SMTP Ghost and vs Competitors: Who Leads in Email Marketing?

SMTP Ghost for Effective Email Marketing: Review + Competitors - cover photo

Email marketing is powerful, but it comes with challenges — keeping emails out of spam, reaching the right leads, and making sure messages don’t feel generic.

Many tools promise to help, but finding one that delivers can be tough. Enter SMTP Ghost, a tool that aims to convert cold leads into customers with AI-powered, personalized outreach.

But is it the right choice?

With its strengths — and a few potential drawbacks — it’s worth examining closely.

Explore our review and competitors list to see if SMTP Ghost stands up to the competition and fits your email marketing needs.

SMTP Ghost: a closeup

SMTP Ghost homepage

What’s the tool about?

SMTP Ghost is an email marketing tool that lets you convert cold leads into customers. It uses AI to create personalized outreach messages that increase conversions.

Key features

  • Inbox rotation – Automatically distribute email volume across inboxes for better deliverability.
  • Email warmup – Boost your chances of landing in your prospects’ inbox with unlimited warmup capabilities.
  • Email verification – Validate your contacts in real time to keep your list accurate and avoid bounces.
  • Instagram and Google Maps scrapers – Extract targeted email addresses from popular platforms to enhance your outreach lists.

Considerations

  • Email marketing focus – Primarily designed for email campaigns. Perfect fit for email marketers and agencies who need robust email outreach.

Pricing

SMTP Ghost offers four pricing plans:

  • Free – Includes 1 email account, 500 emails per month, and 1,000 contacts with limited support.
  • Starter – At $36/month, you get unlimited email accounts and contacts, 100,000 emails per month, unlimited warmups, and more.
  • Professional – For $82/month, this plan supports 250,000 emails/month, IP rotation, 2,000 email scraping credits, and priority support.
  • Business – The top plan at $228/month, with unlimited emails/month, 3,750 email scraping credits, and dedicated priority support.

SMTP Ghost competitors

Woodpecker

Woodpecker's homepage; a tool for cold email sending

Woodpecker targets agencies and sales teams needing robust email automation.

It supports natural sending patterns, email warmup, and verification to keep emails out of spam folders and improve deliverability. Users can create drip campaigns using a visual builder, automate follow-ups, and manage multiple client accounts in one panel.

Pricing starts at $29 per month for 500 contacts. Key features include real-time deliverability monitoring, CRM integrations, and A/B testing for maximum impact.

Woodpecker’s user-friendly interface and flexible configurations make it easy to setup and automate emails for high outreach impact.

Emelia.io

Emelia homepage

Emelia.io is an all-in-one platform for email and LinkedIn outreach, suited for sales teams, marketers, and recruiters.

The tool automates tasks like profile visits, messages, and connection requests, simplifying the whole flow of outreach. Key features include email warmup, LinkedIn Sales Navigator scraping, and CRM integrations, which work fine for increasing engagement across both channels.

Pricing starts at $39 per month for one email account and 1,000 credits, with extra costs for LinkedIn. This tool lacks user reviews on major platforms, leaving some users without social proof.

Folderly

Folderly homepage

Folderly is an email deliverability tool that suits businesses prioritizing inbox placement and sender reputation. The tool monitors spam triggers, checks for spam words, and offers insights on email placement to ensure maximum impact. Folderly works fine with Gmail, Outlook, and other major ESPs.

Pricing begins at $96 per mailbox per month, with discounts for multiple mailboxes. While users find Folderly valuable, some have reported issues with the warmup feature, causing additional pain and impacting their sender reputation.

Folderly’s real-time deliverability insights make it ideal for maintaining high email placement rates.

Ubico

Ubico homepage.

Ubico is an AI-powered tool for prospecting, outreach, and meeting scheduling, designed for sales and marketing teams.

It automates personalized outreach, segmentation, and industry insights to boost engagement. Its top features include email validation and a segmentation engine, enhancing the whole flow of outreach.

Pricing starts at $100 monthly for the Starter plan, which includes automation and scheduling tools. Some users find the interface complex and the reply rates inflated due to bot activity.

Ubico’s AI-driven outreach capabilities and Google products integrations make it suitable for scaling outreach across channels.

Conclusion

SMTP Ghost offers solid tools for email marketing, but it has limitations that may leave some users wanting more. While it performs well for email campaigns, it lacks multi-channel outreach options and user-friendly features that can streamline the setup process for transactional emails.

For businesses and agencies seeking a more comprehensive tool, Woodpecker fills these gaps by offering advanced deliverability, CRM integration, A/B testing, and intuitive automation tools that simplify email workflows and boost engagement.

Ready to upgrade your email outreach? Try Woodpecker today and experience better deliverability and streamlined automation!

FAQ on SMTP Ghost

Let’s clear some doubts.

How to setup SMTP Ghost?

To set up SMTP Ghost setup for all your transactional emails, follow these steps:

  1. Setup basic SMTP – Configure your SMTP server and security settings.
  2. App password and config object – Ensure security by setting up app passwords and adding them to your config object.
  3. Gmail account setup – For Gmail account users, set up SMTP with app passwords.
  4. Free SMTP service — SMTP Ghost includes free SMTP service for users who want to send transactional emails without extra costs.

This setup also enables the tool to be used with var www ghost for ghost publications and other email campaigns.

SMTP vs SMTP Ghost: What’s the difference?

SMTP is a protocol used for sending emails across the internet, focusing on the transmission of messages from one server to another.

SMTP Ghost, on the other hand, is a tool that uses SMTP to enhance email marketing efforts with features like AI personalization and email verification. It’s designed specifically for marketers to improve email campaign effectiveness. Configuring either requires setting up a dedicated app password and pasting the config object in your project directory cd.