8 Affordable SendGrid Alternatives for Higher Efficiency

Things are changing so fast nowadays. The tool you love now might be replaced by something even better tomorrow. If you think you’ve found the best, a new option might surprise you.

This is the beauty of tech – there’s always an alternative.

The same goes for SendGrid. It’s very well-known in the tech industry for its reliable email service, especially for transactional email service.

But what if there’s a tool out there that could do even more?

There are many options that offer fresh features, competitive pricing, and powerful performance. So if you are expecting better deliverability, extra support, and simple integrations, you are in the right place.

Because, in this article, we will explore many SendGrid alternatives that can be marge with your business needs.

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s dive in.

What is SendGrid?

SendGrid is a powerful cloud-based email delivery service founded in 2009 and then acquired by Twilio in 2019. It is built to handle both transactional and marketing email for any business that needs a reliable email delivery platform.

Its powerful Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) allows fast, high-volume delivery that handles over 148 billion emails monthly.

As part of Twilio’s suite, SendGrid integrates smoothly with other Twilio services like SMS, voice, video, and authentication, offering a one-stop platform for customer communication. 

Also, it provides flexible and developer-friendly email API which allows easy integration to automate emails, and a user-friendly dashboard that offers a drag-and-drop editor for non-technical users.

Key features include:

• Email Automation: Schedule and personalize emails efficiently
• Reporting and Analytics: Track engagement metrics and campaign success
• Deliverability Tools: Ensure emails reach inboxes rather than spam

SendGrid combines powerful API capabilities with user-friendly tools to help businesses scale their email communications effectively.

Before exploring the alternatives read our full SendGrid review for a better understanding.

SendGrid Alternatives: A Quick Overview

SendGrid’s basic plan is quite costly for its limited features, and its 3-day log retention period makes it difficult to track performance. Many users also find it costly to add marketing channels like SMS and customer support.

Additionally, its IPs are sometimes blacklisted, which affects deliverability. If you are running a team, the team setup requires a separate subscription. The automation system is very basic, even on the higher plans, and it can be hard for developers to use. The free email API plan only allows 100 emails per day.

Due to these drawbacks, users may need an alternative if SendGrid doesn’t fit their business needs.

If you also feel that you need to change your email service, here is a quick overview of some best alternatives of SendGrid for you.

8 SendGrid Alternative You Can Try

Let’s explore some top alternatives of SendGrid that can fulfill your email marketing and transactional needs without compromising on deliverability, ease of use, or budget.

Mailgun

Mailgun is a powerful email delivery platform that can be used as an alternative to SendGrid, especially when you are a developer or a marketer, dealing with reliable SMTP relay and need API-based solutions.

Like SendGrid, Mailgun is designed to handle transactional emails and has supported big clients like Microsoft, Etsy, and Lyft. While SendGrid includes email marketing tools directly within its platform, Mailgun focuses more on deliverability and analytics for transactional emails.

Also, SendGrid has a wider area of email marketing tools, while Mailgun focuses more on making your emails really reach a destination. Among its features are email verification, testing tools, and email testing.

Mailgun also does some view-time optimization to help estimate the perfect time to send emails.

If you just need to send marketing emails, then SendGrid may be enough for you. On the other hand, if you want more from email deliverability and tracking, Mailgun definitely has more to offer when it comes to providing insight into how your emails are doing and how recipients interact with them.

Key Features of Mailgun

• Email APIs: Easy-to-use APIs for sending, receiving, and tracking emails
• Email Validation: Ensures emails reach valid addresses
• Real-Time Tracking: Monitors email performance with advanced analytics
• Inbound email routing: Directs incoming emails to the appropriate destination
• Reliable Infrastructure: Scalable and efficient email delivery

Pros and Cons

Pricing

• Mailgun offers a free plan where you can send up to 100 emails per day and includes basic features like ticket support, RESTful email APIs, and SMTP relay.
• The paid plans start from $15 per month, allowing you to send up to 10,000 emails per month and access additional features such as no daily email limit, tracking, analytics, and webhooks.

Still, if you have any confusion you can read or comparison between SendGrid vs Mailgun for a better understanding to choose Mailgun or SendGrid.

Postmark

Postmark can be a great choice for sending transactional emails, especially if you’re looking for an alternative to SendGrid. It’s designed to help you send transactional emails quickly and efficiently, with easy-to-use templates.

Postmark is known for fast delivery, ensuring your emails reach inboxes like Outlook and Gmail right away. Users also appreciate their helpful customer support team for assisting them instantly.

One unique feature of Postmark is Message Streams, which keeps your regular and promotional emails separate. This separation helps ensure better delivery and keeps things organized.

Plus, Postmark has simple tools to connect with other apps, making it easy to manage all your emails from one place.

Also, you can read our full review of Postmark for a better understanding of Postmark.

