SMTP
The protocol that delivers email between mail servers.
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is the standard for sending email. Most providers offer both an SMTP relay and an HTTP API. SMTP is convenient when migrating from a self-hosted setup; HTTP APIs are easier to debug and authenticate.
reading this as teams choosing a transactional API
Judged purely as an API. What the request contract guarantees on retry, how complete the webhook event coverage is, whether suppressions are readable and writable programmatically, and how much the message log retains when something needs debugging in production.
Applied to smtp, that means weighing idempotency keys, webhook coverage, event stream, and operating track record ahead of the rest, against high-frequency programmatic sends where a missed delivery is a product failure.