17 Sendgrid Alternatives for High-Performing Transactional Emails

17 Sendgrid Alternatives for High-Performing Transactional Emails

17 Sendgrid Alternatives for High-Performing Transactional Emails

Nov 20, 2024

person with team member - Sendgrid Alternatives


Transactional emails are a crucial part of your business's email infrastructure. They include essential communications like order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, and more that help keep your customers informed and engaged with your business. If your transactional emails go down or are not delivered, your customers will be kept in the loop, and you will quickly lose their trust. Many email marketing platforms may need to provide the right features for your transactional emails to be effective. SendGrid is a popular choice for many businesses, but other options exist. You’re in the right place if you’re looking for reliable, cost-effective SendGrid alternatives. This article explores some of the best SendGrid options to ensure seamless cold email deliverability and enhance your business with better features and solid value.

Inframail's email infrastructure solution can help you achieve your goals. It can help you find a reliable alternative to SendGrid that ensures seamless transactional email delivery and better value for your specific business needs.

Table of Contents

What Does SendGrid Offer, and Why Choose an Alternative?

SendGrid - Sendgrid Alternatives

SendGrid is a transactional email service provider that specializes in bulk sending. It’s trusted by huge enterprises like Uber, Spotify, and Airbnb—the kind of businesses that send a lot of customer emails. SendGrid runs SMTP servers. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It provides reliable email delivery at high volumes. SendGrid can be used for marketing and transactional emails, such as: 

  • Order confirmations

  • Abandoned cart emails

  • Password reset emails

Learn about SMTP or read our guide to the best free SMTP servers.

Why Do People Look for SendGrid Alternatives?  

But SendGrid is by no means the only bulk email service out there. And just because it’s right for Uber doesn’t mean it’s right for you. There are also many reasons you might want to check out an alternative to SendGrid—cost, for one. SendGrid isn’t the cheapest SMTP option out there. 

SendGrid Pricing and Limitations: Is It Worth the Cost?

It starts at $19.95, which lets you send up to 50k emails a month—not too bad. But if you’re on a team, it’s per user. And you don’t get email validation, which checks that you’re sending to legit email addresses. There is a free plan, but it is limited to 100 emails a day. SendGrid’s email marketing platform isn’t the best out there. Automating campaigns is impossible until you sign up for the most expensive tier. Even then, they’re just essential drip campaigns. So, there are plenty of reasons to look at SendGrid alternatives. 

SendGrid’s Biggest Drawbacks  

From my experience, SendGrid may not be the best option if you fall into any of these categories: 

You Are a Low-Volume Sender 

SendGrid’s free plan allows you to send only 100 emails daily, and its cheapest paid plan is $19.95 per month for 50,000 emails. Startups and smaller businesses that don’t need to send that many emails may find such fees pricey compared to other providers like SMTP2Go. 

You Value Simpler, More Affordable Transactional and Marketing Email Bills

Transactional and marketing emails are two types of email marketing campaigns. Transactional emails are emails sent in response to users taking action on your website. They include order confirmation emails when a user places an order and password reset emails if they request to reset their password. (See some tremendous transactional email examples here.) 

Comparing All-in-One Email Platforms to SendGrid’s Segmented Billing Model

On the other hand, marketing emails are emails you proactively send to users to promote your products or services. Examples of marketing emails include newsletters and sales announcement emails, such as SendGrid bills for transactional and marketing emails as separate products. As a result, you’d potentially need to pay more to send both types of emails. Your billing might get more complicated, too. In contrast, all-in-one email platforms like Brevo and SendPulse bundle transactional and marketing emails into their marketing plans. 

You Don’t Compromise on Deliverability

SendGrid placed fifth when we tested the email deliverability of nine free SMTP servers. That’s nothing to shout about. Other platforms like SMTP2GO and Postmark have much more reliable email deliverability. 

You Intend To Automate Your Email Workflows

I found SendGrid’s automation workflow editor rather simplistic. For one, you can’t have conditional paths in your automations or set up multiple triggers for them. If you need advanced marketing automation capabilities, consider looking elsewhere.

Inframail

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17 Best Sendgrid Alternatives for Transactional Emails

SendGrid is one of the most popular email infrastructure tools. But while it offers a solid service, plenty of alternatives exist. Here are 17 of the best SendGrid alternatives to help you improve your email deliverability.

1. Inframail

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Inframail is an email infrastructure tool built for cold emailers who need a private email setup. Unlike shared IP addresses from services like Outlook or Google Workspace, Inframail provides dedicated IP addresses. You control your deliverability and aren't affected by the behavior of others. With Inframail, you get your dedicated IP address to influence deliverability directly. You could still damage your server’s reputation if you don’t follow best practices. Inframail also will enable you to create unlimited email inboxes for a flat fee, which can be a game-changer if you need to manage multiple campaigns or scale up outreach efforts. It takes care of all the complicated email records, saving you from the hassle of manual configuration, like: 

  • SPF

  • DKIM

  • DMARC

Pros of Inframail

  • Automated DKIM, SPF, and DMARC Setup: One of Inframail’s key features is its automated setup for DKIM, SPF, and DMARC protocols. These protocols are essential for ensuring your emails reach the inbox and do not get flagged as spam. The automation here is a real lifesaver because setting up these protocols manually can be daunting, especially if you’re not tech-savvy.

  • Unlimited Email Inboxes: Another feature of Inframail is the ability to create unlimited email inboxes for a flat fee. This feature is a game-changer if you’re managing multiple campaigns or must send out a high volume of emails. 

  • Priority Support: Inframail also offers priority support, which can make all the difference when dealing with email infrastructure. Things can go wrong, but having quick access to support ensures your operations run smoothly, even when issues arise. 

Cons of Inframail

While Inframail promises quick setup and cost savings, some users question its deliverability compared to traditional options. Even Inframail’s founder admits they have a 15% lower deliverability rate. Even though it automates the setup of DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, some users still report that their emails don’t consistently land in inboxes. 

2. SMTP2GO

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

SMTP2GO is a global email delivery service. It’s an SMTP bulk-sending service with extras geared towards high deliverability. There are lots of tricks and techniques for helping emails avoid junk folders. SMTP2GO does most of them. It monitors blocklists and ‘spam traps,’ tools email clients use to ‘catch’ unsolicited sending. It constantly monitors not only its servers but all major email clients, too. 

SMTP2GO: Enhancing Email Deliverability with Advanced Reporting and Pre-Send Testing

If there are any issues, SMTP2GO takes care of them. This means SMTP2GO can offer in-depth reporting. In every email, you can see: 

  • What has been delivered

  • What has bounced

  • What has been tagged as spam and more 

Before you send it, you can also check how your email looks to 40 different email clients. And if there is anything to do, that increases your mail to pass spam filters. 

Pros of SMTP2GO

  • Excellent deliverability

  • Automated spam detection tests and monitoring

  • Status reports for every email

  • Email testing across 40 clients

Cons of SMTP2GO

  • It’s purely email delivery, so it isn't the right fit if you want automation or email design. The interface doesn’t look too shiny or spiffy. 

  • On price, SMTP2GO beats SendGrid. 

  • It starts at $15 a month for 40,000 emails

  • There is a free plan with 1,000 emails per month

3. Brevo

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), based in Europe, is an excellent alternative to SendGrid. Like SendGrid, it offers email marketing alongside an SMTP server. Brevo is a stronger option for email marketing campaigns. It’s got high-quality pre-made email templates plus a sound drag-and-drop editor. Campaign automation is far better than that of SendGrid. You’re not limited to simple autoresponders. 

Conditional workflows make it easy to send emails triggered by contact behavior. Brevo’s SMTP server makes it very easy to start—just a simple three-step process. You can also use the API to send automated messages from your website. Once configured, Brevo’s SMTP server tracks all emails for delivery, opens, clicks, etc.

Pros of Brevo

  • Email marketing and transactional email service 

  • Great automation tools

  • Easy to configure

  • Very generous free plan 

Cons of Brevo

  • There is no built-in email verification service. 

  • Brevo pricing starts at $9 a month. 

  • That gives you 5,000 emails with 500 contacts. 

  • Brevo is better for bulk sending over 100,000 emails a month. Learn more about costs in our Brevo pricing guide. 

  • Brevo also has a great free plan. 

  • You can send up to 300 emails a day to 100K contacts. 

  • All core transactional and email marketing features are included.

4. SMTP.com

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

SMTP.com is a SendGrid alternative that’s been around for 20+ years, serving 100K+ businesses. It combines a cloud SMTP relay with an API. For developers, it promises simple and fast integration. Migration templates make switching to SMTP.com from another relay like SendGrid easy. Send marketing and transactional emails like: 

  • Remarketing campaigns

  • Win-back emails

  • Email notifications

  • Registration emails

  • Order confirmations

  • Status updates

  • Authentication emails

SMTP.com: Maintaining List Hygiene and Reputation with Expert Support and Integrations

SMTP.com has a reputation defender that suppresses invalid email addresses before you send them. This keeps your list healthy and your domain and IP reputation high. It’s a clever tool, taking the weight of list hygiene and sender reputation off businesses. 

SMTP.com integrates with 12 apps, like: 

  • Shopify

  • WordPress

  • Trello

  • Wufoo

  • Slack

  • Airtable

Integrations also include Google products: 

  • Docs

  • Sheets

  • Forms

  • Lead Form Extensions

  • Calendar

  • Gmail

The SMTP.com support team comprises experienced email delivery experts with decades of collective expertise. If you ever need support, you’ll be excellent. 

Pros of SMTP.com 

  • Designed for high-volume sending

  • Automated list hygiene and sender reputation management

  • High deliverability rates

  • Quick API integration 

Cons of SMTP.com 

  • SMTP.com’s plans aren’t the cheapest. And as clever as the Reputation Defender tool is, it’s a paid-for add-on. 

