SparkPost features: what you get on each plan
SparkPost was folded into Bird and is published as Bird Email. The sending engine, the API and the developer documentation are the same ones, under a new name. That matters for reading the table below: it grades the email API’s own feature set, on the plan lines Bird publishes for it. Anything that belongs to the pricing, SMTP settings or API tabs is deliberately out of scope here.
The unusual thing about this plan line is how sharp it is. Most providers spread their gating across three or four tiers. Here, Starter at $20/mo already carries the deliverability intelligence — predictive health scoring, spam-trap and blocklist monitoring, real-time alerting, searchable event data — while one narrow group of features waits for Premier. If none of that group matters to you, the entry plan is the whole product.
Feature matrix
| Feature | Included | From plan | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stored templates | Yes | Starter | Content stored and edited server-side |
| Template language | Yes | Starter | Substitution in every content field |
| Snippets | Yes | Starter | Reusable fragments across templates |
| AMP for Email | Yes | Starter | Via API and SMTP injection |
| Suppression list | Yes | Starter | API-managed, per account |
| Searchable event data | Yes | Starter | Queryable, not only streamed |
| Deliverability analytics | Yes | Starter | Per domain, per ISP, per IP |
| Spam trap and blocklist monitoring | Yes | Starter | Bundled, not a paid add-on |
| Real-time alerting | Yes | Starter | Fires on health score drops |
| Event webhooks | Yes | Starter | Capped at 2, 5 on Premier |
| Recipient validation | Yes | — | API live, plan line not published |
| Seed-list deliverability testing | Yes | — | API live, plan line not published |
| Scheduled sending | Yes | Premier | Not available on the entry plan |
| A/B testing | Yes | Premier | Rare on a transactional API |
| Inbound email (relay webhooks) | Yes | Premier | Forwards inbound mail to your URL |
| Subaccounts | Yes | Premier | 15 included |
| Dedicated IP | Yes | Premier | One included at this tier |
| Automated IP warmup | Yes | Premier | Roughly 30 days, hands-off |
| Uncapped dedicated IPs | Yes | Enterprise | Quoted above 5M a month |
Where the plan line falls
Five features and one cap separate the two self-serve plans: scheduled sending, A/B testing, inbound relay webhooks, subaccounts and a dedicated IP, plus the move from 2 event webhooks to 5. That is the entire decision.
A team sending transactional mail from one application, with one webhook consumer and no need to receive replies, has no reason to leave Starter. A platform sending on behalf of its own customers needs subaccounts and inbound relay, so it needs Premier from day one rather than as an upgrade later.
One caveat on sourcing, and it is worth stating plainly. Bird’s own tier list is the only place these plan lines are published; the SparkPost developer documentation describes each API without naming a plan. The two rows marked — are capabilities whose API is live and whose plan threshold is simply not documented anywhere we could verify. Read them as unconfirmed, not as free.
This review follows our email infrastructure testing methodology. We disclose affiliate relationships in our editorial independence policy.
