Prepaid Email Credits for SMTPfast

Why we added prepaid credits

Most email volume is predictable.

Password resets, login codes, receipts, invites, alerts, and background notifications usually follow the shape of your product usage. That is why SMTPfast plans include a monthly email allowance: 3,000 on Free, then larger allowances on Starter, Growth, and Scale.

But some months are not predictable.

A launch gets more signups than expected. A Black Friday workflow sends more receipts and back-in-stock alerts. A migration replays account invitations. A broadcast to your own customers goes out at the same time as a product spike.

Before prepaid credits, the answer was simple but sometimes too blunt: upgrade plans.

Upgrading is still the right answer when you need more features, more domains, more contacts, higher included volume, exports, or advanced observability. Prepaid credits are for the narrower case where the plan is right, but the month has a temporary volume spike.

How credits work

Email credits are optional prepaid extra sends.

The rate is simple:

Purchase	Extra emails
$1	1,000 extra emails
$5 minimum	5,000 extra emails
$25	25,000 extra emails
$100	100,000 extra emails

Your monthly plan allowance is always used first. Once that allowance reaches zero, SMTPfast uses one prepaid credit for each accepted email.

For example, if your plan includes 10,000 emails/month and you buy 20,000 credits:

1. The first 10,000 accepted emails use your monthly plan allowance.
2. The next 20,000 accepted emails can use prepaid credits.
3. Your effective sending capacity for that month is 30,000 accepted emails.

Credits only add overflow email volume. They do not include higher-plan features, extra domains, extra contacts, exports, tracking, webhooks, trust status, or support levels.

Where credits are used

Credits apply to the same sending paths as your normal monthly allowance:

• transactional API sends
• batch API sends
• broadcast campaign sends

That matters because all three paths share the same quota and ledger logic. If a batch or broadcast needs more emails than your monthly allowance has left, SMTPfast checks the prepaid credit balance before rejecting the send.

If there are not enough credits, the API response includes the monthly usage, monthly limit, remaining plan allowance, current credit balance, and the number of credits needed. That makes it clear whether you should wait for the monthly reset, upgrade your plan, or buy overflow credits.

What you see in Billing

The Billing page now shows three numbers side by side:

• Plan allowance left - how many emails remain in the current monthly plan period
• Extra prepaid emails - the current prepaid credit balance
• Effective sends left - plan allowance plus prepaid credits

There is also a recent credit activity ledger, so purchases, debits, refunds, disputes, reservation refunds, and admin adjustments are visible instead of hidden inside Stripe or support tooling.

Credits now sit below the upgrade plans in Billing. That is intentional. We want upgrades to remain the primary path when you are consistently outgrowing a plan. Credits are there for overflow, experiments, launches, and one-off spikes.

Buying credits

Open Billing, scroll to Prepaid Email Credits, and click Buy Credits.

Stripe Checkout lets you choose the amount. SMTPfast converts the paid amount into email credits after Stripe confirms payment:

$1.00 = 1,000 email credits
$5.00 minimum purchase = 5,000 email credits

Your account must be active before buying credits, and Stripe remains the source of truth for payment events. If a payment is refunded or disputed, the credit ledger records the adjustment.

Why not make everything pay-as-you-go?

Pure usage-based pricing is flexible, but it can also make email costs hard to predict. Transactional email is infrastructure. Teams usually want to know the monthly baseline before they ship a workflow that sends mail in production.

SMTPfast still uses plans because plans are easier to budget and easier to reason about:

• predictable monthly allowance
• feature limits tied to the plan
• clear upgrade path as the product grows
• optional overflow when the month is unusually busy

That gives you the control of prepaid usage without turning every send into an accounting decision.

When to use credits vs upgrading

Use prepaid credits when:

• a launch or seasonal event temporarily raises volume
• you need to finish a month without changing plans
• you are testing a new workflow and do not know its long-term volume yet
• you send an occasional broadcast to your existing contacts

Upgrade when:

• you are repeatedly using credits every month
• you need more included monthly volume
• you need higher-plan features
• your team needs the limits and support level of a larger plan

The short version: upgrade for sustained growth, use credits for overflow.

Availability

Prepaid email credits are available now for active SMTPfast accounts from the Billing page.

You can compare plans on the pricing page, then buy credits from Billing when you need extra volume.