  • SMTP.com pricing

  • Starts at $25/month 

  • For 50K emails

  • Email relay API

  • Detailed reporting

  • Shared IP

  • Email

  • Phone support 

  • $80/month

  • 100K emails 

  • With a dedicated IP cost. 

The reputation defender add-on costs 20% of your plan. If you exceed your monthly limit, you can keep sending and SMTP.com will charge you for the extra emails in the next billing cycle.

5. MailerSend 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

MailerSend is a straight-up transactional email service. It’s the sister service of email marketing software MailerLite. It borrows MailerLite’s drag-and-drop email builder. And its templates. A lot of SendGrid alternatives overlook email design. The assumption is a transactional email doesn’t have to look great. Receipts, order confirmations, delivery updates, etc, are purely functional. That’s a myth. A good-looking transactional email reinforces your brand and gives visual consistency. 

Personalization and Deliverability: Key Features of MailerSend for Effective Email Management

MailerSend’s templates support dynamic content. You can personalize the same template to show different content to different contacts. MailerSend has an email verification tool for removing unused or fake email addresses. This improves email deliverability rates. Its API lets you set up email sending within your website. You can also use MailerSend as your inbox with inbound email routing.

Pros of MailerSend 

  • Dynamic templates

  • Drag-and-drop email editor for customizing transactional emails

  • Email verification

  • Great value for teams 

Cons of MailerSend 

  • No native email marketing options. 

  • MailerSend pricing starts at $30 a month. 

  • For this, you can send 50,000 emails and 

  • Verify 100 emails. 

  • This also gives you 20 users on the account, making it much better value for teams than SendGrid. 

  • It continues to be a good value as you scale email sending. 

  • There is also a free plan. 

  • This plan lets a single user send 3,000 emails a month for free. 

6. Moosend

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Moosend is an excellent email marketing service for small businesses. It also comes with an SMTP server to help with high-volume campaigns. An API lets you send emails directly from a web host, like WordPress. You can also use it for transactional emails. 

Why Moosend is a Top Choice for Ecommerce Email Marketing

Moosend’s email marketing tools are slick and user-friendly. Some are also pretty advanced. It offers advanced automations and lead tracking. It is perfect for ecommerce businesses. You can connect your digital store and drop product listings straight into emails. It helps achieve high email deliverability rates with tools like its spam test.

Pros of Moosend 

  • Excellent value for money

  • No email sending limits

  • Quality email marketing tools 

Cons of Moosend 

SMTP is tricky to set up and use. 

Moosend has a standout advantage over SendGrid: 

  • It’s excellent value for money. 

  • Moosend pricing starts at just $9 a month

  • You can send unlimited emails to 500 contacts

7. ActiveCampaign

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

ActiveCampaign is an excellent SendGrid alternative for marketing automation. If you want to scale your email marketing, it should be at your list. It has a transactional email service called Postmark. ActiveCampaign has a good reputation for deliverability. It’s one of the longest-running email marketing services. And it has made running a reliable high-volume email server one of its core USPs. It offers built-in list-building tools. And various features that help you avoid being flagged as spam. The email marketing tools are high quality. In particular, it has some of the best email automation tools, including hundreds of pre-made automation templates. 

Pros of ActiveCampaign 

  • Unlimited email sending

  • High deliverability rates

  • In-built list cleaning

  • Advanced email marketing tools, including excellent automation 

Cons of ActiveCampaign 

The free trial is 14 days, which would be great if it were longer. ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $15 a month. The number of emails sent is 10x the contact limit on paid plans and can increase to 15x if you are on the Enterprise plan. So, it’s ideal for small—to medium-sized businesses looking to grow their email marketing. 

8. Mailgun

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Out of all our SendGrid alternatives, Mailgun is the most direct competitor. Like SendGrid, its core service is an SMTP relay server and accompanying API. It has a similar lineup of big-name clients, including Microsoft, Etsy, Lyft, and more, and similar features. In a straight SendGrid vs. Mailgun contest, SendGrid is a better option for email marketing. Mailgun needs email marketing tools to send marketing messages. You can also sign up for its sister service, Mailjet. Mailgun also features send-time optimization. It uses AI to pick the best time to send emails. User tracking also supports flexible and in-depth analytics. You can use tagging and tracking to dig down into contact behavior stats at an individual level. 

Pros of Mailgun 

  • Advanced suite of deliverability tools

  • Flexible and in-depth reporting

  • Send time optimization 

Cons of Mailgun 

  • No native email marketing tools. 

  • Mailgun pricing starts at $35 a month 

  • For 50,000 emails

  • For $75 a month

  • You get a dedicated IP address

  • 100,000 emails

  • There’s a one-month free trial, 

  • Limited to 5,000 emails

9. Amazon SES 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Amazon Simple Email Service is a SendGrid alternative built on Amazon’s giant cloud infrastructure. Which means you get enormous scalability. SES works with any cloud application. It can be used for email relaying or transactional emails. Its Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) tools automate inbox placement and send optimization. In-depth statistics cover all sending and deliverability metrics. 

Amazon SES: A Scalable and Cost-Effective SendGrid Alternative for Businesses of All Sizes

What makes SES unique as a SendGrid alternative is its open-ended scalability. Amazon uses it for its own transactional emails and marketing campaigns. It sends out billions of emails every month. But its pay-as-you-go pricing structure means you only pay for what you send. So, no matter how big or small your business is or how many emails you send, the cost is customized to your needs. And changes as your needs change.

Pros of Amazon SES 

  • Open-ended scalability

  • Pay-as-you-go pricing

  • Automated deliverability tools and reputation reporting 

Cons of Amazon SES 

  • No tools for creating and managing email marketing campaigns. 

  • Amazon SES charges a flat rate of $0.10 

  • 1000 emails sent

  • plus $0.12 for each GB of attachments 

  • If you run applications on Amazon’s EC2 cloud

  • You can send up to 62,000 emails a month free of charge.

10. Elastic Email

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Elastic Email is a user-friendly SendGrid alternative. It offers an SMTP relay API to send emails from your website or app. It includes various features to ensure high deliverability rates, including email verification. Dedicated IP addresses are available. They come with extra deliverability features like IP warm-up. Backing up these deliverability tools, Elastic Email offers in-depth analytics. These include insights about why contacts unsubscribe. For email marketing, Elastic Email features all the tools you would expect. Everything is straightforward to use. You get the email builder and templates to build emails that fit your brand, but the customization is limited. 

Pros of Elastic Email 

  • Advanced deliverability tools

  • In-depth analytics

  • Drag-and-drop email builder for transactional emails

  • Full email marketing suite 

Cons of Elastic Email 

  • Template customization is limited. 

  • The Elastic Email API plan costs $9 a month

  • 10,000 emails. 

  • The email marketing plan also starts at $9

  • You can send up to 60,000 emails a month to 2000 contacts.

  • Both have free plans limited to 100 emails a day.

11. Mailchimp Transactional Email

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Mailchimp is well known for its email marketing and landing page features. But did you know it's a transactional email service provider, too? It does so through its Mandrill app, which looks more dated than the Mailchimp interface. Still, you’ll find all the usual features, such as: 

  • Sending via API and SMTP

  • Inbound email processing

  • reports 

Mailchimp Transactional Email is a paid add-on to Mailchimp’s email marketing software. You can’t unbundle the two if you need only the former. A free demo is available, but it’s suitable for only sending 500 emails to your verified domain. 

Pros of Mailchimp Transactional Email 

Where Mailchimp Transactional Email beats SendGrid? 

You can run split tests in Mailchimp to test different versions of your transactional emails and identify the best-performing ones. SendGrid doesn’t have a similar split test feature. Suppose you’re already using Mailchimp for your marketing email campaigns and social media marketing. In that case, you may find adding to the platform’s transactional email service convenient instead of signing up for a separate provider. 

12. Postmark

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Postmark is a fantastic transactional email platform offering: 

  • Superior deliverability

  • Template pushing across environments

  • Inbound email processing for getting into your customers’ inbox and handling their replies

It also integrates smoothly with the parent platform ActiveCampaign, letting you send transactional emails from your marketing automations. (ActiveCampaign’s email marketing automation capabilities are Powerful with a Capital P.) If you’ll be collecting or processing the personal data of EU residents, you’ll be glad to know that Postmark is GDPR-compliant

Pros of Postmark 

Where Postmark beats SendGrid: 

  • Postmark has much higher email deliverability than SendGrid. In our deliverability tests, the former service came in second and three places ahead of SendGrid. 

  • While SendGrid hides some premium features behind more expensive plans, you’ll get full access to almost all of Postmark’s features at every pricing tier. You’ll have to pay more only if you want to send more emails or use add-ons such as dedicated IP addresses. 

Cons of Postmark 

Based on our research, Postmark is one of the market’s more expensive email delivery services. SendGrid presents a much more affordable option.

13. Mailtrap

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Mailtrap is more of an email testing solution than an email marketing service, checking your spam score and analyzing your emails’ HTML for compatibility with major email clients. It also has typical features for sending emails via API or SMTP relay. After sending your emails, you’ll get detailed email analytics across various mailbox providers on your: 

  • Delivery rate

  • Unique open rate

  • Bounce rate, and more 

Pros of Mailtrap 

Where Mailtrap beats SendGrid: 

  • Mailtrap provides a test inbox to test your emails without bothering your customers. You can even test sending your emails to multiple recipients. 

  • SendGrid doesn’t offer a similar test inbox. 

  • Depending on your plan, Mailtrap provides up to 60 days’ worth of email logs for reviewing your email activity. 

  • In SendGrid, the default option is only three or seven days’ worth of records, and you have to pay to access your email activity history over the last 30 days. 

Cons of Mailtrap 

While SendGrid offers 24/7 support through platforms such as support tickets and chat, Mailtrap provides only email support if you want help from a human agent. There’s also no mention of email support hours. 

