8 Best SendGrid Alternatives In 2024 [Pros & Cons]

Twilio SendGrid has been a popular SMTP relay, allowing businesses to reach customers with transactional emails.

However, the email delivery service has its drawbacks. The expensive pricing structure, lack of features, and unresponsive customer support are some of the things users have encountered so far. So, if you’ve experienced similar issues and felt the need to examine your options, you’ve come to the right place.

Today we’ll analyze some of the best SendGrid alternatives, focusing on their features, pros and cons, and pricing, to help you find a transactional email service that better suits your needs.

Disclaimer: The information below is accurate as of May, 2024.

How to Choose the Right Alternative to SendGrid

To find the best alternative, you should first identify your pain points. Slow customer support can delay operations, while limited automation will prevent you from scaling, especially if it’s available on higher-tier plans.

Moreover, SendGrid’s starting cost of $15/month for a relatively small number of contacts and emails is also a deal-breaker, especially if the most crucial automation features are gated behind the premium plans.

Before you change your software, you should consider the following criteria:

• Email volume: Determine how many emails you send each month and how your alternative scales with your needs.
• Deliverability: Opt for a service known for high deliverability rates to avoid sending sensitive messages to the spam folder.
• Advanced features: Ensure your options have features like automation, A/B testing, and advanced email analytics to monitor your performance.
• Integration capabilities: Check if the platform integrates with your existing tools and workflows for a smooth migration.
• Scalable pricing: Choose a tool with a pricing plan that fits your budget to avoid ending up changing the software in the long term.
• Customer support: Consider the responsiveness of the customer support by checking other user reviews found on G2 or Capterra.

Let’s see the best options we compiled for you to tackle SendGrid’s drawbacks.

Best SendGrid Competitors by Use Case

• Moosend – Best for unlimited emails, high deliverability, and advanced automation.
• Brevo – Best for simple transactional email and SMS functionality.
• SMTP2GO – Best for reliable delivery and detailed reporting on email sends.
• Mailchimp – Best for Mailchimp users who want transactional emails.
• Amazon SES – Best for scalability and integration with AWS services.
• Mailgun – Best for powerful APIs for sending, receiving, and tracking emails.
• Mailtrap – Best for testing and debugging email sending.
• Postmark – Best for great delivery rates and transactional email tracking.

Top SendGrid Alternatives: Comparison Table

Below, you will find more information about the email marketing automation and SMTP server alternatives we compiled, including their key features and pricing.

Now let’s see them in more detail.

1. Moosend

Pricing: $9/mo. for unlimited emails, 30-day free trial (Sign up here)

Best for: eCommerce, Startups, SMBs, Enterprises

Best feature: Reliable and flexible email API

Moosend is a powerful and cost-effective alternative to SendGrid, offering an array of tools to suit your promotional and transactional needs.The platform has a user-friendly drag-and-drop newsletter editor with advanced features, such as dynamic content blocks, and a new AI writer to help you generate email copy for different occasions.

It also offers responsive templates to simplify the process and save time. One of its best features, though, is its high email deliverability of 98% and commitment to reducing bounce email and unsubscribe rates.

Compared to SendGrid, Moosend combines marketing campaigns with a smart SMTP server solution to let you send transactional emails. Whether it is password reset messages or order confirmation emails, this software will let you send them effortlessly.

Among other things, the flexible API allows you to manage your lists and campaigns directly through your software. Also, the API documentation is very comprehensive, making it easier to connect your apps directly to Moosend’s infrastructure.

You can benefit from the powerful real-time reporting and analytics tool to monitor performance and track your open rates, click-throughs, and bounce rates. And if you don’t see the results you desire, you can use the A/B testing feature to find the winning variations and optimize your strategy.

Best features

• First-class infrastructure and dedicated IP addresses
• Easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder
• Email marketing automation and pre-made recipes
• Custom reporting and analytics
• A/B testing and spam testing tools
• API integrations with CRM tools, eCommerce, WordPress, etc.

Pros

• More affordable – no need to purchase two separate plans to be able to send both transactional and marketing emails
• User-friendly automated workflows and powerful segmentation options
• Responsive 24/7 customer support through email, live chat, phone (Enterprise), knowledge base, tutorials, and more

Cons

• Not as many native integrations as SendGrid
• No SMS marketing options
• No free plan, but there’s a 30-day free trial including all core features

Pricing

Moosend’s paid plans begin at $9/month for up to 500 subscribers, unlimited emails, and immediate access to the SMTP server to send your transactional emails, craft your reports, and provide personalized customer experiences to your audience.