Key Features of Postmark

• Fast transactional email delivery: Delivers important emails like password resets and confirmations quickly
• High email deliverability: Strict anti-spam measures keep emails out of spam folders
• Detailed email analytics: Tracks metrics like bounce, open, and click rates for better email insights
• Powerful email API: Provides a flexible API for easy integration into apps
• Customizable email templates: Offers customizable templates for various email types, simplifying email creation

Pros and Cons

Pricing

• Postmark offers a free trial where you can send 100 emails monthly, you can enjoy the API and SMTP service, and 45-day message retention.
• The paid plans start from $15 and you can send up to 10,000 emails per month and enjoy all the premium features.

Pro tip: If you are a WordPress user and looking for a transactional email service, read our article on the best transactional email services for WordPress.

Amazon SES

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a flexible and affordable email tool that makes it a great alternative to SendGrid. It is built on Amazon’s massive cloud network, SES can handle any volume of emails, from small businesses to huge enterprises, and works smoothly with other cloud applications. 

It’s perfect for sending order confirmations, notifications, and even marketing emails. Also, to ensure your emails reach inboxes, Amazon SES provides tools to check email performance and boost delivery. Plus a feature called the Mailbox Simulator lets you test how your emails handle common issues like spam filters and bounces.

SES stands out for its flexibility and pay-as-you-go pricing, which scales with your needs. This allows businesses of any size to manage email costs effectively, paying only for what they use. 

With simple tools to keep your emails out of spam and an easy way to track your results, SES offers reliable, scalable email service without the extra cost or complexity, making it a solid SendGrid alternative.

Key Features of Amazon SES

• High Deliverability: Ensures emails reach inboxes with proper email authentication
• Flexible Deployment: Offers shared, dedicated, and custom IP options
• Detailed Analytics: Provides metrics on bounces, opens, clicks, and complaints
• Scalable and Cost-Effective: Handles high volumes and charges based on usage
• Security and Compliance: Includes MFA, PCI DSS compliance, and VPC connectivity

Pros and Cons

Pricing

• On the free plan, you can send up to 62,000 emails per month for free when sending from an application hosted in Amazon EC2.
• After the free tier, Pay-as-You-Go will be applicable which is $0.10 per 1,000 emails sent.

Mailchimp

Next, we’ll talk about another email marketing tool, Mailchimp, that helps businesses grow by making email marketing and customer management simple. Mailchimp was founded in 2001 and is now owned by Intuit. 

Mailchimp offers features like email campaigns, automated marketing, customer tracking, and reports. Its easy-to-use, drag-and-drop email builder is great for users of all experience levels. It also connects with popular tools like Shopify, Salesforce, and Google Analytics.

Mailchimp can be a good alternative to SendGrid. While SendGrid focuses on sending large amounts of emails, Mailchimp has a wider range of marketing tools. It’s easy to use and provides lots of support, which is helpful for beginners and anyone looking for a complete marketing platform. 

It also provides tools for creating and improving content, along with advanced customer targeting, making it suitable for both small and large businesses.

Key Features of MailChimp

• Email Builder: Create professional emails with a drag-and-drop editor
• A/B Testing: Test subject lines, content, and timing to see what works best
• Automated Journeys: Set up emails based on customer actions, like welcome and cart reminders
• Segmentation: Target specific groups by demographics, engagement, or purchase history
• Analytics: Track open rates, clicks, and conversions to improve campaigns
• Landing page: You can build a landing page for lead generation 

Pros and Cons

Pricing:

• You can send up to 1,000 emails per month to 500 contacts for free but it will contain Mailchimp branding.
• The paid plans start at $13 per month for 500 contacts and 5,000 monthly email sends. And then you can upgrade your plans according to your business needs.

Brevo(formerly Sendinblue)

Brevo is an excellent choice for companies seeking an easy-to-use email marketing tool. It is a good alternative if the core of your work deals with email marketing and is a perfect alternative for SendGrid.

Using Brevo allows you to send professionally designed templates and create professional email campaigns using the easy drag-and-drop editor.

But what makes Brevo different? Its automation capabilities. It doesn’t just blindly send follow-up emails; you can create routes so that it automatically adjusts when every contact takes action based on your emails.

Setting up the Brevo email-sending server is quite easy; it’s just a three-step process. Once you set up Brevo, you can track each outgoing email. For example, how many are opened, how many people clicked something in the email, or how many bounced.

Additionally, Brevo has an API with which your website can connect, which will make sending automated emails directly from your website super easy.

For more on Brevo’s features check out our full  Brevo review.

Key Features of Brevo

• Email Marketing: Easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor with pre-made templates
• Marketing Automation: Advanced workflows triggered by customer behavior
• Advanced Segmentation: Targeted audience segmentation based on various criteria
• Transactional Messaging: High deliverability for emails, SMS, and WhatsApp
• Comprehensive Analytics: Detailed performance tracking and reporting

Pros and Cons

Pricing

• You can send up to 300 emails per day for free every month with essential features like customizable templates and a drag-and-drop editor.
• The paid plans start at $9 per month and include up to 20,000 emails per month and there is no daily sending limit.

