Email Service Provider (ESP)

Email providers, also known as ESP (Email service provider), are companies that offer the technical resources and means necessary to create an email account and thus have the ability to send and receive emails.

When you need to create mass mailing campaigns, you have to be very careful in choosing the email service provider, since part of the success of the campaigns is related to the ESP.

Among the free ESPs the most popular are Gmail, Yahoo!, Outlook (hotmail), GMX Mail and Zoho.

1. Differences between email provider and email client

As we have already indicated above, the email provider is the company that offers you the email account, as well as the means that facilitate the possibility of sending and receiving emails.

On the other hand, an email client is the application or software that would allow you to use the features offered by email providers (ESP).

In other words, the email provider allows you to create the email account on their servers and the email client allows you to access and read emails, send new messages and, in short, manage your emails.

Some examples of email clients are:

• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Microsoft Outlook
• Apple Mail
• Android Mail

2. Differences between email providers and bulk mailing services

In general, most ESPs allow users to send personal emails or to small groups of people, whether for personal or professional purposes. So you can’t use them to send large number of messages or mass mailing campaigns, (especially in the case of free ESPs).

Some of the most common limitations are: You can send only up to 150 emails per day, you can’t send the same email to more than 50 contacts at the same time, you won’t have statistical date about the delivery and subscriber behavior, you can send a maximum of 30 emails per hour, etc.

On the other hand, an email marketing service provider or mass mailing company, such as Mailrelay, is just the solution for companies that want to create and send bulk emails without the restrictions that email providers impose when you want to send to thousands of emails at the same time.

An email marketing provider allows you to: send at the same time to as many contacts as your customers want, offers statistics of the mailings, manages unsubscribes, allows the use of autoresponders, segments contacts, makes it easy to design attractive emails, etc.

3. Most used email service providers

Although there are countless email providers, currently the most well-known and used would be the following:

• Gmail: Offers 15 GB of storage space and allows you to attach photos, videos and documents to emails.
• Outlook: Allows you to schedule emails and create new meetings and appointments. It also has an application for Android and iOS.
• Mail.com: Provides 2 GB of online storage.
• Yahoo! Mail: Allows you to add other email services and integrate a calendar.
• Zoho Mail: Ideal for businesses, it offers a set of applications and facilitates team collaboration.
• Inbox.com: Offers 1 TB of storage and protection against spam and viruses.
• GMX: Provides 65 GB of storage and allows you to send attachments up to 50 MB.
• Fastmail: It is a premium service that offers privacy and control with 2 GB of storage in its basic plan.
• ProtonMail: Known for its security, it offers end-to-end encryption.
• AOL Mail: Offers unlimited storage and advanced protection against spam and malware.

These providers are characterized by offering different storage capacities, security options, and email management tools.

These tools may be relevant to users depending on their specific needs.