14. Mailjet

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Mailjet combines email marketing with email API services in one platform, so it has some useful features you may need help finding in other transactional email solutions. These include: 

  • A/B testing

  • Email marketing automation

  • Dynamic email content

Most of Mailjet’s email API-related features are available immediately on its generous free plan. So, you generally have to upgrade only if you need to send more emails or want access to email marketing features. 

Pros of Mailjet 

Where Mailjet beats SendGrid: 

  • Using Mailjet’s linked section feature, you can link email sections to multiple templates and update these templates simultaneously when you edit your linked section. 

  • Not many other SMTP email providers I’ve tested — SendGrid included — offer such a convenient feature. 

  • Free Mailjet users can send up to 200 bulk emails daily or up to 6,000 emails monthly at no cost. This beats SendGrid’s free plan offering of up to 100 daily emails. 

Cons of Mailjet 

SendGrid offers more detailed bounce classifications to help you understand why your emails have bounced. Mailjet distinguishes only between hard and soft bounces

15. SendPulse 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

The generosity of SendPulse’s free transactional email plan first caught my eye. This email service provider lets you send 12,000 transactional monthly emails for free! Very few SMTP email service providers offer such generous sending allowances. This service provider also has: 

  • Email marketing

  • Sales CRM

  • Landing pages

  • Chatbot features and more

The free plan limits for these are pretty generous, too — for instance, you can send up to 15,000 marketing emails to up to 500 subscribers monthly. All these omnichannel marketing features are available in separate pricing plans, so you pay for only the features you need. 

Pros of SendPulse 

Where SendPulse beats SendGrid: 

  • Using SendPulse, you can send a whopping 12,000 transactional emails per month, or up to 400 emails daily, for free. These limits are much higher than SendGrid’s 100 daily emails (which works out to 3,000 emails per month). 

  • You also get a complete marketing platform for: 

    • Sending marketing emails

    • SMSes

    • Web push notifications

    • Setting up chatbots and more

If you opt for SendGrid instead, you’d miss out on many of these (marketing emails being a notable exception). 

Cons of SendPulse 

SendGrid offers more detailed reporting features. For example, you can compare the performance of emails according to different categories you’ve set up or your recipients’ browsers. You won’t get such deep customer insights in SendPulse. 

16. MessageBird (formerly SparkPost)

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

MessageBird (formerly SparkPost) claims to deliver nearly 40% of all B2C & B2B email, with over 6 trillion annual sends. This number is far too large for me to comprehend, but we can all agree that it sounds like an impressive amount of emails. MessageBird offers features beyond email delivery. MessageBird and SendGrid are similar, with: 

  • Enterprise-level analytics

  • Competitive intelligence tools

  • A focus on high-volume sending

It will be a good partner for your needs if you run an enterprise business and work in a highly regulated industry. 

Pros of MessageBird 

  • Committed to offering a reliable service: MessageBird has a 99.99% uptime guaranteed by SLA.

  • Detailed documentation: the comprehensive docs help users and customers navigate MessageBird's complex features.

  • Compliance and enterprise support: Companies in industries with specific security and compliance regulations will find what they need in MessageBird—but what’s a pro for one company is a con for another. Speaking of which: 

Cons of MessageBird 

Focused on enterprise: since MessageBird is focused on providing everything the most prominent businesses could need, its complexity could be too much for smaller companies and startups. 

17. Campaign Monitor 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Campaign Monitor is a tool for marketers, but it also provides transactional email sending that’s not hard to use. It offers a bunch of different features, including an AI writing tool. It makes you faster, but it’s questionable whether it nails the messaging. On a more positive note, I really like the drag-and-drop email builder. Also, the tool is easy to integrate, and all the features are well documented. 

Pros of Campaign Monitor 

  • Drag and drop email editor (+ set of free templates) 

  • Marketing automation (trigger-based drip campaigns)

  • Transactional emails with templates

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5 Criteria to Consider When Choosing a Sendgrid Alternative

person making notes - Sendgrid Alternatives

1. Reliability: The Cornerstone of Email Deliverability

In the email-sending space, reliability equals exceptional deliverability. Switching to an alternative to SendGrid? Look for a tool with predictable deliverability scores, even when using a shared IP address. Deliverability performance reports should show consistent test results without sudden: 

  • Bounces

  • Spam complaints

  • Other deliverability data spikes

Remember that a massive chunk of deliverability performance is in your hands. 

2. Functionality and Features: What Can the Tool Do?  

When choosing a SendGrid alternative, look for functionality and features that match your business needs. For instance, SendGrid sends marketing email campaigns (such as newsletters or bulk promotional messages) and transactional emails (such as user notifications, account confirmations, etc.). Most businesses need to send both; for this reason, all the email-sending tools here provide email API along with the user interface and template constructor. Only note that, unlike Mailtrap, most other tools have transactional emails as separate tools, billed separately. When choosing alternatives to SendGrid, I focused intensely on software for quick campaign optimization. This means you get plenty of data and testing options to improve your emails. 

3. Ease of Integration: How Easily Does the Tool Fit into Your Existing System?

User-friendly interface and clear documentation are a must. This is a general tip when choosing email marketing services or any other cloud-based tool. All the tools listed above are well-documented and easy to use. I’d argue that most are pretty straightforward, even if you’re a novice. For example, assuming you have verified your domain and have proper authentication, setting up email marketing campaigns with these tools takes just a few steps. 

4. Pricing and Scalability: Can the Tool Grow with You?

In a perfect world, we would choose a tool that does everything, is reliable, has all possible features, and is cheap. In reality, define your budget based on how many emails you want to send and prioritize the needed features. I’d advise you to look for something that’s cost-effective but not necessarily cheap. Also, the pay-as-you-go model may work well for you if you're in the growth stage. 

5. Customer Support: When Something Goes Wrong

If something goes wrong, you shouldn’t wait days for your support ticket to be answered. Understandably, higher-tier plans may get priority support. I focused on choosing the services that answer your ticket within a reasonable timeframe, even if you’re on a free plan. Checking how responsive a service is on social media may hint at how responsive their support team is. But don’t take this as a given.

Inframail

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Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today

Inframail offers unlimited inboxes for cold emailing at a single flat rate. Unlike traditional providers like SendGrid, there are no extra costs for additional inboxes. Instead, Inframail lets you scale your outreach efforts without worrying about costs. Buy multiple domains to warm up and create unlimited inboxes for your cold email campaigns.

Automated Technical Setup for Cold Emailing

Setting up a cold email infrastructure isn’t easy. You must configure your inboxes to establish your sending reputation and maximize deliverability. Inframail automates the technical setup process with dedicated email servers for each user and automates: 

  • SPF

  • DKIM

  • DMARC setup

This means you can return to what matters—reaching your prospects and succeeding at your cold email campaigns.


Transactional emails are a crucial part of your business's email infrastructure. They include essential communications like order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, and more that help keep your customers informed and engaged with your business. If your transactional emails go down or are not delivered, your customers will be kept in the loop, and you will quickly lose their trust. Many email marketing platforms may need to provide the right features for your transactional emails to be effective. SendGrid is a popular choice for many businesses, but other options exist. You’re in the right place if you’re looking for reliable, cost-effective SendGrid alternatives. This article explores some of the best SendGrid options to ensure seamless cold email deliverability and enhance your business with better features and solid value.

Inframail's email infrastructure solution can help you achieve your goals. It can help you find a reliable alternative to SendGrid that ensures seamless transactional email delivery and better value for your specific business needs.

Table of Contents

What Does SendGrid Offer, and Why Choose an Alternative?

SendGrid - Sendgrid Alternatives

SendGrid is a transactional email service provider that specializes in bulk sending. It’s trusted by huge enterprises like Uber, Spotify, and Airbnb—the kind of businesses that send a lot of customer emails. SendGrid runs SMTP servers. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It provides reliable email delivery at high volumes. SendGrid can be used for marketing and transactional emails, such as: 

  • Order confirmations

  • Abandoned cart emails

  • Password reset emails

Learn about SMTP or read our guide to the best free SMTP servers.

Why Do People Look for SendGrid Alternatives?  

But SendGrid is by no means the only bulk email service out there. And just because it’s right for Uber doesn’t mean it’s right for you. There are also many reasons you might want to check out an alternative to SendGrid—cost, for one. SendGrid isn’t the cheapest SMTP option out there. 

SendGrid Pricing and Limitations: Is It Worth the Cost?

It starts at $19.95, which lets you send up to 50k emails a month—not too bad. But if you’re on a team, it’s per user. And you don’t get email validation, which checks that you’re sending to legit email addresses. There is a free plan, but it is limited to 100 emails a day. SendGrid’s email marketing platform isn’t the best out there. Automating campaigns is impossible until you sign up for the most expensive tier. Even then, they’re just essential drip campaigns. So, there are plenty of reasons to look at SendGrid alternatives. 

SendGrid’s Biggest Drawbacks  

From my experience, SendGrid may not be the best option if you fall into any of these categories: 

You Are a Low-Volume Sender 

SendGrid’s free plan allows you to send only 100 emails daily, and its cheapest paid plan is $19.95 per month for 50,000 emails. Startups and smaller businesses that don’t need to send that many emails may find such fees pricey compared to other providers like SMTP2Go. 

You Value Simpler, More Affordable Transactional and Marketing Email Bills

Transactional and marketing emails are two types of email marketing campaigns. Transactional emails are emails sent in response to users taking action on your website. They include order confirmation emails when a user places an order and password reset emails if they request to reset their password. (See some tremendous transactional email examples here.) 

Comparing All-in-One Email Platforms to SendGrid’s Segmented Billing Model

On the other hand, marketing emails are emails you proactively send to users to promote your products or services. Examples of marketing emails include newsletters and sales announcement emails, such as SendGrid bills for transactional and marketing emails as separate products. As a result, you’d potentially need to pay more to send both types of emails. Your billing might get more complicated, too. In contrast, all-in-one email platforms like Brevo and SendPulse bundle transactional and marketing emails into their marketing plans. 