You can also sign up for the 30-day free trial to see where Moosend excels and what makes it a robust SendGrid competitor.

Try Moosend

2. Brevo

Pricing: $25/mo. for 20K emails, limited free plan

Best for: Publishers, Agencies, eCommerce

Best feature: Email tracking and analysis

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is a simple email service solution to create newsletters, transactional emails, and SMS campaigns for your customers. This solution also offers an email editor to craft your messages and automate them through the workflow editor.

When it comes to the SMTP server, Brevo will provide you with core API features and advanced templating to build dynamic campaigns. If you use the free plan, there’s, unfortunately, a daily sending limit. To lift it, you need to upgrade to one of the premium plans. Moreover, a dedicated IP is also offered, but it’s only available in the Enterprise plan.

Brevo also offers contact management tools, including customizable newsletter signup forms, a sales CRM, and email segmentation to group your audience. On top of that, you’ll get a workflow builder to set up automated sequences.

This SendGrid alternative also comes with various SMS marketing features to help you increase your marketing efforts. While this solution is a great alternative, it may not be ideal for small businesses on a budget as it is more expensive than other Brevo competitors.

Best features

• Mobile-friendly email designer
• Email & SMS personalization
• Customizable signup forms
• Social media ads
• Contact management system
• Reporting and analytics

Pros

• SMS marketing options and WhatsApp campaigns
• Ease of importing contact lists
• Segments are easy to understand and set up

Cons

• Very limited free plan with a daily sending limit
• Not very advanced reporting and analytics
• No built-in email verification service
• You only get email support for the Transactional Email plan

Pricing

Paid subscription plans start at $25/month with a monthly email volume of 20K (marketing and transactional).

The platform gives you a limited free plan to test out its features. However, you can only send 300 emails per day.

Read full Brevo review

3. SMTP2GO

Pricing: $10/mo. for 10K emails, free plan

Best for: SMBs, eCommerce

Best feature: Email testing tools

SMTP2GO is another great alternative to SendGrid, particularly for businesses seeking a reliable and straightforward SMTP relay solution to handle transactional emails. This option has an excellent delivery infrastructure to ensure your emails reach the inbox without getting caught by spam filters.

Moreover, you can benefit from the detailed reporting and real-time analytics tool. While they aren’t as advanced as SendGrid’s, you can monitor your email performance and use the insights to improve engagement metrics and enhance the customer experience.

SMTP2GO supports various integrations with popular third-party applications, including a WordPress Plugin to send outgoing emails through the platform’s servers.

With a user-friendly dashboard and advanced functionality, this option will help you simplify email campaign management, and offer you all the tools to deliver your messages and minimize bounced emails despite being a less popular competitor.

Best features

• TLS/SSL Secured
• Bounce/spam tracking
• SMS messaging
• Dedicated IP address
• Automatic DKIM/SPF
• Email testing tools

Pros

• High deliverability rates
• Intuitive user interface
• Responsive customer support and additional resources

Cons

• Limited advanced marketing features compared to others
• Only 30 days of email reporting on all plans
• Pricing plans can be expensive (email-based)

Pricing

Paid plans start at $10/month with the Starter plan for 10K emails and certain limitations. For a dedicated IP address and email testing tools you need to get the Professional starting at $75/month (1K emails).

A free plan is available but for 1K emails/mo., 5 days of reporting, and ticket support only.

4. Mailchimp

Pricing: $20/block for 25K emails, limited free plan

Best for: Agencies, Publishers, eCommerce

Best feature: Automatic SPAM loop registration

Next, we have Mailchimp, a popular SendGrid alternative for eCommerce businesses and publishers. This email marketing platform offers an SMTP server solution called Mailchimp Transactional Email (formerly Mandrill) to send and manage inbound emails.

As an ESP, Mailchimp gives you access to an email builder and a visual workflow editor. This software is also famous for its advanced multi-step sequences (available on the highest tier plan) that let you deliver more targeted emails to your recipients based on their actions and funnel stage.

Moreover, you can use the form and landing page builders to increase your lead generation and then use email segmentation to group your new subscribers according to specific criteria, such as demographics.

