I Tested 6 SendGrid Alternatives: Here’s What I Found

Yeah, Sendgrid is among the most popular email platforms, but it’s not without its limitations. 

In this article, I aim to provide you with the best SendGrid alternatives without losing any of the functionalities you currently have. 

If you feel like fast-forwarding a bit, use some of the following jump links:

• A snapshot of the alternatives
• Detailed comparison criteria
• Reviews of each alternative

Disclaimer: The references to software ratings, available features, and pricing were valid at the time of writing this article but could be subject to change in the future.

SendGrid alternatives: a snapshot

Click on a platform name to jump ahead to the detailed review.

• Mailtrap is best for developers and marketers to send transactional, marketing, and mass emails with high deliverability, growth-focused features, and industry best analytics. 
• Mailgun is best for developers and tech-savvy marketers who don’t need many extra features and are just looking to add email-sending functionality to their apps.
• Amazon SES is best for software engineers looking for a cloud-based email-sending service to send transactional and bulk emails.
• Mailchimp is best for marketers looking to get their campaigns off the ground or add basic email-sending functionality to their apps.
• Brevo is best for eCommerce users who want to send on top of marketing emails.
• Postmark is best for developers who need an SMTP/API service and who can live without advanced features.

And here’s a back-to-back comparison of the SendGrid alternatives:

Platform	Free plan	Pricing
SendGrid	100 emails/day	From $19.95/month
Mailtrap	1,000 emails/month	From $15/month
Mailgun	100 per day	From $15/month
Amazon SES	3,000 per month (during the first year)	$0.10 per 1,000 emails
Mailchimp	500 per month	From $6.50
Brevo	300 per day	From $9
Postmark	100 emails per month	From $15

SendGrid alternatives comparison criteria

To narrow down the selection of the numerous platforms out there and find the best SendGrid alternatives, I’ve taken the following criteria into consideration:

Email infrastructure

Email infrastructure consists of three core components: deliverability, reliability, and scalability. 

Deliverability

When talking about email deliverability, we’re actually talking about the email service provider’s ability to have your emails reach main inboxes instead of going to spam. 

To achieve high deliverability rates, ESPs need to:

• Have proper authentication protocols (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to verify sender identity. 
• Warm up dedicated IPs before sending to establish a trusted sender reputation.
• Separate marketing and transactional emails to prevent reputation damage.

However, deliverability rates are rarely, if ever, available to the public eye. So, to help you get a rough estimate of what you can expect from each ESP from this list, we’ve run a few deliverability tests. The tests were 100% fair, as we used free plans, shared IPs, the same template, and we didn’t warm up domains.

Check out the results:

Email service provider	Email placement result
Mailtrap	Inbox: 78.8% Tabs: 4.8% Spam: 14.4% Missing: 2.0%
Amazon SES	Inbox: 77.1% Tabs: 1.9% Spam: 20.0% Missing: 1.0%
Mailgun	Inbox: 71.4% Tabs: 3.8% Spam: 23.8% Missing: 1.0%
SendGrid	Inbox: 61.0% Tabs: 1.0% Spam: 17.1% Missing: 20.9%
Postmark	Inbox: 83.3% Tabs: 1.0% Spam: 14.3% Missing: 0.9%

For the full results and insights into the methodology we used, check out our dedicated blog post on email deliverability comparison.

Reliability

When it comes to reliability, what you’re looking for is the ESP’s consistency in sending your emails without any delays, failures, and similar hiccups. 

And, unlike with deliverability, you can pretty much tell whether an ESP is reliable or not by checking its status pages, which is exactly what I did for every platform on this list. For example, here’s SendGrid’s status page.

Additionally, to leave no stone unturned, I’ve checked social media and review platforms to see if there are any user reports of downtimes like this one. 

Scalability

An email service provider is considered to be scalable if it’s able to adapt to the growth of your business. More specifically, your email-sending performance shouldn’t suffer as you increase your volume.

In translation, scalability is determined by the ESP’s ability to allow you to send your emails to 100 emails just as well as you would to 1,000,000 recipients without any compromise in quality.