You Don’t Compromise on Deliverability

SendGrid placed fifth when we tested the email deliverability of nine free SMTP servers. That’s nothing to shout about. Other platforms like SMTP2GO and Postmark have much more reliable email deliverability. 

You Intend To Automate Your Email Workflows

I found SendGrid’s automation workflow editor rather simplistic. For one, you can’t have conditional paths in your automations or set up multiple triggers for them. If you need advanced marketing automation capabilities, consider looking elsewhere.

Inframail

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17 Best Sendgrid Alternatives for Transactional Emails

SendGrid is one of the most popular email infrastructure tools. But while it offers a solid service, plenty of alternatives exist. Here are 17 of the best SendGrid alternatives to help you improve your email deliverability.

1. Inframail

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Inframail is an email infrastructure tool built for cold emailers who need a private email setup. Unlike shared IP addresses from services like Outlook or Google Workspace, Inframail provides dedicated IP addresses. You control your deliverability and aren't affected by the behavior of others. With Inframail, you get your dedicated IP address to influence deliverability directly. You could still damage your server’s reputation if you don’t follow best practices. Inframail also will enable you to create unlimited email inboxes for a flat fee, which can be a game-changer if you need to manage multiple campaigns or scale up outreach efforts. It takes care of all the complicated email records, saving you from the hassle of manual configuration, like: 

  • SPF

  • DKIM

  • DMARC

Pros of Inframail

  • Automated DKIM, SPF, and DMARC Setup: One of Inframail’s key features is its automated setup for DKIM, SPF, and DMARC protocols. These protocols are essential for ensuring your emails reach the inbox and do not get flagged as spam. The automation here is a real lifesaver because setting up these protocols manually can be daunting, especially if you’re not tech-savvy.

  • Unlimited Email Inboxes: Another feature of Inframail is the ability to create unlimited email inboxes for a flat fee. This feature is a game-changer if you’re managing multiple campaigns or must send out a high volume of emails. 

  • Priority Support: Inframail also offers priority support, which can make all the difference when dealing with email infrastructure. Things can go wrong, but having quick access to support ensures your operations run smoothly, even when issues arise. 

Cons of Inframail

While Inframail promises quick setup and cost savings, some users question its deliverability compared to traditional options. Even Inframail’s founder admits they have a 15% lower deliverability rate. Even though it automates the setup of DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, some users still report that their emails don’t consistently land in inboxes. 

2. SMTP2GO

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

SMTP2GO is a global email delivery service. It’s an SMTP bulk-sending service with extras geared towards high deliverability. There are lots of tricks and techniques for helping emails avoid junk folders. SMTP2GO does most of them. It monitors blocklists and ‘spam traps,’ tools email clients use to ‘catch’ unsolicited sending. It constantly monitors not only its servers but all major email clients, too. 

SMTP2GO: Enhancing Email Deliverability with Advanced Reporting and Pre-Send Testing

If there are any issues, SMTP2GO takes care of them. This means SMTP2GO can offer in-depth reporting. In every email, you can see: 

  • What has been delivered

  • What has bounced

  • What has been tagged as spam and more 

Before you send it, you can also check how your email looks to 40 different email clients. And if there is anything to do, that increases your mail to pass spam filters. 

Pros of SMTP2GO

  • Excellent deliverability

  • Automated spam detection tests and monitoring

  • Status reports for every email

  • Email testing across 40 clients

Cons of SMTP2GO

  • It’s purely email delivery, so it isn't the right fit if you want automation or email design. The interface doesn’t look too shiny or spiffy. 

  • On price, SMTP2GO beats SendGrid. 

  • It starts at $15 a month for 40,000 emails

  • There is a free plan with 1,000 emails per month

3. Brevo

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), based in Europe, is an excellent alternative to SendGrid. Like SendGrid, it offers email marketing alongside an SMTP server. Brevo is a stronger option for email marketing campaigns. It’s got high-quality pre-made email templates plus a sound drag-and-drop editor. Campaign automation is far better than that of SendGrid. You’re not limited to simple autoresponders. 

Conditional workflows make it easy to send emails triggered by contact behavior. Brevo’s SMTP server makes it very easy to start—just a simple three-step process. You can also use the API to send automated messages from your website. Once configured, Brevo’s SMTP server tracks all emails for delivery, opens, clicks, etc.

Pros of Brevo

  • Email marketing and transactional email service 

  • Great automation tools

  • Easy to configure

  • Very generous free plan 

Cons of Brevo

  • There is no built-in email verification service. 

  • Brevo pricing starts at $9 a month. 

  • That gives you 5,000 emails with 500 contacts. 

  • Brevo is better for bulk sending over 100,000 emails a month. Learn more about costs in our Brevo pricing guide. 

  • Brevo also has a great free plan. 

  • You can send up to 300 emails a day to 100K contacts. 

  • All core transactional and email marketing features are included.

4. SMTP.com

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

SMTP.com is a SendGrid alternative that’s been around for 20+ years, serving 100K+ businesses. It combines a cloud SMTP relay with an API. For developers, it promises simple and fast integration. Migration templates make switching to SMTP.com from another relay like SendGrid easy. Send marketing and transactional emails like: 

  • Remarketing campaigns

  • Win-back emails

  • Email notifications

  • Registration emails

  • Order confirmations

  • Status updates

  • Authentication emails

SMTP.com: Maintaining List Hygiene and Reputation with Expert Support and Integrations

SMTP.com has a reputation defender that suppresses invalid email addresses before you send them. This keeps your list healthy and your domain and IP reputation high. It’s a clever tool, taking the weight of list hygiene and sender reputation off businesses. 

SMTP.com integrates with 12 apps, like: 

  • Shopify

  • WordPress

  • Trello

  • Wufoo

  • Slack

  • Airtable

Integrations also include Google products: 

  • Docs

  • Sheets

  • Forms

  • Lead Form Extensions

  • Calendar

  • Gmail

The SMTP.com support team comprises experienced email delivery experts with decades of collective expertise. If you ever need support, you’ll be excellent. 

Pros of SMTP.com 

  • Designed for high-volume sending

  • Automated list hygiene and sender reputation management

  • High deliverability rates

  • Quick API integration 

Cons of SMTP.com 

  • SMTP.com’s plans aren’t the cheapest. And as clever as the Reputation Defender tool is, it’s a paid-for add-on. 

  • SMTP.com pricing

  • Starts at $25/month 

  • For 50K emails

  • Email relay API

  • Detailed reporting

  • Shared IP

  • Email

  • Phone support 

  • $80/month

  • 100K emails 

  • With a dedicated IP cost. 

The reputation defender add-on costs 20% of your plan. If you exceed your monthly limit, you can keep sending and SMTP.com will charge you for the extra emails in the next billing cycle.

5. MailerSend 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

MailerSend is a straight-up transactional email service. It’s the sister service of email marketing software MailerLite. It borrows MailerLite’s drag-and-drop email builder. And its templates. A lot of SendGrid alternatives overlook email design. The assumption is a transactional email doesn’t have to look great. Receipts, order confirmations, delivery updates, etc, are purely functional. That’s a myth. A good-looking transactional email reinforces your brand and gives visual consistency. 

Personalization and Deliverability: Key Features of MailerSend for Effective Email Management

MailerSend’s templates support dynamic content. You can personalize the same template to show different content to different contacts. MailerSend has an email verification tool for removing unused or fake email addresses. This improves email deliverability rates. Its API lets you set up email sending within your website. You can also use MailerSend as your inbox with inbound email routing.

Pros of MailerSend 

  • Dynamic templates

  • Drag-and-drop email editor for customizing transactional emails

  • Email verification

  • Great value for teams 

Cons of MailerSend 

  • No native email marketing options. 

  • MailerSend pricing starts at $30 a month. 

  • For this, you can send 50,000 emails and 

  • Verify 100 emails. 

  • This also gives you 20 users on the account, making it much better value for teams than SendGrid. 

  • It continues to be a good value as you scale email sending. 

  • There is also a free plan. 

  • This plan lets a single user send 3,000 emails a month for free. 

6. Moosend

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Moosend is an excellent email marketing service for small businesses. It also comes with an SMTP server to help with high-volume campaigns. An API lets you send emails directly from a web host, like WordPress. You can also use it for transactional emails. 

Why Moosend is a Top Choice for Ecommerce Email Marketing

Moosend’s email marketing tools are slick and user-friendly. Some are also pretty advanced. It offers advanced automations and lead tracking. It is perfect for ecommerce businesses. You can connect your digital store and drop product listings straight into emails. It helps achieve high email deliverability rates with tools like its spam test.

Pros of Moosend 

  • Excellent value for money

  • No email sending limits

  • Quality email marketing tools 

Cons of Moosend 

SMTP is tricky to set up and use. 

Moosend has a standout advantage over SendGrid: 

  • It’s excellent value for money. 

  • Moosend pricing starts at just $9 a month

  • You can send unlimited emails to 500 contacts

7. ActiveCampaign

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

ActiveCampaign is an excellent SendGrid alternative for marketing automation. If you want to scale your email marketing, it should be at your list. It has a transactional email service called Postmark. ActiveCampaign has a good reputation for deliverability. It’s one of the longest-running email marketing services. And it has made running a reliable high-volume email server one of its core USPs. It offers built-in list-building tools. And various features that help you avoid being flagged as spam. The email marketing tools are high quality. In particular, it has some of the best email automation tools, including hundreds of pre-made automation templates. 

Pros of ActiveCampaign 

  • Unlimited email sending

  • High deliverability rates

  • In-built list cleaning

  • Advanced email marketing tools, including excellent automation 

Cons of ActiveCampaign 

The free trial is 14 days, which would be great if it were longer. ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $15 a month. The number of emails sent is 10x the contact limit on paid plans and can increase to 15x if you are on the Enterprise plan. So, it’s ideal for small—to medium-sized businesses looking to grow their email marketing. 