Lastly, it’s good to know that Mailchimp’s email platform and SMTP service have different pricing structures. To send transactional emails, you need to purchase block credits starting at $20/block for 25K emails, unlike other Mailchimp alternatives that offer transactional emails as part of their paid plans.

Best features

• Email marketing campaign editor
• Visual workflow builder
• Campaign push notifications
• Landing page builder
• Dedicated IP address (with additional cost)

Pricing

Paid plans start at $20/month for up to 500 contacts for the marketing features. To get access to the SMTP server, you need to buy credit blocks at $20 each for 25K emails. There’s a dedicated IP option for an additional $29.95/mo.

Mailchimp also offers a limited free plan with an email send limit of 1K monthly campaigns (500/day).

Read full Mailchimp review

5. Amazon SES

Pricing: Pay-as-you-go, free plan

Best for: eCommerce, Developers

Best feature: Activity and sender reputation monitoring

Amazon SES is a simple solution that gives developers the tools they need to send emails from different applications. While this SendGrid competitor isn’t like the email service providers mentioned above, you can use it to deliver transactional emails, marketing campaigns, and bulk emails to your audience.

To help you ace your email delivery, this solution has various authentication options, including Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM). This way you’ll ensure that your deliverability remains intact, and you avoid getting flagged as spam or ending up on an email blacklist.

In addition, Amazon SES offers activity and reputation monitoring, an essential feature to keep track of your performance. You can easily check your open rates and click-throughs to see how effective your efforts are.

Amazon SES is a tool oriented towards developers that can integrate it into any stand-alone application. Also, you don’t get a fancy user interface and out-of-the-box features, but the service is on the affordable side (depending on usage).

Best features

• Dedicated IP addresses
• Activity and reputation monitoring
• Sender identity management
• Sending statistics
• Mailbox simulator

Pros

• Affordability
• Customizable emails

Cons

• Requires a lot of manual setup
• No deliverability insights
• No customer support

Pricing

Amazon SES has a very particular pricing structure. If you send from Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) hosted apps, then you have 62K free emails and you pay $0.10 for every 1K messages sent after that.

If you send emails from another email client, then you have no free emails and pay $0.10 per 1K messages. To receive emails, you also pay nothing for the first 1,000 emails and $0.10 for every 1K emails you get after that.

6. Sinch Mailgun

Pricing: $35/mo. for 50K emails, 30-day free trial

Best for: Online marketers, Creators

Best feature: Suppression management

Among the top SendGrid alternatives, you’ll also find Mailgun, an email marketing software and SMTP service geared towards online marketers and creators who want to send transactional campaigns to their audience.

The platform has a full suite of deliverability features, like pre-send testing, email verification, etc., while you also get a send time optimization feature to enhance delivery.

Users can handle and track the performance of their transactional emails, either through the SMTP relay or the available RESTful API. Apart from transactional campaigns, you can use Mailjet, Mailgun’s recent acquisition, to craft messages through the drag-and-drop email builder. You can also segment your audience effortlessly and use data to amp conversions.

Finally, Mailgun will give you access to suppression management to make sure that you are in control of your email marketing and are compliant with the CAN-SPAM act.

Best features

• Inbound email routing
• Marketing campaigns through Mailjet
• Email address verification
• Suppression Management
• Send API, SMTP Relay, and webhooks

Pricing

Paid plans start at $35/month with 50,000 emails/month included. If you want to get Mailjet, the tool gives you a free plan for 6,000 email sends/month (200/ daily emails). Then, the Essential plan begins at $15/month for 15,000 emails/month.

Mailgun has a 30-day free trial with 5,000 emails/month for five authorized users.

7. Mailtrap

Pricing: $10/mo. for 10K emails, limited free plan

Best for: Developers, IT services, SMBs

Best feature: Complex email sequence testing

Mailtrap is another great competitor to SendGrid geared towards developers and quality assurance teams.

The software is more of a development tool rather than an email marketing service. Users can safely test and debug emails in a controlled environment before they send them to their lists. This prevents spamming real customers with test emails, ensuring your domain reputation remains intact.

Regarding Mailtrap’s virtual email testing environment, developers can view their emails, check spam scores, validate HTML/CSS, and check if links are working before deployment. You can also simulate various email server conditions to test how emails respond under different scenarios. This is a great addition for quality assurance teams.