Pricing

Pricing is all about the ESP’s ability to match your business’ size and offer the best bang for your buck. Basically, you don’t want to overpay when you scale up.

Additionally, an ESP should balance the cost, features, and email volume you plan to send. For example, features like email logs or dedicated IPs shouldn’t be cut out from low to mid-tier plans.

Transactional email sending

Some of the basic transactional email-sending features that every ESP should have include:

• SMTP server
• Web API
• SDKs 
• API email tracking
• Dedicated IPs
• Pre-made templates
• Test mode 

Marketing email sending

If you plan on launching email marketing campaigns with your ESP, you need to have some of the following features:

• Bulk sending to efficiently deliver large amounts of promotional emails to multiple emails at once.
• In-depth analytics to monitor the performance of your marketing emails from different angles with metrics like open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, unsubscribes, etc.
• A/B testing to allow you to adjust your subject lines, content, and CTAs according to what resonates best with your audience. 
• Campaign scheduling to ensure your messages reach your targeted audience at the perfect moment.

AI, email automation, and integrations

AI in email marketing

AI in email marketing stopped being a gimmick a long time ago since you can leverage it for multiple purposes nowadays.

You can use it to create landing pages, templates, workflows, and more. It’s especially useful for segmentation and content personalization since it greatly speeds up these processes while maintaining high efficiency.

For example, SendGrid offers an MCP server, which you can connect to your Cline AI agent and ask it to make new contact lists, add emails to it, generate templates, send emails, and more. Mailtrap’s MCP is similar, albeit limited in features; you can connect it to more AI agents and even VS Code.

And keep in mind that although all of the SendGrid alternatives I list in this article have AI features, not all of them are high-level. But don’t worry, I’ll be sure to note both the good ones and the bad ones.

Automation

Did you know that automated emails (e.g., abandoned cart reminders, order confirmations, etc.) generate 29% of all email-driven sales? This includes everything from cart reminders and re-engagement emails to order confirmations and welcome emails. 

That’s why workflow automations are pretty much considered a must in the email marketing world.

However, for automation to actually bring you profit, it needs to be intuitive and easy to set up so you’re not wasting time trying to figure it out. After all, the email autopilot should work for you, not against you.

For example, here’s Brevo’s automation builder, which is one of the most intuitive ones I’ve used so far:

Some platforms, like HubSpot or ActiveCampaign, even offer AI-driven automation and allow you to create smart sequences and adaptive workflows. If this is something that rocks your boat, check out the video we’ve prepared for you. 👀

Integrations 

Let’s be frank: integrating your email platform with other software your business uses is a sure-shot way to launch a killer campaign. 

With integrations, you can:

• Sync customer data across the platforms you use (CRM integrations)
• Automatically sync product data and customer purchases (e-commerce integrations)
• Track user activity through the whole pipeline

However, there’s a trick to it. Although most platforms on this list offer integrations, not a single platform checks 100% of use cases. 

For example, Brevo has integrations geared towards eCommerce businesses, as you can connect your account to most online commerce platforms (e.g., Shopify, WooCommerce, etc.). However, although it lets you integrate with, for example, WordPress, Brevo falls short when it comes to other developer-focused integrations.

On the other hand, developer-friendly integrations are what Amazon SES shines at since you can integrate it with AWS Lambda, Amazon SNS, AWS CloudWatch, and other AWS services for custom email infrastructure. And to go full circle, Amazon SES lacks e-commerce integrations. 🙂

But don’t worry—I’ll be sure to point out which integrations every SendGrid alternative on this list is geared towards to make your choice easier. In the meantime, consult with your team and see if you have any specific integration preferences.

Email design

Email templates library

The thing with email templates is that you should avoid looking for huge libraries since quantity is not better than quality in this case. Some platforms claim they offer a plethora of ready-to-use templates, whereas in reality, they don’t look that flattering.

On the other hand, there are platforms that have a limited email templates library, but almost every template in them is a sight to behold.

HTML email editor

If you have a team of developers working with you, you should probably consider providing them with an email editor that allows them to code HTML emails from scratch. These should support custom HTML, CSS, or even AMP for email if we’re being fancy.

