The 7 Best SendGrid Alternatives: Which is Right for You?

Business emails are not a new trend. They have been around and will always be. The reason being consumers enjoy receiving emails be they promotional, informative etc. from the business they are keen on. This is also one of the quickest and easiest ways for businesses to announce their offerings, remarket to existing customers and share company updates. Emails are so popular that it breaks the barriers across generations and enables companies to widen their audience base effectively.

As the years pass by and technology becomes a part and parcel of our lives, consumers still prefer to engage with businesses via email. Be it replying to an offer, forwarding a message, or clicking through to something that is within the email like a coupon, newsletter, survey etc. Email interaction is an activity businesses can’t deny and thrive on. It is no surprise a big chunk of emails drives sales in businesses of every shape and size.

SendGrid is a name that pops up as a transactional emails service provider. It has established its name as a SMTP service provider for years. However small and medium businesses are losing interest in SendGrid owing to its expensive packages. The service provider is more inclined to serve prominent brands than SMBs. If you are looking for an affordable and feature-rich alternative for SendGrid this article is for you.

Top 7 Best SendGrid Alternatives

1. Mailchimp

This is one the best alternatives as it is an all-in-one integrated branding solution. There are many reasons for the popularity and rampant adoption of Mailchimp. They offer a generous free plan to their customers. This is a boon for small and medium-sized businesses as they can email a single group of up to 2,000 contacts. The free plan gives access to starter templates, up to six of them, to choose from. Businesses and even individual users can track their email delivery campaigns with comprehensive reporting. It gives counts of open emails delivery count, click-throughs, revenue earned and a host of other options.

Email marketers can start using Mailchimp with a free plan with up to 2,000 contacts monthly. For upgrades, they have the Essential plan for $9.99 and $14.99 monthly and a Premium plan for $299 monthly. Its prominent features include the drag-and-drop custom email delivery builder. It allows users to easily store images for later use. It has an unbeatable email automation capability with the ability to share transactional emails.

2. Mandrill

Another SendGrid competitor Mandrill is best used for SMTP Transactional email service. With this application, users can use a variety of custom options. The application is highly data-driven and focused. It is a great fit for any commercial and non-commercial email campaign. It tracks the open rate, bounce rate and click rate. 

Emails can be sent via domains with the same dedicated IP and user account. It is a cloud-based service and hence very effective and dependable. It has an advanced email tracking option. It can perform in-depth data analysis based on the reports gathered about the emails. Its pricing begins at $20 for 25000 emails monthly. It can be considered as a SendGrid cheaper alternative.

3. Mailgun

It is a robust cloud-based transactional API solution. It was built keeping the developers in mind. As a SendGrid competitor, it offers straightforward SMTP integration and flexible HTTP API. Its tools facilitate hassle-free, real-time email validation to weed out invalid email addresses. It provides deliverability services for businesses for more than 5,00,000 emails monthly.

It is based on a pay-as-you-go service with 5,000 emails free for three months. Before this users only need to pay for the messages. Its Foundation plan is $35/month for 50,000 emails, the Growth plan is $80/month for 1,00,000 emails and the Scale plan is $90/month for 1,00,000 emails with advanced settings. Its intuitive features coupled with SMTP integration make it a highly capable email service.

4. Mailjet

If you are keen on SendGrid alternatives free solution then Mailjet is a good choice. It is best for email API and marketing software solutions. This is an intuitive service that lets both marketers and developers create and send bulk emails. Its online email builder gives users a real-time collaboration feature. This is useful when multiple users need to collaborate on a campaign and work as a team. The emails can be A/B tested to get statistical insights on images, sequencing, content and so on.

Mailjet, as a SendGrid alternatives open source, has a Free plan to send 6,000 emails monthly and 200 emails per day. The Basic plan is $9.65 monthly that allows 30,000 emails monthly with no limits on daily emails. The Premium plan is $20.95 monthly that allows 30,000 emails per month with no limits on daily emails. Its customized plan is also available. This can be a great alternative for SendGrid as it is easily affordable, user-friendly and offers numerous useful features to its users.

5. Constant Contact 

For users managing a huge database of email contact then Constant Contact is one of the best SendGrid alternatives for their business. It's ideal for email marketing automation as well. The platform is fairly easy to deploy and helps users with hundreds of templates to choose from. The drag-and-drop functionality is one of the reasons it is being adopted by commercial and non-commercial users alike.

The platform is easy to customize to convey the brand. It segments contacts based on certain criteria that allow email creators to create meaningful campaigns for their audience. As far as its pricing goes it offers a 60-day free trial to new users. While its Core plan is $9.99 monthly and the Plus plan is available for $45 per month.

6. Hubspot

This is an email campaign monitor solution that emphasizes optimization. It helps to improve the email deliverability rates of the overall campaigns. It smoothly integrates with its other products making it a go-to marketing option for businesses of every shape and size. It allows personalization to let users create compelling email marketing campaigns for their brand.

From creating landing pages to pop-ups and forms it has all features to spice up the look and feel of email campaigns. Ist various integrations promise versatility and efficiency to boost conversion rates for business users. HubSpot has a Free plan available for $45 per month for 1,000 marketing contacts, $800 per month for 2,000 marketing contacts and $3200 per month for 10,000 marketing contacts.

7. Amazon SES

Amazon SES is built for users working on highly scalable SMTP Transactional email services. It helps to track emails and lets users apply various settings to avoid spam and bounce rate issues. It helps to create diverse kinds of email marketing campaigns to reach a wide range of audiences. It is highly flexible and can be integrated into any application to initiate email marketing.

Some of its features that stand out are its content filtering feature, seamless integration with other apps and dedicated IP addresses. As it is easily affordable it can be considered a SendGrid cheaper alternative for startups. It offers custom pricing to users.

Also Read: Build Web Apps without Coding with 7 of the Most Preferred Tools 

Which Best SendGrid Alternatives is for you?

As you know now, there is a dearth of amazing Sendgrid competitors that stand out on their own. All of them offer a range of features to help users create customer-centric email marketing campaigns that are easy to track and generate revenue.

However, the email marketing solution that would best suit your need be they business or personal will depend on - 

• What are the goals of your email campaign?
• Who are your competitors?
• What is your target audience looking for?
• What is the SendGrid pricing alternative that fits your budget and requirement?
• How do you manage your email data?
• What is your future email marketing strategy?

These questions are here to get you started. Once you figure out the right answers for each question and even come up with your own, your choice of the SendGrid alternative will begin.