Comparing Email API Providers for SaaS
If you're planning to launch your MVP app with Bubble building with no code and you haven't seriously considered an email API provider, then this video is for you because I'm going to be comparing my top three starting with Resend.
Resend: A New Player in Email APIs
Resend is relatively new onto the scene and they say "email for developers". Resend to me is comparable at least feature-wise with Postmark. If we dive into their documentation and then the API, we get a taste of what we can do through the Bubble API connector engaging with the Resend API.
Key Features of Resend
Of course, we can send emails over API. But I get lots of questions about this: What if I want to allow my users to add their own domains as senders within the app? Well, if you need to do that, you need something like Resend because you need to be able to add a domain over the API so that your users can add their domain through your app and you can verify that and ensure the highest possible deliverability while sending through their domain. What else do we have here? We've got audiences and we've also got contacts. So everything you need - bare basics plus a little bit more.
Postmark: A Trusted Email API Provider
Next on my list is Postmark and I've been a big fan of Postmark now and using them across Bubble and WordPress sites over three years. I partly love Postmark because they just lay everything out so easily. Yes, they are built for developers, but it's all explained in plain English. And once more you get a range of features. Let's dive into the API documentation.
Postmark's Features
You can, of course, send emails. You can do things like send click open stats, that sort of thing. You can set up domains through their API, you can set up sender signatures. So a really serious contender. I've experienced great support by their team. Yeah, big thumbs up from me with Postmark.
Loops: Simplifying Email for SaaS
And then lastly, but of course not least, because I'm also a big fan of Loops because Loops gets the basics of email for SaaS right, and it's so simple and easy. They have features in here for both your marketing and transactional emails. So they've got automation. You can replace MailChimp or anything like that with Loops. And you can send from your domain name, of course, and you can set up audiences. You can set up automations like I've just said. Really cool, really simple. Here we go as an idea of a user journey with automations.
Limitations of Loops
The one thing you can't do with Loops yet, which I have mentioned and it's worth comparing with Postmark and Resend, is that Loops is for sending from yourself from the identity of your app to your users. They do not yet allow you or I've not seen (maybe someone knows any different, they can leave a comment down below) - they don't let you send emails on behalf of your users. If you need to do that, then check out the previous offerings.
Conclusion and Further Learning
And so yeah, that's my roundup of emails. If you want to learn more about building apps with Bubble then click the link down in the description where we go in-depth on many of these providers of how you can add and get full access to the API through your Bubble app using the Bubble API connector, not relying on plugins, just going direct to the source so you have that full API capacity. So do go down, click on the link in the description and check out our website and our hundreds of Bubble tutorials to get started on that and truly accelerate your Bubble journey.