8. Mailgun

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Out of all our SendGrid alternatives, Mailgun is the most direct competitor. Like SendGrid, its core service is an SMTP relay server and accompanying API. It has a similar lineup of big-name clients, including Microsoft, Etsy, Lyft, and more, and similar features. In a straight SendGrid vs. Mailgun contest, SendGrid is a better option for email marketing. Mailgun needs email marketing tools to send marketing messages. You can also sign up for its sister service, Mailjet. Mailgun also features send-time optimization. It uses AI to pick the best time to send emails. User tracking also supports flexible and in-depth analytics. You can use tagging and tracking to dig down into contact behavior stats at an individual level. 

Pros of Mailgun 

  • Advanced suite of deliverability tools

  • Flexible and in-depth reporting

  • Send time optimization 

Cons of Mailgun 

  • No native email marketing tools. 

  • Mailgun pricing starts at $35 a month 

  • For 50,000 emails

  • For $75 a month

  • You get a dedicated IP address

  • 100,000 emails

  • There’s a one-month free trial, 

  • Limited to 5,000 emails

9. Amazon SES 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Amazon Simple Email Service is a SendGrid alternative built on Amazon’s giant cloud infrastructure. Which means you get enormous scalability. SES works with any cloud application. It can be used for email relaying or transactional emails. Its Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) tools automate inbox placement and send optimization. In-depth statistics cover all sending and deliverability metrics. 

Amazon SES: A Scalable and Cost-Effective SendGrid Alternative for Businesses of All Sizes

What makes SES unique as a SendGrid alternative is its open-ended scalability. Amazon uses it for its own transactional emails and marketing campaigns. It sends out billions of emails every month. But its pay-as-you-go pricing structure means you only pay for what you send. So, no matter how big or small your business is or how many emails you send, the cost is customized to your needs. And changes as your needs change.

Pros of Amazon SES 

  • Open-ended scalability

  • Pay-as-you-go pricing

  • Automated deliverability tools and reputation reporting 

Cons of Amazon SES 

  • No tools for creating and managing email marketing campaigns. 

  • Amazon SES charges a flat rate of $0.10 

  • 1000 emails sent

  • plus $0.12 for each GB of attachments 

  • If you run applications on Amazon’s EC2 cloud

  • You can send up to 62,000 emails a month free of charge.

10. Elastic Email

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Elastic Email is a user-friendly SendGrid alternative. It offers an SMTP relay API to send emails from your website or app. It includes various features to ensure high deliverability rates, including email verification. Dedicated IP addresses are available. They come with extra deliverability features like IP warm-up. Backing up these deliverability tools, Elastic Email offers in-depth analytics. These include insights about why contacts unsubscribe. For email marketing, Elastic Email features all the tools you would expect. Everything is straightforward to use. You get the email builder and templates to build emails that fit your brand, but the customization is limited. 

Pros of Elastic Email 

  • Advanced deliverability tools

  • In-depth analytics

  • Drag-and-drop email builder for transactional emails

  • Full email marketing suite 

Cons of Elastic Email 

  • Template customization is limited. 

  • The Elastic Email API plan costs $9 a month

  • 10,000 emails. 

  • The email marketing plan also starts at $9

  • You can send up to 60,000 emails a month to 2000 contacts.

  • Both have free plans limited to 100 emails a day.

11. Mailchimp Transactional Email

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Mailchimp is well known for its email marketing and landing page features. But did you know it's a transactional email service provider, too? It does so through its Mandrill app, which looks more dated than the Mailchimp interface. Still, you’ll find all the usual features, such as: 

  • Sending via API and SMTP

  • Inbound email processing

  • reports 

Mailchimp Transactional Email is a paid add-on to Mailchimp’s email marketing software. You can’t unbundle the two if you need only the former. A free demo is available, but it’s suitable for only sending 500 emails to your verified domain. 

Pros of Mailchimp Transactional Email 

Where Mailchimp Transactional Email beats SendGrid? 

You can run split tests in Mailchimp to test different versions of your transactional emails and identify the best-performing ones. SendGrid doesn’t have a similar split test feature. Suppose you’re already using Mailchimp for your marketing email campaigns and social media marketing. In that case, you may find adding to the platform’s transactional email service convenient instead of signing up for a separate provider. 

12. Postmark

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Postmark is a fantastic transactional email platform offering: 

  • Superior deliverability

  • Template pushing across environments

  • Inbound email processing for getting into your customers’ inbox and handling their replies

It also integrates smoothly with the parent platform ActiveCampaign, letting you send transactional emails from your marketing automations. (ActiveCampaign’s email marketing automation capabilities are Powerful with a Capital P.) If you’ll be collecting or processing the personal data of EU residents, you’ll be glad to know that Postmark is GDPR-compliant

Pros of Postmark 

Where Postmark beats SendGrid: 

  • Postmark has much higher email deliverability than SendGrid. In our deliverability tests, the former service came in second and three places ahead of SendGrid. 

  • While SendGrid hides some premium features behind more expensive plans, you’ll get full access to almost all of Postmark’s features at every pricing tier. You’ll have to pay more only if you want to send more emails or use add-ons such as dedicated IP addresses. 

Cons of Postmark 

Based on our research, Postmark is one of the market’s more expensive email delivery services. SendGrid presents a much more affordable option.

13. Mailtrap

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Mailtrap is more of an email testing solution than an email marketing service, checking your spam score and analyzing your emails’ HTML for compatibility with major email clients. It also has typical features for sending emails via API or SMTP relay. After sending your emails, you’ll get detailed email analytics across various mailbox providers on your: 

  • Delivery rate

  • Unique open rate

  • Bounce rate, and more 

Pros of Mailtrap 

Where Mailtrap beats SendGrid: 

  • Mailtrap provides a test inbox to test your emails without bothering your customers. You can even test sending your emails to multiple recipients. 

  • SendGrid doesn’t offer a similar test inbox. 

  • Depending on your plan, Mailtrap provides up to 60 days’ worth of email logs for reviewing your email activity. 

  • In SendGrid, the default option is only three or seven days’ worth of records, and you have to pay to access your email activity history over the last 30 days. 

Cons of Mailtrap 

While SendGrid offers 24/7 support through platforms such as support tickets and chat, Mailtrap provides only email support if you want help from a human agent. There’s also no mention of email support hours. 

14. Mailjet

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Mailjet combines email marketing with email API services in one platform, so it has some useful features you may need help finding in other transactional email solutions. These include: 

  • A/B testing

  • Email marketing automation

  • Dynamic email content

Most of Mailjet’s email API-related features are available immediately on its generous free plan. So, you generally have to upgrade only if you need to send more emails or want access to email marketing features. 

Pros of Mailjet 

Where Mailjet beats SendGrid: 

  • Using Mailjet’s linked section feature, you can link email sections to multiple templates and update these templates simultaneously when you edit your linked section. 

  • Not many other SMTP email providers I’ve tested — SendGrid included — offer such a convenient feature. 

  • Free Mailjet users can send up to 200 bulk emails daily or up to 6,000 emails monthly at no cost. This beats SendGrid’s free plan offering of up to 100 daily emails. 

Cons of Mailjet 

SendGrid offers more detailed bounce classifications to help you understand why your emails have bounced. Mailjet distinguishes only between hard and soft bounces

15. SendPulse 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

The generosity of SendPulse’s free transactional email plan first caught my eye. This email service provider lets you send 12,000 transactional monthly emails for free! Very few SMTP email service providers offer such generous sending allowances. This service provider also has: 

  • Email marketing

  • Sales CRM

  • Landing pages

  • Chatbot features and more

The free plan limits for these are pretty generous, too — for instance, you can send up to 15,000 marketing emails to up to 500 subscribers monthly. All these omnichannel marketing features are available in separate pricing plans, so you pay for only the features you need. 

Pros of SendPulse 

Where SendPulse beats SendGrid: 

  • Using SendPulse, you can send a whopping 12,000 transactional emails per month, or up to 400 emails daily, for free. These limits are much higher than SendGrid’s 100 daily emails (which works out to 3,000 emails per month). 

  • You also get a complete marketing platform for: 

    • Sending marketing emails

    • SMSes

    • Web push notifications

    • Setting up chatbots and more

If you opt for SendGrid instead, you’d miss out on many of these (marketing emails being a notable exception). 

Cons of SendPulse 

SendGrid offers more detailed reporting features. For example, you can compare the performance of emails according to different categories you’ve set up or your recipients’ browsers. You won’t get such deep customer insights in SendPulse. 

16. MessageBird (formerly SparkPost)

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

MessageBird (formerly SparkPost) claims to deliver nearly 40% of all B2C & B2B email, with over 6 trillion annual sends. This number is far too large for me to comprehend, but we can all agree that it sounds like an impressive amount of emails. MessageBird offers features beyond email delivery. MessageBird and SendGrid are similar, with: 

  • Enterprise-level analytics

  • Competitive intelligence tools

  • A focus on high-volume sending

It will be a good partner for your needs if you run an enterprise business and work in a highly regulated industry. 

Pros of MessageBird 

  • Committed to offering a reliable service: MessageBird has a 99.99% uptime guaranteed by SLA.

  • Detailed documentation: the comprehensive docs help users and customers navigate MessageBird's complex features.

  • Compliance and enterprise support: Companies in industries with specific security and compliance regulations will find what they need in MessageBird—but what’s a pro for one company is a con for another. Speaking of which: 

Cons of MessageBird 

Focused on enterprise: since MessageBird is focused on providing everything the most prominent businesses could need, its complexity could be too much for smaller companies and startups. 

17. Campaign Monitor 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Campaign Monitor is a tool for marketers, but it also provides transactional email sending that’s not hard to use. It offers a bunch of different features, including an AI writing tool. It makes you faster, but it’s questionable whether it nails the messaging. On a more positive note, I really like the drag-and-drop email builder. Also, the tool is easy to integrate, and all the features are well documented. 

