I am looking for an alternative to GMail that is:
- Free
- Can be used through REST API
I am writing a web application that needs to send some emails for various reasons, due to some restrictions I cannot use GMail and its wonderful RESTfull API. now I’m wondering if there is something else I can use.
Why do you need REST to send an email? All programming languages have libraries to send emails via SMTP.
I’m not sure if “Gmail alternative” is implying anything other than “service to send and receive email”. If that’s all, I’ve been using https://www.mailgun.com/ to send emails to myself whenever someone uses a small app I wrote to get into my building using their api. And I’ve had zero problems. They give 10k emails sent/received a month.
I’ve used mailgun on a bunch of WordPress installs, and have yet to be disappointed.
https://sendgrid.com/ is pretty nice, too.
+1 for sendgrid.
I have used sendgrid and it was OK for my relatively low volume traffic.
I concur about Mailgun being a really great solution for professional and hobby projects as well, thanks to its generous free quota.
You can also look at Sendgrid, Mailjet, SparkPost, Postmark, Sendinblue and Amazon SES.
I posted a similar question some time ago, got some good discussion:
https://lobste.rs/s/bclape/email_solution_for_side_projects
MailChimp?
And do you need a REST API for any particular reason? I would just use msmtp or something.
‘REST API’ is just a matter of preference. Does it have a free mail hosting plan, like gmail or yahoo?
It’s for sending only iirc
yes, only for sending.
For sending email, you really should be using a email service such as Sendgrid, MailChimp or Amazon’s SES. Sending automated email though an normal email account will likely get you flagged as spam, or get blocked by the provider.