GMass’s transactional email SMTP service: Send better transactional emails through your Gmail account

Send your transactional emails through Gmail with GMass’s SMTP service for better deliverability, speed — and future marketing opportunities

Transactional emails are the non-promotional but crucial business emails you send — they’re emails like account registration confirmations, password resets and shipping notifications.

If you’re running a website or an app, odds are you use transactional emails — and odds are you’re sending those emails through an SMTP service or a transactional email API.

At GMass, we’ve built our own SMTP relay service that works differently than the others: It sends transactional emails through your Gmail or Google Workspace account.

That means your transactional emails go through Gmail’s ultra-reliable servers and they’re logged in your sent folder like any other email you send from your Gmail account. You’ll still get data on opens and clicks like you would from any other SMTP service.

And… it’s free for everyone. Even if you don’t have a paid GMass plan.

Read on to learn about GMass’s SMTP service to send your transactional emails through your Gmail account for searchability, deliverability, ease, new marketing opportunities and more.

GMass SMTP service basics

How GMass’s SMTP service differs from the GMass extension, and who the SMTP service is for

GMass SMTP vs. GMass extension

GMass’s SMTP service is a completely different product than the GMass extension.

You use the GMass extension to send promotional emails. (Using the term “promotional” quite broadly, as it applies here to all email campaigns you initiate with the extension, even if they’re non-commercial.)
You use the GMass SMTP service to send transactional emails.

What they have in common? Both the GMass extension and GMass SMTP service send your emails through your Gmail account.

So if you use both services, you’ll unify all of your business emails in your Gmail account. That can help you with your email management — plus, as we’ll cover later on this page, it’s a powerful but simple way to build marketing email lists from transactional emails.

You do not need to use both services together; you can continue to use the GMass extension for your promotional emails and a different SMTP service for transactional emails. (In fact, depending on your transactional email volume, that may be the right decision for you.)

However, using the combo of the GMass extension and GMass SMTP service can be quite powerful (and also quite practical) for the right business.

How the GMass SMTP is different from using a third-party SMTP server to break Gmail’s limits with GMass

When you’re using the GMass extension and want to break Gmail’s daily sending limits (around 500 emails per day for standard Gmail accounts and around 2,000 emails per day for Google Workspace accounts), you can use a third-party SMTP server to send your extra emails.

The GMass SMTP service is not that.

The GMass SMTP service is only for transactional emails. It’s not for promotional emails, nor is it for busting past Gmail’s sending limits.

So if you’re looking to send virtually unlimited numbers of high-volume promotional emails with the GMass extension, head on over to our explanation of how we’re breaking Gmail’s limits to get started.

Who the GMass SMTP service is for

You’re a good candidate for the GMass SMTP service if…

You are currently sending (or plan to send) transactional emails for your website or app through another transactional email SMTP service like SendGrid, JangoSMTP or Amazon SES.
You send a reasonable volume of transactional emails (and of other emails). Because the GMass SMTP service sends through your Gmail account, it abides by the Gmail daily limits (500/day for standard accounts, 2,000/day for Google Workspace accounts). If you need to send a higher volume, you’ll need to use a different service.
You’re sending transactional emails from your WordPress or WooCommerce website using a SMTP plugin like WP Mail.
You want to send emails from a printer or scanner through a reliable SMTP service.
You use an external email client for your Gmail account and it uses a different SMTP service.

The GMass SMTP service isn’t right for you if…

You don’t send transactional emails.
You’re looking to send a high volume of cold emails through the GMass extension. That’s a different situation entirely — those are promotional emails. You can use a third-party SMTP server to send your large campaigns.
You send out a large volume of emails from your Gmail account on a daily basis. GMass’s SMTP service can’t surpass Google’s sending limits. So if you’re sending around 500 emails a day with a standard Gmail account or 2,000 a day with a Google Workspace account, you’ll need a different SMTP provider.

GMass SMTP service

Set up the GMass SMTP service for reliability, tracking and ease

There are several advantages to sending your transactional emails through your Gmail account via the GMass SMTP relay.

Searchability. Since your transactional emails will now be logged in your Gmail sent folder, you can quickly search through your transactional emails. This is particularly useful for GMass list building and future marketing purposes, which we’ll cover later on this page.
Ease of setup. When you start with a new SMTP service, you normally have to do quite a bit of technical housekeeping (setting up DNS records, SPF, DKIM and more). With the GMass SMTP service, as long as your email service is already configured with your Google account, you won’t have to do any additional setup. Even Gmail’s own SMTP relay has a more complicated setup than the GMass SMTP service (plus the Gmail SMTP relay doesn’t track your emails).
Speed. About half of the inboxes in the world are using Gmail. Since you’ll be sending from Google accounts to (lots of) other Google accounts, you’ll maximize the speed of those email deliveries.
Deliverability. Most transactional SMTP services start you in a shared pool of IP addresses — which can often be blacklisted and have poor deliverability. Your only option? Pay to upgrade to a dedicated IP. With the GMass SMTP service, your emails are sent from Google’s IPs, which no one blacklists.
Price. GMass SMTP service is free. So… yeah, hard to beat that.

Get started by heading to the GMass SMTP service page and signing up. You’ll get all of the info (like server address, ports, and password) you need to configure the transactional email settings for your website, app or other email system.

Transactional email list building

Build new marketing email lists in GMass with a simple search of your transactional emails

The combo of the GMass SMTP service and the GMass extension gives you a chance to build new targeted email lists and send personalized mass emails to those lists — all without ever leaving Gmail.

Since the GMass SMTP service sends your transactional emails through Gmail, those emails all appear in your sent folder.

As we’ve discussed earlier, that means you can search those emails. And with the GMass extension, you can turn those searches into new email campaigns.

Make sure you have the GMass extension installed in your browser.

Run a search on your transactional emails (for example, you could search something like “receipt in:sent after:1/1/22 before:3/31/22” to find all order receipts sent in the first three months of 2022).

Click the magnifying glass icon that appears next to the search box. GMass will then build a new email list from your search results, compiling all of the email addresses to which you sent receipts.

A standard Gmail compose window will now pop up, where you can write an email to everyone on your new list (for instance, offering them an exclusive discount to re-engage them).

You can use GMass’s features like auto follow-ups, scheduling, A/B testing, and more as you set up your new campaign — a campaign which materialized entirely from one transactional email search.

GMass API

Send single transactional emails through your Gmail account with the GMass API

While most transactional emails are automated based on different actions someone takes on your website or app, there may be situations where you need to send a one-off transactional email. (For instance, if your support team works with an individual client to manually reset a password on a hacked account.)

In those situations, you can still send the transactional email through your Gmail or Google Workspace with the GMass API.

You’ll just need to pass the key transactional email data (like the from email, from name, to email, subject, and message) from your server and your transactional email will be sent through your Gmail account to the recipient.

GMass API access is a paid service starting at $29.95/month and is billed separately from your GMass account.

Ready to use the GMass SMTP service to send better transactional emails through your Gmail account?

If you’re sending transactional emails through another SMTP service, you should find quite a few advantages in switching to the GMass SMTP service.

By sending your transactional emails through your Google account, you get the searchability, deliverability and speed of Gmail. Setup is simple as well and the price is, well, free.

And when you pair the promotional emails of the GMass extension with the transactional emails of the GMass SMTP, you’ll be able to quickly find and capitalize on new marketing opportunities — and you’ll never have to leave Gmail to find them.

Try GMass for free

Get started with the GMass SMTP service

(Want to learn more about GMass’s features? Next up: All about A/B testing in GMass.)