8 SendGrid Alternatives For Better Transactional Emails [2024]

SendGrid has been a great SMTP relay and transactional email service for online businesses. While the platform has various features to help you deliver your messages to your customers, it seems to be lacking in some areas.

Today, we’ll explore the best SendGrid alternatives for your business, their features, and their pricing structure.

Let’s start with a quick comparison table.

Disclaimer: The information below is accurate as of July 19, 2023.

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How We Selected The Following Tools

All of the tools in this list have been tested by our team to provide an unbiased description of their 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.

Best SendGrid Alternatives: Compared

As mentioned above, Sendgrid has a reputation for being a great SMTP relay service. However, if you’re looking for an all-in-one email marketing service with better functionality, you need to look at its best competitors to find a solution for your small business or enterprise needs.

Below, we collected the best email marketing automation and SMTP server alternatives to show you an overview of their pricing and best features.

Let’s take a look!

Now that you know the tools we’ll look at, it’s time to see them in more detail.

Best Alternatives To SendGrid By Use Case

• Moosend – Best overall SendGrid alternative. Great all-in-one marketing solution with a reliable SMTP service.
• Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) – Best for sending transactional emails without coding knowledge. SMS functionality included.
• Mailchimp – Best integrated package for transactional emails, marketing, and automation.
• Amazon SES – Best for scalable sending with flexible pricing
• Mailgun – Best solution with advanced deliverability features
• Netcore – Best tool for sending bulk emails with customized offers
• Postmark – Best transactional service with top-notch customer support and great documentation
• MessageBird (formerly SparkPost) – Best for large businesses with complex needs

1. Moosend – Best All-in-One Alternative

Pricing: Paid plans start at $9/month, 30-day Free trial (Sign up here)

Best for: Small Businesses, eCommerce, Startups, SMBs

Unique feature: Reliable email API

One of the best SendGrid alternatives out there is Moosend, an email marketing automation tool with powerful tools and capabilities.

The newsletter creator is perfect for crafting beautiful email marketing campaigns from scratch or by using one of the responsive email templates. Moreover, the automated workflows will allow you to automate your business processes in a couple of minutes.

Compared to SendGrid, this service combines the above tools with a smart SMTP server solution to allow you to send transactional emails to your customers. Whether it is password reset messages or order notification emails, the email service will let you create and send them. What’s more, the API will let you connect your apps directly to Moosend’s infrastructure, calling methods that will allow you to manage your lists, campaigns, etc.

Apart from the SMTP relay, you can benefit from the advanced email automation, personalization, and segmentation options that this email marketing platform offers. You can use the tools to create personalized journeys for your subscribers and see them convert into customers in no time.

Lastly, you can take advantage of the powerful real-time reporting and analytics to keep track of your performance, monitoring, among others, your open rates, click-throughs, and bounce rates.

If you don’t see the results you desire, you can use the A/B Testing feature to optimize your messages accordingly. And to make things sweeter, Moosend sports a 98% sender score to help you nail your email deliverability, land your campaigns in the inbox, and minimize your unsubscribes.

Moosend Features

• Easy-to-use drag-and-drop email builder
• Email marketing automation and pre-made recipes
• First-class infrastructure and IPs
• Forms and landing pages for lead generation
• Powerful custom reporting and analytics
• API integrations with CRM tools, eCommerce, WordPress, etc.

Moosend Pricing

The platform’s pricing starts 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 a stellar customer experience to your audience.

You can sign up for a free account to see why getting an email marketing automation platform like Moosend is better than using SendGrid.

Try Moosend for free

SendGrid Vs Moosend

Moosend is a vastly more affordable service than SendGrid. What’s more, you don’t need to purchase two separate plans in order to be able to send both your transactional and bulk (marketing emails). This means you don’t overpay for your email strategy and save a ton of money that can be invested elsewhere. With Moosend, you also won’t have to worry about slow customer support, unlike SendGrid.

SendGrid, on the other hand, is an ideal service for large brands and enterprises with big budgets. Its reliable infrastructure really does the job well, but their support is (based on their customers) rather slow despite the 24/7 availability.

2. Brevo (Formerly Sendinblue) – Best for Sending Transactional Emails Without Coding

Pricing: Paid plans start at $25/month, Limited free plan

Best for: Publishers, Agencies, eCommerce

Unique feature: Email testing features

Brevo is a simple email service solution to create newsletters and transactional email campaigns for your customers. This solution offers an email campaign builder 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 starting at $25/month. Moreover, a dedicated IP is also offered, but it’s only available in the Enterprise plan.

What’s more, Brevo 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 also get a workflow builder to set up automated sequences.