Drag-and-drop email builder

However, if you want to take some work off of your developers’ hands or simply allow your marketers to spill out their creative juices, you can choose from some of the few platforms on this list that have great drag-and-drop builders. 

User experience

User experience is probably the trickiest criteria to judge because, for some, a certain email platform can feel super easy to use, while for others, the same platform can be a thing of nightmares.

Migration support

However, since you’re looking for an alternative to SendGrid, the migration process from one platform to another was probably the element I paid the most attention to.

When you’re switching platforms, you want to keep your contacts, subscribers, lists, automations, and be able to quickly integrate and keep sending campaigns. So, I’ve made sure to include platforms that offer great migration support and a seamless migration experience.

For example, migrating to Mailtrap from SendGrid couldn’t be more seamless, since the former provides you with:

• A breakdown of the key differences between the two platforms
• A comparison chart with key terms so you can get adjusted to new terminology  
• A step-by-step flow for migration you can follow all the way from signing up to sending your first emails after the transition
• Various documentation and video tutorials to help you along each step, including detailed API documentation, help center articles, and more.
• ActionMailer Balancer that smoothens out the migration process even further by proportionally distributing the email-sending load between two different sending services. 
• To top it all off, you can get in touch with Mailtrap’s customer support and deliverability experts who will provide you with any additional guidance you need.

Ease-of-use

Once you successfully migrate to your SendGrid alternative, you’ll likely want to get down to business straight away, so my goal was to choose platforms that have:

• Intuitive user interfaces
• Clear navigation between features
• Detailed documentation
• Attentive customer support 

Customer experience

Contrary to user experience, examining customer experience was probably one of the most interesting parts of reviewing all the SendGrid alternatives—mainly because it involved browsing social media pages for customer testimonials.

There are also a few peer-to-peer review websites I like to check out as well, such as G2 or Capterra.

By browsing these, I get insight into what I can expect when it comes to specific aspects of the platforms, such as performance, support, and overall satisfaction of the user base. This feedback is crucial since, unlike marketing materials, it’s honest and comes from users, satisfied or dissatisfied.

For instance, there are platforms I won’t be naming that boast about having the best customer support in the industry, but a quick look at user reviews tells a different story. Slow response times, unhelpful agents, and unresolved blockers are just some of the most common complaints that contradict their advertised claims.

Point of the story: don’t trust the fancy award badges you see on platforms’ websites. Instead, trust the customer base. Now, let’s get down to business!

Best SendGrid alternative: Mailtrap Email Delivery Platform

G2: 4.8 🌟 Capterra: 4.8 🌟

Mailtrap is an email delivery platform designed to drive your revenue. It’s great for dev, and marketing teams who wish to send campaigns, mass, and transactional emails. The platform has high deliverability rates by design, meaning your emails will land in inboxes regardless of the pricing plan you choose.

Speaking of deliverability, here are the results of the email deliverability tests we ran:

Email service provider	Email placement result
Mailtrap	Inbox: 78.8% Tabs: 4.8% Spam: 14.4% Missing: 2.0%
SendGrid	Inbox: 61.0% Tabs: 1.0% Spam: 17.1% Missing: 20.9%

Mailtrap and SendGrid comparison

Compared to SendGrid, Mailtrap offers both the SMTP/API service and its Email Marketing Suite at a single plan, which is one of the reasons it’s great for both developers and marketers. Essentially, you’re getting everything you have with SendGrid, only a more affordable all-in-one solution.

Another key difference is that with Mailtrap Email Testing, you can test 5,000 emails for $14.99/month, whereas you can only test 30 emails for $18.00 with SendGrid. And if you run out of the credits that come in 30, 60, and 100 packages, you can only purchase 100 additional credits for $40.00. So, you do the math. 