Pros of Campaign Monitor 

  • Drag and drop email editor (+ set of free templates) 

  • Marketing automation (trigger-based drip campaigns)

  • Transactional emails with templates

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5 Criteria to Consider When Choosing a Sendgrid Alternative

person making notes - Sendgrid Alternatives

1. Reliability: The Cornerstone of Email Deliverability

In the email-sending space, reliability equals exceptional deliverability. Switching to an alternative to SendGrid? Look for a tool with predictable deliverability scores, even when using a shared IP address. Deliverability performance reports should show consistent test results without sudden: 

  • Bounces

  • Spam complaints

  • Other deliverability data spikes

Remember that a massive chunk of deliverability performance is in your hands. 

2. Functionality and Features: What Can the Tool Do?  

When choosing a SendGrid alternative, look for functionality and features that match your business needs. For instance, SendGrid sends marketing email campaigns (such as newsletters or bulk promotional messages) and transactional emails (such as user notifications, account confirmations, etc.). Most businesses need to send both; for this reason, all the email-sending tools here provide email API along with the user interface and template constructor. Only note that, unlike Mailtrap, most other tools have transactional emails as separate tools, billed separately. When choosing alternatives to SendGrid, I focused intensely on software for quick campaign optimization. This means you get plenty of data and testing options to improve your emails. 

3. Ease of Integration: How Easily Does the Tool Fit into Your Existing System?

User-friendly interface and clear documentation are a must. This is a general tip when choosing email marketing services or any other cloud-based tool. All the tools listed above are well-documented and easy to use. I’d argue that most are pretty straightforward, even if you’re a novice. For example, assuming you have verified your domain and have proper authentication, setting up email marketing campaigns with these tools takes just a few steps. 

4. Pricing and Scalability: Can the Tool Grow with You?

In a perfect world, we would choose a tool that does everything, is reliable, has all possible features, and is cheap. In reality, define your budget based on how many emails you want to send and prioritize the needed features. I’d advise you to look for something that’s cost-effective but not necessarily cheap. Also, the pay-as-you-go model may work well for you if you're in the growth stage. 

5. Customer Support: When Something Goes Wrong

If something goes wrong, you shouldn’t wait days for your support ticket to be answered. Understandably, higher-tier plans may get priority support. I focused on choosing the services that answer your ticket within a reasonable timeframe, even if you’re on a free plan. Checking how responsive a service is on social media may hint at how responsive their support team is. But don’t take this as a given.

Inframail

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Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today

Inframail offers unlimited inboxes for cold emailing at a single flat rate. Unlike traditional providers like SendGrid, there are no extra costs for additional inboxes. Instead, Inframail lets you scale your outreach efforts without worrying about costs. Buy multiple domains to warm up and create unlimited inboxes for your cold email campaigns.

Automated Technical Setup for Cold Emailing

Setting up a cold email infrastructure isn’t easy. You must configure your inboxes to establish your sending reputation and maximize deliverability. Inframail automates the technical setup process with dedicated email servers for each user and automates: 

  • SPF

  • DKIM

  • DMARC setup

This means you can return to what matters—reaching your prospects and succeeding at your cold email campaigns.


Transactional emails are a crucial part of your business's email infrastructure. They include essential communications like order confirmations, shipping notifications, password resets, and more that help keep your customers informed and engaged with your business. If your transactional emails go down or are not delivered, your customers will be kept in the loop, and you will quickly lose their trust. Many email marketing platforms may need to provide the right features for your transactional emails to be effective. SendGrid is a popular choice for many businesses, but other options exist. You’re in the right place if you’re looking for reliable, cost-effective SendGrid alternatives. This article explores some of the best SendGrid options to ensure seamless cold email deliverability and enhance your business with better features and solid value.

Inframail's email infrastructure solution can help you achieve your goals. It can help you find a reliable alternative to SendGrid that ensures seamless transactional email delivery and better value for your specific business needs.

Table of Contents

What Does SendGrid Offer, and Why Choose an Alternative?

SendGrid - Sendgrid Alternatives

SendGrid is a transactional email service provider that specializes in bulk sending. It’s trusted by huge enterprises like Uber, Spotify, and Airbnb—the kind of businesses that send a lot of customer emails. SendGrid runs SMTP servers. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It provides reliable email delivery at high volumes. SendGrid can be used for marketing and transactional emails, such as: 

  • Order confirmations

  • Abandoned cart emails

  • Password reset emails

Learn about SMTP or read our guide to the best free SMTP servers.

Why Do People Look for SendGrid Alternatives?  

But SendGrid is by no means the only bulk email service out there. And just because it’s right for Uber doesn’t mean it’s right for you. There are also many reasons you might want to check out an alternative to SendGrid—cost, for one. SendGrid isn’t the cheapest SMTP option out there. 

SendGrid Pricing and Limitations: Is It Worth the Cost?

It starts at $19.95, which lets you send up to 50k emails a month—not too bad. But if you’re on a team, it’s per user. And you don’t get email validation, which checks that you’re sending to legit email addresses. There is a free plan, but it is limited to 100 emails a day. SendGrid’s email marketing platform isn’t the best out there. Automating campaigns is impossible until you sign up for the most expensive tier. Even then, they’re just essential drip campaigns. So, there are plenty of reasons to look at SendGrid alternatives. 

SendGrid’s Biggest Drawbacks  

From my experience, SendGrid may not be the best option if you fall into any of these categories: 

You Are a Low-Volume Sender 

SendGrid’s free plan allows you to send only 100 emails daily, and its cheapest paid plan is $19.95 per month for 50,000 emails. Startups and smaller businesses that don’t need to send that many emails may find such fees pricey compared to other providers like SMTP2Go. 

You Value Simpler, More Affordable Transactional and Marketing Email Bills

Transactional and marketing emails are two types of email marketing campaigns. Transactional emails are emails sent in response to users taking action on your website. They include order confirmation emails when a user places an order and password reset emails if they request to reset their password. (See some tremendous transactional email examples here.) 

Comparing All-in-One Email Platforms to SendGrid’s Segmented Billing Model

On the other hand, marketing emails are emails you proactively send to users to promote your products or services. Examples of marketing emails include newsletters and sales announcement emails, such as SendGrid bills for transactional and marketing emails as separate products. As a result, you’d potentially need to pay more to send both types of emails. Your billing might get more complicated, too. In contrast, all-in-one email platforms like Brevo and SendPulse bundle transactional and marketing emails into their marketing plans. 

You Don’t Compromise on Deliverability

SendGrid placed fifth when we tested the email deliverability of nine free SMTP servers. That’s nothing to shout about. Other platforms like SMTP2GO and Postmark have much more reliable email deliverability. 

You Intend To Automate Your Email Workflows

I found SendGrid’s automation workflow editor rather simplistic. For one, you can’t have conditional paths in your automations or set up multiple triggers for them. If you need advanced marketing automation capabilities, consider looking elsewhere.

Inframail

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17 Best Sendgrid Alternatives for Transactional Emails

SendGrid is one of the most popular email infrastructure tools. But while it offers a solid service, plenty of alternatives exist. Here are 17 of the best SendGrid alternatives to help you improve your email deliverability.

1. Inframail

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Inframail is an email infrastructure tool built for cold emailers who need a private email setup. Unlike shared IP addresses from services like Outlook or Google Workspace, Inframail provides dedicated IP addresses. You control your deliverability and aren't affected by the behavior of others. With Inframail, you get your dedicated IP address to influence deliverability directly. You could still damage your server’s reputation if you don’t follow best practices. Inframail also will enable you to create unlimited email inboxes for a flat fee, which can be a game-changer if you need to manage multiple campaigns or scale up outreach efforts. It takes care of all the complicated email records, saving you from the hassle of manual configuration, like: 

  • SPF

  • DKIM

  • DMARC

Pros of Inframail

  • Automated DKIM, SPF, and DMARC Setup: One of Inframail’s key features is its automated setup for DKIM, SPF, and DMARC protocols. These protocols are essential for ensuring your emails reach the inbox and do not get flagged as spam. The automation here is a real lifesaver because setting up these protocols manually can be daunting, especially if you’re not tech-savvy.

  • Unlimited Email Inboxes: Another feature of Inframail is the ability to create unlimited email inboxes for a flat fee. This feature is a game-changer if you’re managing multiple campaigns or must send out a high volume of emails. 

  • Priority Support: Inframail also offers priority support, which can make all the difference when dealing with email infrastructure. Things can go wrong, but having quick access to support ensures your operations run smoothly, even when issues arise. 

Cons of Inframail

While Inframail promises quick setup and cost savings, some users question its deliverability compared to traditional options. Even Inframail’s founder admits they have a 15% lower deliverability rate. Even though it automates the setup of DKIM, SPF, and DMARC, some users still report that their emails don’t consistently land in inboxes. 

2. SMTP2GO

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

SMTP2GO is a global email delivery service. It’s an SMTP bulk-sending service with extras geared towards high deliverability. There are lots of tricks and techniques for helping emails avoid junk folders. SMTP2GO does most of them. It monitors blocklists and ‘spam traps,’ tools email clients use to ‘catch’ unsolicited sending. It constantly monitors not only its servers but all major email clients, too. 

SMTP2GO: Enhancing Email Deliverability with Advanced Reporting and Pre-Send Testing

If there are any issues, SMTP2GO takes care of them. This means SMTP2GO can offer in-depth reporting. In every email, you can see: 

  • What has been delivered

  • What has bounced

  • What has been tagged as spam and more 

Before you send it, you can also check how your email looks to 40 different email clients. And if there is anything to do, that increases your mail to pass spam filters. 

