagement as well as personalized email templates. Users can also pick from any of the numerous APIs…
TrustRadius Insights
Meh. SparkPost is okay, but there are better options for cheaper, and they've become kinda sleazy.
Using SparkPost for sending Transactional Emails
Sparkpost Engineer Review
Amazing product when used with another email building system.
You can trust in SparkPost
Awards
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Reviewer Pros & Cons
Pricing
Starter
$30
Premier
$75
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Product Demos
SparkPost Signals Demo
Product Details
- About
- Tech Details
What is SparkPost?
SparkPost Technical Details
Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
---|---|
Operating Systems | Unspecified |
Mobile Application | No |
Comparisons
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Reviews and Ratings
(16)Community Insights
- Business Problems Solved
- Pros
- Cons
- Recommendations
Users have found that SparkPost is a reliable and versatile email delivery service that offers a range of useful features. One of the main use cases for SparkPost is to improve email deliverability and give a more professional look to emails. Users appreciate the structured design and formatting options available, which help ensure that their emails reach the intended recipients' inboxes. SparkPost also provides users with the ability to authenticate their email domains, allowing them to send personalized emails directly from their own inboxes.
Another valuable use case for SparkPost is its in-depth analytics and reporting features. Users have found these tools to be incredibly helpful in refining their email campaigns and increasing customer engagement. The detailed insights into open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates provided by SparkPost allow users to track the performance of their emails and make data-driven decisions to optimize their campaigns.
Moreover, the integration with social media apps makes it easy for users to create and post marketing materials directly from SparkPost. This feature saves time and effort by enabling users to streamline their marketing efforts within one platform. In addition, SparkPost supports sending emails in batches, which is particularly useful for businesses that need to reach a large number of recipients at once. The ability to create reusable templates further enhances efficiency by allowing users to save time on repetitive email creation.
Despite some negative experiences with account suspension and lack of communication from customer service, users have generally found that SparkPost improves email deliverability and allows them to focus on their core business. It has been particularly beneficial for businesses with unique and data-heavy models, providing customization solutions and high-volume sending capabilities. Additionally, SparkPost has proven reliable for sending transactional emails, receipts, regular communications, troubleshooting messages, and Q&A purposes.
For many users, one of the most significant advantages of using SparkPost is its ability to handle high-volume email sends quickly and cost-effectively. By offloading this task to SparkPost, users avoid internal headaches and can focus more on their core business. The seamless integration with other marketing tools, as well as CRM systems, has made SparkPost a valuable addition to users' workflows.
Overall, SparkPost has been appreciated by users for its ability to improve email deliverability, provide comprehensive analytics and reporting, simplify the process of sending emails, and handle high-volume sends efficiently. Despite some occasional issues, it has proven to be a reliable and cost-effective solution for transactional emails, marketing campaigns, and customer communications across various industries.
Intuitive and Easy to Use: Users find SparkPost intuitive and easy to use, with a clean, simple, and easy-to-navigate user interface. Several users have praised the clarity of instructions and explanations for all features. Some users felt that SparkPost's user-friendly design made it effortless to understand and follow.
Reliable and Scalable: Users appreciate that SparkPost is built on AWS, ensuring reliability and scalability. The well-built API allows for easy integration and distribution of emails. Users value the ability to maintain email templates in source control and send transactional emails using raw data. Many reviewers have stated their satisfaction with SparkPost's reliable performance and seamless scalability.
Convenient Setup: Once set up, there is little to do, making SparkPost convenient for users. Several users find the pricing reasonable, appreciating the generous free plan that offers 100,000 emails per month. The community and customer support provided by SparkPost are highly regarded by users as helpful resources when needed. A significant number of users find the setup process hassle-free, allowing them to focus on other aspects of their business.
Overwhelming User Interface: Many users have found the user interface of SparkPost overwhelming and challenging to navigate, especially for novice users. They have experienced difficulties in finding settings for email campaigns, resulting in delayed work and the need for additional learning.
Lack of Integrations: Users have expressed disappointment with the lack of integrations with other marketing tools in SparkPost. This limitation has made tasks like email personalization and automation more cumbersome, requiring manual effort or the use of additional tools.
Email Deliverability Issues: Several users have encountered issues with email deliverability in SparkPost. They have reported a significant number of non-mailable and non-deliverable emails, as well as spam complaints. These problems can negatively impact their communication efforts and overall effectiveness of their campaigns.
Users frequently recommend exploring the comprehensive documentation available for SparkPost in order to maximize its utilization. They also suggest checking out the active and helpful community, where users can find valuable information and get answers to their questions. As a best practice, it is advised to open a trial account and thoroughly test the API or SMTP integration before fully committing to SparkPost. Additionally, users recommend considering another service specifically for reporting purposes and ensuring proper API connections.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-6 of 6)Worst Services by SparkPost
waste of money and efforts experienced with SparkPost
- no customer support
- no dashboard oreintation
- no good services
- not kind
- Have to give good services
- have to give platform walkthrough
- atleast have to recorded walkthrough videos
Meh. SparkPost is okay, but there are better options for cheaper, and they've become kinda sleazy.
- Easy integration
- Good documentation
- (Used to have) great customer service
- (Used to have) great pricing options
- A horrifying about-face on pricing after guaranteeing a lifetime rate.
- A steep drop in customer care and customer service quality.
- Increased prices compared to competitors.
- Clumsy email templating system.
- Lack of integration with other messaging systems.
"When you signed up, we promised that if we ever changed the terms of our 100K free plan, we would continue to honor the original plan for the life of the account. I would like to reaffirm this promise: while this plan is no longer available to new customers, you are grandfathered into this level of free sending volume."
The following year, apparently following a change in leadership, they decided to "deprecate" existing free plans, dropping us down from 100,000 messages per month to 500, the lowest of any email API service I'm aware of. No recognition of the broken promise, the reneged guarantee, just a 20% off coupon. This atrocious behavior that reeks of a new culture of squeezing as much money as possible out of its users and has coincided with a steady deterioration of functionality and customer service. At this point, I have no idea why anyone would pay more for a worse service that treats its users so poorly when you could use SendGrid or a similar competitor for a lower price and way more features.
Using SparkPost for sending Transactional Emails
- Good Documentation
- Developer focused
- Supports sub-accounts
- Good support
- Integrates with Laravel out of the box
- When I first implemented SparkPost, I did not take advantage of the sub-account feature, and my account was suspended on New Year's Eve. It took two days until I could speak with a support representative to get my account re-activated. I am now using sub-accounts to alleviate the underlying problem, but I was disappointed that my account was suspended by an automated system with no notice.
Sparkpost Engineer Review
- Status of deliverabilty
- Open and Click Tracking
- Customer Service
- Manual replaying of events
- N/A
- Email Deliverability
- Last 10 day insights for reporting on email system health
- Individually viewing users on the suppression list and quickly take off or put back on.
- API
- Reporting. Within the User Interface, it only allows visibility for 10 days.
- You have to use their API to do anything for long-term metrics
- Billing support when issues arise with bad communication.
You can trust in SparkPost
- When you don't want to spent time writing your own code to send emails from your apps
- When you're looking for a product which provides all that you need regarding email features to make it part of your software
- When you want to use a product which includes templates that can be re-used instead of writing your own and all the required effort to do that
- I really like SparkPost, it was really useful to achieve our goals