Feature	Mailtrap	SendGrid
SMTP relay	✅	✅
Web API (RESTful)	✅	✅
Domain authentication	DKIM, SPF, DMARC	DKIM, SPF, DMARC
Dedicated IPs	Yes	Yes
In-depth analytics	✅	✅
Access to deliverability experts	For everyone, for free	For paid plans only
Affordable testing	✅	❌
Email marketing suite	✅	✅
Email validation	❌	✅
Event webhooks	✅	✅
Email marketing features	✅	✅
Types of emails	Transactional Marketing Bulk (e.g. product updates)	Transactional Marketing
Integrations	Node.js Ruby PHP Python Elixir	Java Python Node.js PHP Ruby C# Go

Pricing 

Free plan: Yes (Testing: 100 emails per month, Sending: 1,000 emails per month and up to 100 contacts)

Sending plans, which come with the Email Marketing Suite start at $15 for 10,000 emails per month and 5,000 contacts. There are 4 different tiers for different business scenarios and use cases:

Plan	Monthly cost	Email limit	Contacts	Key features
Free	$0	Up to 1,000 emails	Up to 100 contacts	SMTP relay, email API,  drag-and-drop editor, webhooks
Basic	From $15	10,000+ emails	Up to 50,000 contacts	Email logs (5 days),  body retention,  click-rate tracking,  HTTPS link branding
Business	From $85	100,000+ emails	Up to 750,000 contacts	Email logs (15 days),  dedicated IP,  auto warm-up
Enterprise	From $750	1,500,000 emails	Up to 5,000,000 contacts	All of the above,  priority support, and 30 days email log retention
Custom	Custom	From 1,500,000	Unlimited	All of the above

As for Email Testing plans, the prices range from $14.00 for 5,000 emails per month to 10,000,000 emails per month for $399,99, depending on the plan you choose.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Email Testing Team Plan is free for Open Source non-profit organizations or educational institutions.

For more details, please consult the official Mailtrap pricing page.

Pros

• Separate sending streams
• Dedicated IPs
• In-depth analytics
• Up to 60 days of email logs
• Separate dashboards for major email providers
• Event webhooks
• 24/7 customer support
• Email Marketing Suite that includes:
  • Drag and drop email builder
  • Email templates
  • Campaign scheduling
  • In-built AI for generating images and text
  • And more
• Sandbox for safe email testing

Cons

• Automation is available only via email API; a workflow builder is coming soon
• The free plan doesn’t include a dedicated IP address or SSO

Customer experience

I was happy to see that people praise Mailtrap both on Reddit and Twitter (X). Some praise its straightforward setup, others its seamless verification process.

Mailgun

G2: 4.2 🌟 Capterra: 4.3 🌟

Mailgun is a transactional email delivery service designed for tech-savvy users who want to add simple email-sending functionality to their apps. It doesn’t come with many extra features, but its parent company, Sinch, offers a variety of messaging services.

In our deliverability tests, Mailgun has delivered 11.4% more emails to the recipients’ inboxes. What’s more, only 1% of its emails went missing. Albeit, 23.8% went to spam. Check it out: 

Email service provider	Email placement result
Mailgun	Inbox: 71.4% Tabs: 3.8% Spam: 23.8% Missing: 1.0%
SendGrid	Inbox: 61.0% Tabs: 1.0% Spam: 17.1% Missing: 20.9%

How is Mailgun different from SendGrid?

The biggest difference between Mailgun and SendGrid is that the former doesn’t offer any email marketing features like campaign sending. However, you can use Mailjet, a platform from the same parent company as Mailgun, that offers a plethora of email marketing features.

It’s also important to note that Mailgun is slightly more expensive than SendGrid. However, it offers more features than SendGrid, especially at lower-tier plans.

Lastly, another feature that’s a bit different between the two is email validation. With Mailgun, you can validate your emails via the user interface, whereas with SendGrid you need to use the API.