Pros of SMTP2GO

  • Excellent deliverability

  • Automated spam detection tests and monitoring

  • Status reports for every email

  • Email testing across 40 clients

Cons of SMTP2GO

  • It’s purely email delivery, so it isn't the right fit if you want automation or email design. The interface doesn’t look too shiny or spiffy. 

  • On price, SMTP2GO beats SendGrid. 

  • It starts at $15 a month for 40,000 emails

  • There is a free plan with 1,000 emails per month

3. Brevo

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue), based in Europe, is an excellent alternative to SendGrid. Like SendGrid, it offers email marketing alongside an SMTP server. Brevo is a stronger option for email marketing campaigns. It’s got high-quality pre-made email templates plus a sound drag-and-drop editor. Campaign automation is far better than that of SendGrid. You’re not limited to simple autoresponders. 

Conditional workflows make it easy to send emails triggered by contact behavior. Brevo’s SMTP server makes it very easy to start—just a simple three-step process. You can also use the API to send automated messages from your website. Once configured, Brevo’s SMTP server tracks all emails for delivery, opens, clicks, etc.

Pros of Brevo

  • Email marketing and transactional email service 

  • Great automation tools

  • Easy to configure

  • Very generous free plan 

Cons of Brevo

  • There is no built-in email verification service. 

  • Brevo pricing starts at $9 a month. 

  • That gives you 5,000 emails with 500 contacts. 

  • Brevo is better for bulk sending over 100,000 emails a month. Learn more about costs in our Brevo pricing guide. 

  • Brevo also has a great free plan. 

  • You can send up to 300 emails a day to 100K contacts. 

  • All core transactional and email marketing features are included.

4. SMTP.com

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

SMTP.com is a SendGrid alternative that’s been around for 20+ years, serving 100K+ businesses. It combines a cloud SMTP relay with an API. For developers, it promises simple and fast integration. Migration templates make switching to SMTP.com from another relay like SendGrid easy. Send marketing and transactional emails like: 

  • Remarketing campaigns

  • Win-back emails

  • Email notifications

  • Registration emails

  • Order confirmations

  • Status updates

  • Authentication emails

SMTP.com: Maintaining List Hygiene and Reputation with Expert Support and Integrations

SMTP.com has a reputation defender that suppresses invalid email addresses before you send them. This keeps your list healthy and your domain and IP reputation high. It’s a clever tool, taking the weight of list hygiene and sender reputation off businesses. 

SMTP.com integrates with 12 apps, like: 

  • Shopify

  • WordPress

  • Trello

  • Wufoo

  • Slack

  • Airtable

Integrations also include Google products: 

  • Docs

  • Sheets

  • Forms

  • Lead Form Extensions

  • Calendar

  • Gmail

The SMTP.com support team comprises experienced email delivery experts with decades of collective expertise. If you ever need support, you’ll be excellent. 

Pros of SMTP.com 

  • Designed for high-volume sending

  • Automated list hygiene and sender reputation management

  • High deliverability rates

  • Quick API integration 

Cons of SMTP.com 

  • SMTP.com’s plans aren’t the cheapest. And as clever as the Reputation Defender tool is, it’s a paid-for add-on. 

  • SMTP.com pricing

  • Starts at $25/month 

  • For 50K emails

  • Email relay API

  • Detailed reporting

  • Shared IP

  • Email

  • Phone support 

  • $80/month

  • 100K emails 

  • With a dedicated IP cost. 

The reputation defender add-on costs 20% of your plan. If you exceed your monthly limit, you can keep sending and SMTP.com will charge you for the extra emails in the next billing cycle.

5. MailerSend 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

MailerSend is a straight-up transactional email service. It’s the sister service of email marketing software MailerLite. It borrows MailerLite’s drag-and-drop email builder. And its templates. A lot of SendGrid alternatives overlook email design. The assumption is a transactional email doesn’t have to look great. Receipts, order confirmations, delivery updates, etc, are purely functional. That’s a myth. A good-looking transactional email reinforces your brand and gives visual consistency. 

Personalization and Deliverability: Key Features of MailerSend for Effective Email Management

MailerSend’s templates support dynamic content. You can personalize the same template to show different content to different contacts. MailerSend has an email verification tool for removing unused or fake email addresses. This improves email deliverability rates. Its API lets you set up email sending within your website. You can also use MailerSend as your inbox with inbound email routing.

Pros of MailerSend 

  • Dynamic templates

  • Drag-and-drop email editor for customizing transactional emails

  • Email verification

  • Great value for teams 

Cons of MailerSend 

  • No native email marketing options. 

  • MailerSend pricing starts at $30 a month. 

  • For this, you can send 50,000 emails and 

  • Verify 100 emails. 

  • This also gives you 20 users on the account, making it much better value for teams than SendGrid. 

  • It continues to be a good value as you scale email sending. 

  • There is also a free plan. 

  • This plan lets a single user send 3,000 emails a month for free. 

6. Moosend

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Moosend is an excellent email marketing service for small businesses. It also comes with an SMTP server to help with high-volume campaigns. An API lets you send emails directly from a web host, like WordPress. You can also use it for transactional emails. 

Why Moosend is a Top Choice for Ecommerce Email Marketing

Moosend’s email marketing tools are slick and user-friendly. Some are also pretty advanced. It offers advanced automations and lead tracking. It is perfect for ecommerce businesses. You can connect your digital store and drop product listings straight into emails. It helps achieve high email deliverability rates with tools like its spam test.

Pros of Moosend 

  • Excellent value for money

  • No email sending limits

  • Quality email marketing tools 

Cons of Moosend 

SMTP is tricky to set up and use. 

Moosend has a standout advantage over SendGrid: 

  • It’s excellent value for money. 

  • Moosend pricing starts at just $9 a month

  • You can send unlimited emails to 500 contacts

7. ActiveCampaign

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

ActiveCampaign is an excellent SendGrid alternative for marketing automation. If you want to scale your email marketing, it should be at your list. It has a transactional email service called Postmark. ActiveCampaign has a good reputation for deliverability. It’s one of the longest-running email marketing services. And it has made running a reliable high-volume email server one of its core USPs. It offers built-in list-building tools. And various features that help you avoid being flagged as spam. The email marketing tools are high quality. In particular, it has some of the best email automation tools, including hundreds of pre-made automation templates. 

Pros of ActiveCampaign 

  • Unlimited email sending

  • High deliverability rates

  • In-built list cleaning

  • Advanced email marketing tools, including excellent automation 

Cons of ActiveCampaign 

The free trial is 14 days, which would be great if it were longer. ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $15 a month. The number of emails sent is 10x the contact limit on paid plans and can increase to 15x if you are on the Enterprise plan. So, it’s ideal for small—to medium-sized businesses looking to grow their email marketing. 

8. Mailgun

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Out of all our SendGrid alternatives, Mailgun is the most direct competitor. Like SendGrid, its core service is an SMTP relay server and accompanying API. It has a similar lineup of big-name clients, including Microsoft, Etsy, Lyft, and more, and similar features. In a straight SendGrid vs. Mailgun contest, SendGrid is a better option for email marketing. Mailgun needs email marketing tools to send marketing messages. You can also sign up for its sister service, Mailjet. Mailgun also features send-time optimization. It uses AI to pick the best time to send emails. User tracking also supports flexible and in-depth analytics. You can use tagging and tracking to dig down into contact behavior stats at an individual level. 

Pros of Mailgun 

  • Advanced suite of deliverability tools

  • Flexible and in-depth reporting

  • Send time optimization 

Cons of Mailgun 

  • No native email marketing tools. 

  • Mailgun pricing starts at $35 a month 

  • For 50,000 emails

  • For $75 a month

  • You get a dedicated IP address

  • 100,000 emails

  • There’s a one-month free trial, 

  • Limited to 5,000 emails

9. Amazon SES 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Amazon Simple Email Service is a SendGrid alternative built on Amazon’s giant cloud infrastructure. Which means you get enormous scalability. SES works with any cloud application. It can be used for email relaying or transactional emails. Its Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) tools automate inbox placement and send optimization. In-depth statistics cover all sending and deliverability metrics. 

Amazon SES: A Scalable and Cost-Effective SendGrid Alternative for Businesses of All Sizes

What makes SES unique as a SendGrid alternative is its open-ended scalability. Amazon uses it for its own transactional emails and marketing campaigns. It sends out billions of emails every month. But its pay-as-you-go pricing structure means you only pay for what you send. So, no matter how big or small your business is or how many emails you send, the cost is customized to your needs. And changes as your needs change.

Pros of Amazon SES 

  • Open-ended scalability

  • Pay-as-you-go pricing

  • Automated deliverability tools and reputation reporting 

Cons of Amazon SES 

  • No tools for creating and managing email marketing campaigns. 

  • Amazon SES charges a flat rate of $0.10 

  • 1000 emails sent

  • plus $0.12 for each GB of attachments 

  • If you run applications on Amazon’s EC2 cloud

  • You can send up to 62,000 emails a month free of charge.

10. Elastic Email

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Elastic Email is a user-friendly SendGrid alternative. It offers an SMTP relay API to send emails from your website or app. It includes various features to ensure high deliverability rates, including email verification. Dedicated IP addresses are available. They come with extra deliverability features like IP warm-up. Backing up these deliverability tools, Elastic Email offers in-depth analytics. These include insights about why contacts unsubscribe. For email marketing, Elastic Email features all the tools you would expect. Everything is straightforward to use. You get the email builder and templates to build emails that fit your brand, but the customization is limited. 

Pros of Elastic Email 

  • Advanced deliverability tools

  • In-depth analytics

  • Drag-and-drop email builder for transactional emails

  • Full email marketing suite 

Cons of Elastic Email 

  • Template customization is limited. 

  • The Elastic Email API plan costs $9 a month

  • 10,000 emails. 

  • The email marketing plan also starts at $9

  • You can send up to 60,000 emails a month to 2000 contacts.

  • Both have free plans limited to 100 emails a day.