This service also sports 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.

Brevo (Formerly Sendinblue) Features

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

Brevo Pricing

The platform gives you a limited free plan to test out its features. Nevertheless, you can only send 300 emails per day. For full access and no sending limits, you can get a paid subscription plan starting at $25/month (for marketing emails) or $15/month for transactional emails.

Read Full Brevo Review

SendGrid Vs Brevo

Brevo is a versatile service with email, SMS and WhatsApp campaigns functionality. Setting up your transactional emails is very simple (in three easy steps), while the company’s free plan is more generous than SendGrid’s. While there’s no email verification tool, you can design marketing and transactional emails alike with the great drag-and-drop builder.

The downside is that if you purchase the Transactional emails plan you only get email support.

3. Mailchimp – Best Integrated Package For Transactional Email, Marketing & Automation

Pricing: Paid plans start at $20/month, Limited free plan, $20/25K emails (SMTP)

Best for: Agencies, Publishers, eCommerce

Unique feature: Multi-step automated workflows

Next in line we have Mailchimp, a popular SendGrid alternative for eCommerce businesses and publishers. Like the previous tools, this platform offers an SMTP server solution named Mailchimp Transactional Email (formerly Mandrill) to send and manage inbound emails.

Before you proceed, it’s good to know that Mailchimp’s email platform and SMTP service have different prices. 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.

As an email service provider, Mailchimp gives you access to an email builder and a visual workflow editor. The platform is famous for its advanced multi-step sequences (available on the highest tier plan) that will 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 and manage your contacts more efficiently.

Mailchimp Best Software Features

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

Pricing

Mailchimp offers a limited free plan with an email send limit of 1,000 monthly campaigns (500/day). For more, pricing starts at $20/month for up to 500 contacts for the marketing features. To get access to the SMTP server, you need to buy a credit block starting at $20 for 25K emails.

Read Full Mailchimp Review

SendGrid Vs Mailchimp

Transactional Email will be an excellent fit for existing Mailchimp users. The service offers rich analytics, pre-built dashboards and an export API. Despite all these, the service is on the expensive side since you need to pay for two subscriptions to send both transactional and marketing emails.

Of course, the same applies to SendGrid, with the difference that SendGrid focuses more on providing a reliable SMTP service.

4. Amazon SES – Best For Scalable Sending With Flexible Pricing

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

Best for: eCommerce, Developers

Unique feature: Activity and reputation monitoring

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

To help you ace your email delivery, this alternative offers you 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 a blacklist.

What’s more, 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.

When it comes to email sending, this alternative to SendGrid lets you send 62K messages/month but only from Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) hosted applications. If you want to send more than that or use a different email client, you need to pay $0.10 for every 1,000 emails.

Amazon SES Transactional Service Features

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

Pricing

Amazon SES has a very particular pricing structure. If you send from Amazon 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 1000 messages. To receive emails, you also pay nothing for the first 1,000 emails and $0.10 for every 1,000 emails you get after that.

Check Amazon SES

SendGrid Vs Amazon SES

Amazon SES is a tool oriented towards developers that can integrate it into any stand-alone application. You don’t get a fancy user interface and out-of-the-box features, but the service is the most affordable solution out there (depending of course if you can handle it). Also, you don’t get deliverability insights.

SendGrid is a more “complete” solution requiring less manual work. Plus, you won’t need an additional support package.

5. Mailgun – Best Solution With Advanced Deliverability Features

Pricing: Paid plans start at $35/month, 30-day Free trial

Best for: Online marketers, Creators

Unique 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.

As you may know, Mailgun has acquired Mailjet, so if you get this competitor you also get access to various tools to ace your marketing efforts. More specifically, users can use the platform’s SMTP Relay or Send API. By integrating Mailgun you can easily send and track emails via the SMTP server or the available RESTful API.

Apart from transactional campaigns, you can leverage Mailjet’s features to craft messages through the drag-and-drop email builder. What’s more, you can personalize your copy and segment your audience to amp your conversion endeavors.

Last but not least, 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 law.

Mailgun Best SMTP Server Features

• Inbound email routing
• Email address verification
• Suppression Management
• Send Time Optimization
• Email APIs, SMTP Relay, and webhooks

Pricing

Mailgun pricing has a 30-day free trial with 5,000 emails for a month. To continue delivering your campaigns, you need to get one of the paid plans, starting 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.

Check Mailgun

SendGrid Vs Mailgun

Mailgun is a popular “direct” competitor to Sendgrid with many big-name clients. It has a full suite of deliverability features (like pre-send testing, email verification, etc.), while you also get send time optimization. Finally, the tool sports rich and flexible analytics.