Feature	Mailgun	SendGrid
SMTP relay	✅	✅
Web API (RESTful)	✅	✅
Dedicated IPs	✅	✅
Isolated sending domains	✅	❌
Authentication	SPF, DKIM, DMARC	SPF, DKIM, DMARC
3rd party plugins	❌	✅
Email testing	✅	✅
Sink domain	❌	✅
Link validation	❌	✅
Email marketing suite	❌	✅
Email validation	✅ Via user interface	⚠️ Via API
In-depth analytics	✅	✅
Email marketing features	✅	✅
Types of emails	Transactional Marketing	Transactional Marketing
Integrations	Node.js Go PHP Java Ruby	Java Python Node.js PHP Ruby C# Go

Pricing 

Free plan: Yes (100 emails/per day)

When it comes to its email-sending solutions (SMTP and API), Mailgun offers two scalable pricing plans and one custom plan. 

Plan	Monthly cost	Email limit	Key features
Foundation	$35/month	50,000 emails/month	APIs, SMTP relay, tracking,  analytics,  5-day log retention,  ticket support
Scale	$90/month	100,000 emails/month	Includes Foundation tier features,  30-day log retention,  and dedicated IPs
Enterprise	Custom	2,500,000+ emails/month	Includes Scale tier features,  dedicated support,  and proactive account monitoring

However, if you want to test your emails with Mailgun, you’ll have to choose one of the three Optimize Pricing plans. These provide you with email address validations, placement tests, email previews, and integrations with tools like Google Postmaster.

For more details, please consult the official Mailgun pricing page.

Pros 

• SMTP relay and email API
• Isolated sending domains
• Send-time optimization
• Dynamic template editor
• Email analytics
• Email validation
• Inbound email routing
• Flexible pricing plans
• Reliable customer support

Cons

• Can be complex for non-advanced users
• No email marketing features
• Dedicated IPs available only on higher-tier plans

Customer experience

Even though it faced some issues with Yahoo in 2024, Mailgun still gets a lot of praise online. Some praise it for its pricing:

Whilst others like the fact that they can handle their transactional sending in one place:

Amazon SES

G2: 4.3 🌟 Capterra: 4.7 🌟

Amazon SES is a cloud-based email sending service for businesses on a budget who want to rely on Amazon infrastructure. This makes it quite reliable for sending a large amount of both transactional and bulk emails.

In our email deliverability tests, Amazon SES had 16.1% higher inbox placement than SendGrid. And similarly to Mailgun, it also had only 1% of its sent emails missing.

Email service provider	Email placement result
Amazon SES	Inbox: 77.1% Tabs: 1.9% Spam: 20.0% Missing: 1.0%
SendGrid	Inbox: 61.0% Tabs: 1.0% Spam: 17.1% Missing: 20.9%

How is Amazon SES different from SendGrid?

One of the key differences between Amazon SES and SendGrid is that the former is quite difficult to set up. It’s geared for developers, so it’s not a service you can set up in several clicks, as you can access it through AWS Management Console, AWS SDKs, or the SMTP and API interfaces.

Additionally, you can contact its customer support only via tickets, so if you’re facing a blocker, you’ll have to wait for a while. 

Last but not least, the analytics Amazon SES provides are lackluster compared to SendGrid, to say the least. So, you’ll have to leverage other tools to monitor the performance of your emails if you decide to use it.

Feature	Amazon SES	SendGrid
SMTP relay	✅	✅
Email APIs	✅	✅
Email analytics	Limited	✅
Dedicated IPs	✅	✅
Multiple sending domains	✅	✅
List management	Only via SES API	✅
Scheduled sending	❌	✅
Email validation	✅	❌
Email testing	Limited	✅
Email marketing features	❌	✅
Email types	Transactional Marketing	Transactional Marketing
Integrations	Java .NET PHP Python Ruby Go	Java Python Node.js PHP Ruby C# Go

Also, as you might have noticed from the table above, I’ve put ‘Limited’ for Amazon SES’ email testing. The reason behind this is that you need to use Amazon SES SMTP or API interface to test your emails + you don’t get the advanced but key features like HTML and spam check.

Pricing 

Free plan: Yes (3,000 emails/month during the first year)

Compared to other services on this list, and in the industry in general, Amazon SES has quite a unique, pay-as-you-go, pricing model. Namely, you get to pay per one of its services you plan on using.