11. Mailchimp Transactional Email

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Mailchimp is well known for its email marketing and landing page features. But did you know it's a transactional email service provider, too? It does so through its Mandrill app, which looks more dated than the Mailchimp interface. Still, you’ll find all the usual features, such as: 

  • Sending via API and SMTP

  • Inbound email processing

  • reports 

Mailchimp Transactional Email is a paid add-on to Mailchimp’s email marketing software. You can’t unbundle the two if you need only the former. A free demo is available, but it’s suitable for only sending 500 emails to your verified domain. 

Pros of Mailchimp Transactional Email 

Where Mailchimp Transactional Email beats SendGrid? 

You can run split tests in Mailchimp to test different versions of your transactional emails and identify the best-performing ones. SendGrid doesn’t have a similar split test feature. Suppose you’re already using Mailchimp for your marketing email campaigns and social media marketing. In that case, you may find adding to the platform’s transactional email service convenient instead of signing up for a separate provider. 

12. Postmark

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Postmark is a fantastic transactional email platform offering: 

  • Superior deliverability

  • Template pushing across environments

  • Inbound email processing for getting into your customers’ inbox and handling their replies

It also integrates smoothly with the parent platform ActiveCampaign, letting you send transactional emails from your marketing automations. (ActiveCampaign’s email marketing automation capabilities are Powerful with a Capital P.) If you’ll be collecting or processing the personal data of EU residents, you’ll be glad to know that Postmark is GDPR-compliant

Pros of Postmark 

Where Postmark beats SendGrid: 

  • Postmark has much higher email deliverability than SendGrid. In our deliverability tests, the former service came in second and three places ahead of SendGrid. 

  • While SendGrid hides some premium features behind more expensive plans, you’ll get full access to almost all of Postmark’s features at every pricing tier. You’ll have to pay more only if you want to send more emails or use add-ons such as dedicated IP addresses. 

Cons of Postmark 

Based on our research, Postmark is one of the market’s more expensive email delivery services. SendGrid presents a much more affordable option.

13. Mailtrap

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Mailtrap is more of an email testing solution than an email marketing service, checking your spam score and analyzing your emails’ HTML for compatibility with major email clients. It also has typical features for sending emails via API or SMTP relay. After sending your emails, you’ll get detailed email analytics across various mailbox providers on your: 

  • Delivery rate

  • Unique open rate

  • Bounce rate, and more 

Pros of Mailtrap 

Where Mailtrap beats SendGrid: 

  • Mailtrap provides a test inbox to test your emails without bothering your customers. You can even test sending your emails to multiple recipients. 

  • SendGrid doesn’t offer a similar test inbox. 

  • Depending on your plan, Mailtrap provides up to 60 days’ worth of email logs for reviewing your email activity. 

  • In SendGrid, the default option is only three or seven days’ worth of records, and you have to pay to access your email activity history over the last 30 days. 

Cons of Mailtrap 

While SendGrid offers 24/7 support through platforms such as support tickets and chat, Mailtrap provides only email support if you want help from a human agent. There’s also no mention of email support hours. 

14. Mailjet

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Mailjet combines email marketing with email API services in one platform, so it has some useful features you may need help finding in other transactional email solutions. These include: 

  • A/B testing

  • Email marketing automation

  • Dynamic email content

Most of Mailjet’s email API-related features are available immediately on its generous free plan. So, you generally have to upgrade only if you need to send more emails or want access to email marketing features. 

Pros of Mailjet 

Where Mailjet beats SendGrid: 

  • Using Mailjet’s linked section feature, you can link email sections to multiple templates and update these templates simultaneously when you edit your linked section. 

  • Not many other SMTP email providers I’ve tested — SendGrid included — offer such a convenient feature. 

  • Free Mailjet users can send up to 200 bulk emails daily or up to 6,000 emails monthly at no cost. This beats SendGrid’s free plan offering of up to 100 daily emails. 

Cons of Mailjet 

SendGrid offers more detailed bounce classifications to help you understand why your emails have bounced. Mailjet distinguishes only between hard and soft bounces

15. SendPulse 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

The generosity of SendPulse’s free transactional email plan first caught my eye. This email service provider lets you send 12,000 transactional monthly emails for free! Very few SMTP email service providers offer such generous sending allowances. This service provider also has: 

  • Email marketing

  • Sales CRM

  • Landing pages

  • Chatbot features and more

The free plan limits for these are pretty generous, too — for instance, you can send up to 15,000 marketing emails to up to 500 subscribers monthly. All these omnichannel marketing features are available in separate pricing plans, so you pay for only the features you need. 

Pros of SendPulse 

Where SendPulse beats SendGrid: 

  • Using SendPulse, you can send a whopping 12,000 transactional emails per month, or up to 400 emails daily, for free. These limits are much higher than SendGrid’s 100 daily emails (which works out to 3,000 emails per month). 

  • You also get a complete marketing platform for: 

    • Sending marketing emails

    • SMSes

    • Web push notifications

    • Setting up chatbots and more

If you opt for SendGrid instead, you’d miss out on many of these (marketing emails being a notable exception). 

Cons of SendPulse 

SendGrid offers more detailed reporting features. For example, you can compare the performance of emails according to different categories you’ve set up or your recipients’ browsers. You won’t get such deep customer insights in SendPulse. 

16. MessageBird (formerly SparkPost)

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

MessageBird (formerly SparkPost) claims to deliver nearly 40% of all B2C & B2B email, with over 6 trillion annual sends. This number is far too large for me to comprehend, but we can all agree that it sounds like an impressive amount of emails. MessageBird offers features beyond email delivery. MessageBird and SendGrid are similar, with: 

  • Enterprise-level analytics

  • Competitive intelligence tools

  • A focus on high-volume sending

It will be a good partner for your needs if you run an enterprise business and work in a highly regulated industry. 

Pros of MessageBird 

  • Committed to offering a reliable service: MessageBird has a 99.99% uptime guaranteed by SLA.

  • Detailed documentation: the comprehensive docs help users and customers navigate MessageBird's complex features.

  • Compliance and enterprise support: Companies in industries with specific security and compliance regulations will find what they need in MessageBird—but what’s a pro for one company is a con for another. Speaking of which: 

Cons of MessageBird 

Focused on enterprise: since MessageBird is focused on providing everything the most prominent businesses could need, its complexity could be too much for smaller companies and startups. 

17. Campaign Monitor 

Tools - Sendgrid Alternatives

Campaign Monitor is a tool for marketers, but it also provides transactional email sending that’s not hard to use. It offers a bunch of different features, including an AI writing tool. It makes you faster, but it’s questionable whether it nails the messaging. On a more positive note, I really like the drag-and-drop email builder. Also, the tool is easy to integrate, and all the features are well documented. 

Pros of Campaign Monitor 

  • Drag and drop email editor (+ set of free templates) 

  • Marketing automation (trigger-based drip campaigns)

  • Transactional emails with templates

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5 Criteria to Consider When Choosing a Sendgrid Alternative

person making notes - Sendgrid Alternatives

1. Reliability: The Cornerstone of Email Deliverability

In the email-sending space, reliability equals exceptional deliverability. Switching to an alternative to SendGrid? Look for a tool with predictable deliverability scores, even when using a shared IP address. Deliverability performance reports should show consistent test results without sudden: 

  • Bounces

  • Spam complaints

  • Other deliverability data spikes

Remember that a massive chunk of deliverability performance is in your hands. 

2. Functionality and Features: What Can the Tool Do?  

When choosing a SendGrid alternative, look for functionality and features that match your business needs. For instance, SendGrid sends marketing email campaigns (such as newsletters or bulk promotional messages) and transactional emails (such as user notifications, account confirmations, etc.). Most businesses need to send both; for this reason, all the email-sending tools here provide email API along with the user interface and template constructor. Only note that, unlike Mailtrap, most other tools have transactional emails as separate tools, billed separately. When choosing alternatives to SendGrid, I focused intensely on software for quick campaign optimization. This means you get plenty of data and testing options to improve your emails. 

3. Ease of Integration: How Easily Does the Tool Fit into Your Existing System?

User-friendly interface and clear documentation are a must. This is a general tip when choosing email marketing services or any other cloud-based tool. All the tools listed above are well-documented and easy to use. I’d argue that most are pretty straightforward, even if you’re a novice. For example, assuming you have verified your domain and have proper authentication, setting up email marketing campaigns with these tools takes just a few steps. 

4. Pricing and Scalability: Can the Tool Grow with You?

In a perfect world, we would choose a tool that does everything, is reliable, has all possible features, and is cheap. In reality, define your budget based on how many emails you want to send and prioritize the needed features. I’d advise you to look for something that’s cost-effective but not necessarily cheap. Also, the pay-as-you-go model may work well for you if you're in the growth stage. 

5. Customer Support: When Something Goes Wrong

If something goes wrong, you shouldn’t wait days for your support ticket to be answered. Understandably, higher-tier plans may get priority support. I focused on choosing the services that answer your ticket within a reasonable timeframe, even if you’re on a free plan. Checking how responsive a service is on social media may hint at how responsive their support team is. But don’t take this as a given.

Inframail

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Start Buying Domains Now and Setup Your Email Infrastructure Today

Inframail offers unlimited inboxes for cold emailing at a single flat rate. Unlike traditional providers like SendGrid, there are no extra costs for additional inboxes. Instead, Inframail lets you scale your outreach efforts without worrying about costs. Buy multiple domains to warm up and create unlimited inboxes for your cold email campaigns.

Automated Technical Setup for Cold Emailing

Setting up a cold email infrastructure isn’t easy. You must configure your inboxes to establish your sending reputation and maximize deliverability. Inframail automates the technical setup process with dedicated email servers for each user and automates: 

  • SPF

  • DKIM

  • DMARC setup

This means you can return to what matters—reaching your prospects and succeeding at your cold email campaigns.