Skip to main content
TrustRadius
SparkPost

SparkPost

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…

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Users have found that SparkPost is a reliable and versatile email delivery service that offers a range of useful features. One of the main …
Continue reading
Read all reviews
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

Starter

$30

Cloud
per month

Premier

$75

Cloud
per month

Enterprise

Contact sales team

Cloud

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Return to navigation

Product Demos

SparkPost Signals Demo

YouTube
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is SparkPost?

SparkPost is a cloud email delivery, authentication, and marketing product from Message Systems.

SparkPost Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(15)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

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

(1-5 of 5)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We've connected SparkPost to our web products, so all online subscribers. Site admins, receive emails through SparkPost. It's been used for internal management messages (like database errors, user requests, etc.), but also as the primary way to communicate with the subscribers of our web products. It provided an easy integration experience within our existing web infrastructure (written in primarily Python). It was set up by our department, and we're largely the only ones who send messages through SparkPost, but the entire organization (and hundreds of subscribed users) receive the messages we send.
  • 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.
Our early experiences with SparkPost were great; we were looking for a low-cost (or no-cost) solution to our email messaging needs, and SparkPost had the best low-cost option: 100,000 messages per month for free, guaranteed for life. Even though our team has experience with other APIs, we chose SparkPost because it felt like the best value. Our experience with it was great. Two years ago, they discontinued their free option but sent the existing users the following message:

"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.



  • We chose SparkPost based on a pricing plan and price guarantee that they lied about.
  • It left us stuck with an inferior option that's too deeply integrated into our system to swap out without significant cost.
  • As a result, SparkPost has been a net cost, not a net benefit, to our organization.
I'd say SparkPost is probably the worst option of the three email API products I've used. It has the worst customer service, the fewest features, and costs significantly more than SendGrid, even though SendGrid lets you integrate all of Twilio's other features into a broader set of communications media. In addition, the API and documentation were easy enough to use and integrate, but the templating system has also caused a lot of headaches for us.
Would give it a zero if I could. Their customer service used to be incredible; fast response times, really hands-on with their users, and a pretty regular feedback process. They sent me an awesome t-shirt that became part of my go-to climbing gear. But for the past year, their response times went way down, their customer service was less helpful and generally a lot more rude, and they haven't asked for customer input once since their leadership change.
Witt Sparks | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Assessment Generator uses SparkPost as an email delivery service. We use SparkPost to deliver end user results after they take an assessment, as well as notifications to assessment authors that their assessment has been taken. SparkPost allows us to send a larger volume of emails than the SMTP server provided by our hosting service.
  • 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 is great for automated sending of transactional emails. It appears to be designed for developers—it does not allow the creation and sending of emails from within the SparkPost user interface. If you're building a software system that needs to send emails, SparkPost is a great choice, but it is not a CRM.
  • As a small business, we appreciate the inexpensive plans that SparkPost offers.
  • SparkPost allows us to fulfill our email needs at low cost.
I selected SparkPost based on the following factors:
  • low-cost basic subscription
  • Support for sub-accounts
  • Supported out of the box by Laravel.
Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) does not support sub-accounts. Mailgun does, but their lowest priced paid plan is $79/month, which was outside of our budget. I did not evaluate other services.
Stripe, Zapier, Hotjar
Samir Shamma | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is currently used for all of our outward facing emails. We are currently in the process of expanding it out to other teams in order to be used for better tracking and insight into the inbox. It has helped us with deliverability issues as well as making sure that we are fully aware of how we are doing.
  • Status of deliverabilty
  • Open and Click Tracking
  • Customer Service
  • Manual replaying of events
  • N/A
Great for users looking for seamless integration and solid deliverability.
  • It has helped us with our IP health and making sure that we avoid spam traps
  • Very high deliverability and automatic retrying once they have the event
NA
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Sparkpost as our "mailman" to deliver all of our transactional and non-transactional emails.
  • 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.
It works best if using another platform to build your emails. Not the best in terms of using as a standalone solution.
  • Not really Sparkpost's doing, but we've increased ROI through list hygiene and keeping users engaged as long as possible.
  • They will turn off service during the weekend if there is a billing issue, we lost significant leads because of this. Their business wasn't even open to mitigate the problem and bad communication and expectations during the process.
ExactTarget, Marketo CRM. These are completely different types of systems, but their email element is similar.
Rene Enriquez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We had to write an application where we need to send emails to the end users and then track if there were issues with the email delivery. So we decided to use SparkPost to handle this requirement.
  • 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
It provides a good API and the documentation is good enough to start working with it, I first played with the REST API and then I included the product as part of our software, what we really like about SparkPost is the provided dashboard where you can check the status of all the emails that you send from the application. Even the free version is awesome since it allows you to send a huge amount of emails which is enough in certain cases.
  • We used at the first time the free version which worked awesome.
  • We didn't have to spend our time writing all the features that SparkPost has included.
  • The dashboard give us all the information that we need to know regarding the status of the emails that have been sent from the app
The free version provided by SparkPost is awesome and it lets you use the product and then decide if it fits or not for you, this version doesn't include any trial period which helps to evaluate the product and later make the decision of buying or not.
Return to navigation