See the table for more details:

Service type	Price	Additional charges
Email sending	$0.10 per 1,000 emails	$0.12 per GB of attachments sent
Email receiving	$0.10 per 1,000 emails	$0.09 per 1,000 incoming mail chunks
Global endpoints	$0.03 per 1,000 emails	Charged on top of base sending price
Open ingress endpoint	$50 per month per endpoint	N/A
Email processing	$0.15 per 1,000 emails	$0.09 per 1,000 incoming mail chunks
Email archiving	$2 per GB ingested	$0.19 per GB per month for storing/searching the archive
Amazon Connect	$0.05 per email	N/A
Dedicated IPs – Standard	$24.95 per month per IP	N/A
Dedicated IPs – Managed	$15 per month per account	$0.08/1,000 emails (0-10M emails), decreasing at higher volumes
Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP)	$24.95 per month per IP	Minimum 256 IPs required (starting at $6,387.20/month)
Virtual deliverability manager	$0.07/1,000 emails (0-10M)	Price decreases with higher volume, plus $0.0005/1,000 queries

For more details, please consult the official Amazon SES pricing page.

Pros

• Cost-effective pricing
• Customizable pricing model
• Generous free plan
• Rich API documentation
• Easily scalable
• Reputable IPs
• Stable infrastructure

Cons 

• Limited email analytics
• No email template builder
• Lackluster email testing 

Customer experience

I’ve found that Amazon SES is quite loved in the online developer community, regardless of whether I looked at Capterra, G2, or X. 

Mailchimp

G2: 4.4 🌟 Capterra: 4.5 🌟

Mailchimp is an email marketing solution for individuals looking to get their campaigns off the ground or add basic email-sending functionality to their apps via API.

With Mailchimp, you can also launch email campaigns relatively quickly, create landing pages and forms, perform A/B testing, and a bit more.

How is Mailchimp different from SendGrid?

At first sight, Mailchimp and SendGrid are pretty much similar. But, if you look deeper, you’ll notice that Mailchimp has a bit more advanced analytics, a better selection of templates, A/B testing, and a few other features like SMS support.

Essentially, if you’re looking to switch to an email marketing platform, Mailchimp might be one of your better bets. But if you need an SMTP from a dedicated transactional email service, you’re better off looking somewhere else.

Feature	Mailchimp	SendGrid
SMTP relay	❌	✅
Email APIs	✅	✅
Dedicated IPs	✅	✅
Authentication	DKIM, SPF	DKIM, SPF, DMARC
Email templates	Better selection	Basic selection
A/B testing	✅ More advanced	✅ Limited to subject lines
In-depth analytics	✅ More advanced	✅
Subscription management	✅	❌
Email validation	❌	✅
SMS support	✅	❌
Email marketing features	✅	✅
Types of emails	Marketing	Transactional Marketing
Integrations	RESTful API	Java Python Node.js PHP Ruby C# Go

Pricing 

Free trial: Yes (1,000 emails/month)

Although it’s on a bit pricier side when compared to some of its competitors from this list, Mailchimp at least has your typical pricing plan. Meaning: several tiers you can choose from and a slider for the email amount you want to send or contacts you want to have.

Plan	Monthly Cost	Email Limit	Contacts	Key features
Free	$0	Up to 1,000	Up to 500	Basic segmentation, audience dashboard, basic templates, content studio
Essentials	From $13	10X contacts	Up to 500	Role based access, limited analytics, role-based access
Standard	From $20	12X contacts	Up to 500	Generative AI features, custom templates, priority customer support, drip campaigns
Premium	From $350	15X contacts	10,000 contacts	All of the above + phone support

For more details, please consult the official Mailchimp pricing page.

Pros

• User-friendly drag-and-drop editor
• Marketing automation templates
• AI email writer
• Stable infrastructure
• SMS support
• A/B testing and analytics

Cons

• More expensive than its competitors, especially at the Premium tier
• Reports of unresponsive customer support, which is also not available with the free plan

Brevo

G2: 4.5 🌟 Capterra: 4.6 🌟

Brevo, formerly known as SendinBlue, is a five-in-one platform that offers both transactional and marketing email solutions. So, with it, you can either send user-triggered transactional or marketing emails—it’s completely up to you.

