SendLayer

What SendLayer is

SendLayer is a transactional email service: it delivers the messages a website or application sends on its own, such as order and booking confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets and the email a WordPress site generates. It does this through an SMTP relay and an HTTP API. The home page headline is "Never worry about email delivery again", and the About page describes SendLayer as "the transactional email delivery platform designed to just work, without the headaches or the hefty price tag." The company is SendLayer, LLC, with a copyright line from 2021.

The About page tells the origin story. In 2022 the team was building software products and kept hitting the same problem: email delivery was "either unreliable, overly complex, or ridiculously expensive", so they built their own service. The stated principles are reliability, simplicity and affordability, and the page is blunt about the second one: "We hate complexity." It says the product strips away unnecessary features, that the documentation is clear and that support is human. The target audience is wide, from "complete beginners and small businesses just getting started to experienced developers, product teams, and enterprise business owners alike."

Two ways to send

The SMTP relay is the no-code route. The FAQ says no coding skills are needed, because the relay "is easy to integrate with common WordPress plugins and other applications", and the features page describes an SMTP setup "so easy that you only need to copy and paste credentials." Any site or tool that can send through an SMTP server can use it, and the home page names WordPress, WooCommerce and custom applications as examples of what it fits into. The site claims SendLayer works with "1,000+ platforms".

The API is the developer route. The home page shows the calls: a POST to console.sendlayer.com/api/v1/email with a JSON body holding the sender, one or more recipients with names, the subject, a content type and both HTML and plain-text content. Further calls retrieve email events, create a webhook for an event such as delivery, list webhooks and delete one. The About page says integration "takes minutes, not days" and that the company provides code snippets for popular programming languages. It also promises "no complex authentication flows, no cryptic error messages", and points to the detailed logs and webhooks as the way to see exactly what is happening with each email.

Tracking, logs and deliverability tools

Every plan includes the same feature set; what changes is volume, domains, log retention and support. Detailed email logs let a sender browse the email history, check delivery status and see when each message arrived. Open and click analytics show who opened an email and which links they clicked, with filters by status or recipient, and the analytics reports cover opens, clicks and bounces. Event-based webhooks push email events straight to the customer's application or server.

On the deliverability side, SendLayer lists suppression management that handles bounced emails and unwanted recipients automatically, bounce management, blocklist management and what it calls active anti-spam. Its "smart delivery protection" monitors spam complaints and bounces to protect the sender's domain reputation. DKIM, SPF and DMARC authentication are part of every plan, and a guided DNS setup walks the customer through authorizing a domain. Accounts can be protected with two-factor authentication. The features page argues for speed as well: a business "can't wait 30 minutes for batch processing", and SendLayer says emails are delivered moments after they are sent.

The trial covers more than sending. The FAQ says a new account can test the API and SMTP credentials along with email logs, analytics, mailing lists and webhooks before paying.

Plans and pricing

All plans are billed annually, prices are in USD, and the sending limit resets each month.

• Starter, $5 a month: 1,000 emails a month, 1 sender domain, 3 days of log retention, standard support.
• Business, $15 a month: 5,000 emails a month, 3 sender domains, 15 days of log retention, premium support. The page shows "$240 savings", calculated on sending 10,000 emails a month.
• Growth, $25 a month: 10,000 emails a month, 5 sender domains, 30 days of log retention, premium support, with "$300 savings" on the same basis.
• Scale, quoted on request: 20,000+ emails a month, 20 sender domains, 30 days of log retention and VIP support.

Every paid plan includes sending by API or SMTP relay, suppression, open and click tracking, bounce and blocklist management, active anti-spam, event-based webhooks, analytics and DKIM, SPF and DMARC authentication. A free trial lets a new user send up to 200 emails without paying. When an account reaches its plan limit or runs out of trial emails, the FAQ says "we'll upgrade you automatically to make sure that your emails never fail". Upgrades are also a button in the dashboard, and customers can change plans or cancel at any time.

The pricing page carries a "100% No-Risk Money Back Guarantee": within 14 days, a customer who decides SendLayer does not fit can request a refund, and the company says it will "happily refund 100% of your money. No questions asked."

Security, reach and support

The site footer states "100% Secure and GDPR Compliant" and "Trusted by customers in 150+ countries", and the home page invites readers to "Join thousands of businesses". Support is a selling point. The home page promises help "from real people who understand email" and says the team has "over 40 years of email experience"; the features page says the team "sleeps, eats, and breathes email." Support is by ticket from the documentation site, with standard, premium or VIP support depending on the plan. Customer quotes on the pricing and home pages praise fast, detailed answers and name individual support staff.

The documentation is organized into getting started (10 articles), account (12), domains (20), integrations (3), the API (2), troubleshooting (2), a glossary (27) and an error library of 111 articles. The most-read docs cover creating an account, authorizing a domain, connecting a site with SMTP, protecting a site from spam and managing the suppression list.

Who it suits

SendLayer suits small businesses and site owners who need their website's email to arrive and do not want to write code: a WordPress or WooCommerce site whose order confirmations, appointment reminders or booking confirmations go missing can switch to the SMTP relay by pasting credentials. Developers get a plain JSON API with webhooks and logs, and the entry plan costs $5 a month. The per-plan volumes are modest, so a growing application will move through Business and Growth to a quoted Scale plan. It is built for transactional mail, not for designing marketing campaigns.