For the time, the platform doesn’t offer marketing campaigns; however, an email marketing feature is in the works. If you want to send marketing messages, you should consider another alternative that combines the two instead of waiting for the feature to roll out.

Best features

• HTML/text templates
• 60-day email logs
• API and SMTP integration
• Email validation and testing options
• Deliverability alerts

Pros

• Testing API allows you to test all email components (header, subject line, etc.)
• Detailed reporting and analytics
• Full control over domain authority

Cons

• No marketing campaigns for the time
• No inbox placement analysis
• Difficult to handle if not a developer

Pricing

Mailtrap offers two paid plans for sending and testing emails. The Email Sending plan starts at $10/month for 10K emails, while Email Testing is $15/month for 5K test emails.

Free plans are available for both, but they are primarily for testing purposes due to the sending/testing limits.

8. Postmark

Pricing: $15/mo. for 10K emails, limited free plan

Best for: Developers, SaaS

Unique feature: Message Streams

Another premium SMTP relay server you can consider is Postmark by ActiveCampaign. This SendGrid alternative allows you to craft and deliver transactional email campaigns to your audience. The tool also comes with pre-made email templates to help you build an effective email program.

When it comes to sending, Postmark promises fast and reliable email delivery to popular clients like Outlook and Gmail. According to user reviews, customer support is also very responsive and helpful.

Apart from that, the service has a feature called Message Streams which prevents your transactional and bulk emails or promotional messages from mixing to ensure better traffic management and high deliverability.

Lastly, Postmark features great REST APIs to help you connect your applications and streamline your marketing efforts.

Best features

• System & service availability API
• Powerful analytics
• Full message retention (45 days)
• Email expert assistance
• Spam score checking

Pros

• Responsive customer support
• Comprehensive documentation
• Message Stream will keep everything organized

Cons

• Can be expensive
• No list management
• No marketing automation features

Pricing

Paid plans start at $15/month for 10K emails. Dedicated IPs are available (to customers sending more than 300K emails) as an optional add-on that you can get for an extra $50/month/IP.

The service also has a free developer plan, but it’s only for 100 test emails per month.

How We Selected The Tools

All of the tools in this list have been tested by our team to provide an unbiased description of its features and capabilities.

We spent hours setting up new accounts and trying each software to provide an accurate experience and show users exactly what they will come across when they sign up. Find more information about our software selection methodology on how we choose tools to feature on the Moosend Blog.

Additional Resources

If you’re looking for more resources to make an informed decision, check the following posts we compiled:

• SMTP Server Solutions For Marketers & Developers
• Best Email Marketing Services Reviewed
• Best Mailchimp Alternatives

Choose the Best SendGrid Alternative

Finding the right email tool to create and deliver your email messages is essential for a successful email marketing strategy.

While SendGrid has a reputation for being a good service, you can always find more scalable solutions that combine marketing campaigns and transactional emails to avoid purchasing additional tools and facing integration incompatibility.

The market has numerous options for you to choose from. If you want a solution that combines marketing and transactional emails, is more affordable, and has high deliverability, why not give Moosend’s email tools and API a chance?

All you need to deliver your transactional email campaigns is to sign up for a paid subscription plan.

FAQ

Below you’ll find some helpful answers to frequent questions.

1. Why should I consider a SendGrid alternative?

You should consider a competitor to SendGrid if you’re experiencing slow customer support or need more features at a lower price tag. Exploring other options will ensure you find a solution that aligns with your specific email marketing needs and budget.

2. Are there any free alternatives to SendGrid?

Yes, several alternatives offer free plans. Mailchimp and Mailtrap, for example, have free plans but they are very limited. Instead, you can sign up for any free trials to test the tools and their advanced functionality. This way, you’ll have a clear picture of the new software and its true capabilities.

3. What should I check in a service’s API when switching from SendGrid?

When considering an alternative’s API, assess how well-documented and user-friendly it is. Also, aim for APIs that are straightforward to integrate and offer extensive functionality without requiring extensive coding knowledge.

4. How important is deliverability when choosing a SendGrid competitor?

Email deliverability is one of the most critical factors since it directly impacts the success of your email campaigns. Look for transactional email service providers that offer strong delivery rates, like Moo send or Amazon SES, and spam testing tools to help manage and improve your performance.