With SendGrid, it will be a little easier when it comes to sending your marketing messages since Mailgun can be intimidating for marketers.

6. Netcore (Formerly Pepipost) – Best Tool For Sending Bulk Emails With Customized Offers

Pricing: Unavailable (Request a demo)

Best for: Developers

Unique feature: 90-day history log

Netcore (previously Pepipost) is a free SMTP server alternative to SendGrid to deliver transactional messages and bulk email campaigns. This popular open-source email service will equip you with a plethora of tools to reach your subscribers’ inboxes and maintain a great sender score.

What’s more, you can benefit from the AI-powered tools to make sure that you stay away from spam traps and avoid getting blacklisted, which will harm your email marketing strategy.

Apart from that, you can also use the predictive engagement feature to engage your most active contacts through priority emails. This way, you will target them more effectively and ensure higher open rates.

Lastly, Netcore’s SMTP service has a 3-month history log to help you improve your transactional emails and increase your email metrics. Not only that, but the relay service allows you to connect it to any app/service, including your WordPress website.

Netcore Features

• Flexible SMTP Relay setup
• Email tracking tools and webhooks
• Custom Metadata
• Template APIs

Netcore Pricing

The platform does not provide public information about its pricing model. Regardless, you can request a demo of the platform and find out more about its pricing after you experience a tour of the software.

Check Netcore

SendGrid Vs Netcore

7. Postmark – Best Transactional Service With Excellent Customer Support & Documentation

Pricing: Paid plans start at $15/month, Limited free plan

Best for: Developers, SaaS

Unique feature: Message streams

Another premium SMTP relay server you can get is Postmark. This SendGrid alternative allows you to craft and deliver transactional email campaigns to your audience. The tool also comes with a series of features like 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.

What’s more, the service has a feature called Message Streams which prevents your transactional and bulk emails or promotional messages to mix in order to ensure better traffic management and high deliverability.

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

Postmark Top Email Service Features

• Ready-made templates
• Powerful analytics
• Webhooks
• Email expert assistance

Postmark Pricing

The service has a free developer plan you can use to test out its capabilities. This free tier gives you 100 test emails per month. For more, you need to get a paid plan starting at $15/month for 10,000 emails. Dedicated IPs are available (to customers sending more than 300,000 emails) as an optional add-on that you can get for an extra price (starting at $50/month per IP).

Check Postmark

SendGrid Vs Postmark

Postmark is a service that focuses on email delivery. As such, you get fast delivery times according to their customers. The unique Message Streams feature helps protect your email deliverability.

SendGrid, on the other hand, is more user-friendly while it doesn’t have such a narrow focus on transactional emails. However, this doesn’t mean that creating marketing campaigns will be as easy as with alternatives like Moosend or Mailchimp.

8. MessageBird (formerly SparkPost) – Best For Large Businesses With Complex Needs

Pricing: Paid plans start at $20/month, Free test account

Best for: Developers, eCommerce, SMBs

Unique feature: Predictive insights

MessageBird (formerly Sparkpost) is another email sending and deliverability platform you can use to manage your campaigns, improve your email delivery and analyze your results through advanced analytics.

More specifically, MessageBird offers Signals, a predictive feature that analyzes your email data and helps you optimize your email strategy before issues arise.

The real-time analytics and performance insights will also work in tandem with Signals to help you see how your subscribers interact with your emails. This way, you can improve certain aspects of your email sending and apply changes to enhance the customer journey.

Moreover, MessageBird offers customizable email templates to craft campaigns for your audience, allowing you to create personalized messages that will engage and convert them.

MessageBird (SparkPost) Features

• Recipient validation
• Real-time alerts
• Dynamic email templates
• Email analytics & performance data

MessageBird Pricing

The platform offers a full-featured test account for free, allowing you to send 500 emails per month before purchasing a paid plan. These start at $20/month with the Starter plan, which is suitable for new senders getting started with email marketing. Their Premier plan offers more functionality, while there’s also a custom Enterprise plan, but you have to contact sales to find out more about the price.

Check SparkPost

SendGrid Vs MessageBird (SparkPost)

MessageBird (formerly SparkPost) offers competitive intelligence tools, enterprise-level analytics, and a focus on high-volume sending. If you run an enterprise business (or work in a highly regulated industry), the service will be a great fit for you.

As a final note, MessageBird lets you access your email insights for ten days (event data).

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 for sending transactional emails, you can always find better all-in-one and scalable solutions to amp your efforts.

The market has numerous options for you to choose from. If you want a great solution to improve every aspect of your email strategy, 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 starting at $9/month.