Activecampaign

ActiveCampaign is a complete CRM (customer relationship management) tool with all-in-one email marketing, automation, and CRM features. Since the beginning of 2003, the company has supported over 180,000 businesses around the world in creating customized automated campaigns.

For many reasons, ActiveCampaign is a strong alternative to SendGrid. While SendGrid does great things in regards to email deliverability and transactional email services, ActiveCampaign gives way to a more efficient set of toolsets that includes powerful marketing automation and CRM features.

This platform is highly suitable for businesses with the need to create personalized customer journeys and automate their marketing activities across a range of channels.
Also, their advanced segmentation and machine learning abilities in ActiveCampaign give deeper insights, plus more effective targeting than in SendGrid.

Key Features of ActiveCampaign

• Advanced Automation: Create complex workflows to automate tasks
• Email Marketing: Provide a drag-and-drop editor and templates for personalized email
• CRM Integration: Manage contacts and sales processes with the built-in CRM
• Analytics and Reporting: Track campaign performance with detailed analytics
• SMS Marketing: You can reach your audience through SMS in addition to email

Pros and Cons

Pricing

• ActiveCampaign has no free plan but you can use their 14-day free trial version.
• The paid plan starts from $15 per month with a 10X contact limit.

Mailtrap

Mailtrap is an email delivery platform that helps businesses and individuals to test, send, and manage their emails all in one place, making itself a perfect alternative to SendGrid. It includes tools for email testing and sending, with a feature for email campaigns currently in beta and coming soon.

You can send emails using Mailtrap’s Email API or SMTP service and setting it up is quick and easy. Mailtrap delivers emails in about 1 second on average. It also has a bulk stream option that lets you send marketing emails at the same price as regular emails.

With Mailtrap, you get the same features as SendGrid but at a lower cost, and users usually get quicker support. Plus, its testing area helps improve email delivery, ensuring your messages reach the right people.

Key Features of Mailtrap

• Sandbox Testing: Provides a safe environment to test emails without sending them to real recipients
• Email Inspection: Offers tools for debugging emails, including spam score analysis and HTML/CSS validation
• Email Preview: This allows you to preview emails across different clients and devices to ensure a consistent appearance
• API Integration: Supports API integration for automating email tests and workflow.
• Team Collaboration: Features like shared inboxes and customizable notifications to facilitate team collaboration

Pros and Cons

Pricing

• On the free plan, you can send up to 1,000 emails per month with essential features like email tracking and a single sending domain.
• The basic paid plan starts at $15 per month which includes up to 10,000 emails per month and supports up to 1,000 sending domains.

Elastic Email

Elastic Email is an easy-to-use alternative to SendGrid. It lets you send emails directly from your website or app with an SMTP relay. To help ensure your emails reach inboxes, it includes tools like email verification and offers dedicated IP addresses with features like IP warm-up.

Elastic Email also provides clear reports, including details on why contacts unsubscribe your newsletters. For email marketing, it has the basics you need, including a simple email builder and templates that make it easy to create branded emails, though customization options are somewhat limited.

Key Features of Elastic Email

• Drag-and-Drop Editor: Create and customize emails with an AI-powered drap-and-drop editor without needing coding skills
• Email Automation: Set up automated sequences for tasks like welcome emails and follow-ups
• Landing Page Builder: Design custom landing pages to capture leads and drive conversions
• Advanced Analytics: Access detailed metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and bounce rates
• SMTP Relay & API: Send high volumes of emails with high deliverability, suitable for both marketing and transactional emails

Pros and Cons

Pricing

• You can use their free plan to test their advanced features but in limited sending.
• For the period plan starts at $29 and you can up to 37,500 emails and up to 2500 contacts per month on the email marketing plan. And, the email API plan starts from $19 for sending up to 50,000 emails per month will all the premium features.

Choose Your Alternative for Better Workflow

Choosing the right email service depends on your specific goals and needs. If you’re looking for seamless integration, high-volume capabilities, or advanced marketing tools, here’s a quick guide to help you find the best fit:

• Choose Mailgun if you need developer-friendly APIs and a focus on transactional email deliverability.
• Postmark will be best for fast, reliable transactional email with minimal delay and high deliverability.
• Amazon SES is perfect for high-volume email sending and cost-saving on a scalable, pay-as-you-go model.
• Mailchimp is great for small businesses that need an all-in-one email marketing tool with simple automation.
• Choose Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) for easy-to-use email marketing with strong automation features.
• ActiveCampaign is good for advanced marketing automation and CRM capabilities.
• Mailtrap will be an ideal choice for testing email delivery and functionality without sending it to actual recipients.
• Elastic Email for flexible pricing options and a focus on both transactional and marketing emails,

Now, it’s your time to choose the best email service for your business as an alternative to SendGrid. We’ve described all the advantages and disadvantages of the services and why should choose them. 

So, choose one that fits your business best as an alternative to SendGrid, level up your email sending, and boost the relationship with your customers.

Best of luck!