However, due to its integrations and email marketing automations, I’d say that Brevo is best geared toward eCommerce users. At least, it’s the tool I’d use if I’d owned an online store. And thanks to its generous free plan, it can be used by small businesses who want to kickstart their email campaigns.

How is Brevo different from SendGrid?

The most noticeable difference between Brevo and SendGrid is that the former offers more integrations, especially with CRM platforms. So if you’re into that, Brevo might be the best alternative on this list for you.

Similarly to Mailchimp, Brevo offers SMS marketing and has one of the best automation editors that I’ve ever used, and I’ve tried pretty much every editor out there. However, its analytics are a tad bit limited compared to other services on this list.

Feature	Brevo	SendGrid
SMTP relay	✅	✅
Email API	✅	✅
Dedicated IPs	✅	✅
Email validation	❌	✅
Scheduled sending	✅	✅
Email analytics	Limited	In-depth
SMS marketing	✅	❌
Automation editor	✅	❌
Email marketing features	✅	✅
Types of emails	Transactional Marketing	Transactional Marketing
Integrations	C# Go Java Node JS PHP Python Ruby TypeScript node	Java Python Node JS PHP Ruby C# Go

Pricing 

Free plan: Yes (300 emails/day)

Brevo has 4 suites with different pricing models, but since you’re interested in email-sending, we’ll take a look at its Marketing Platform plans:

Plan	Monthly Cost	Email Limit	Contacts	Key features
Free	$0	300 per day	500	Automation templates, API/SMTP, webhooks, drag and drop editor
Starter	$9	From 5000/month	Up to 500	Basic reporting and analytics, 24/7 email support
Business	$18	From 5000/month	500, 1,500, or 500,000	A/B testing, advanced statistics, phone support
Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Unlimited	Tailored onboarding, priority support, advanced integrations

For more details, please consult the official Brevo pricing page.

Pros

• Super intuitive interface
• Easy-to-use workflow editor
• A great variety of templates
• Plethora of useful integrations
• Generous sending limit
• Responsive customer support

Cons

• No built-in testing solution
• Barebones analytics

Customer experience

Brevo is doing quite well on all review platforms I’ve researched and has a variety of feedback. Some users like the fact that you can handle both your marketing and transactional emails via a single platform:

While others seem to enjoy the platform, although they found its documentation lacking:

Postmark

G2: 4.6 🌟 Capterra: 4.8 🌟

Postmark is a simple email service that doesn’t offer any email marketing features but provides a reliable email API and SMTP service. This makes it best for developers who want to focus on deliverability and email tracking. However, if you want to send marketing emails, you can use ActiveCampaign, a platform that owns Postmark and offers a plethora of email marketing features.

In our deliverability tests, Postmark was one of the best performers and had 22.3% better inbox placement than SendGrid. What’s more, Postmark also had a significantly smaller amount of missing emails compared to SendGrid.

Email service provider	Email placement result
Postmark	Inbox: 83.3% Tabs: 1.0% Spam: 14.3% Missing: 0.9%
SendGrid	Inbox: 61.0% Tabs: 1.0% Spam: 17.1% Missing: 20.9%

How is Postmark different from SendGrid?

The biggest difference between the two is that Postmark is geared towards developers since it doesn’t offer any email marketing features, unlike SendGrid. With Postmark, you can only send transactional, user-triggered emails like password resets and address verifications.

Postmark’s email API is also more developer-friendly than SendGrid’s and has a more minimal setup than SendGrid, although the latter has more configuration options and is more versatile.

Next, I have to mention that Postmark’s customer support is the same for all plans, whereas SendGrid’s premium support is available only for higher-tier ones. Oh, and Postmark retains its email logs for up to 45 days, compared to SendGrid’s 30.

Feature	Postmark	SendGrid
SMTP relay	✅	✅
Email APIs	✅	✅
Email logs	Up to 45 days	Up to 30 days
Authentication	DKIM, SPF, DMARC	DKIM, SPF, DMARC
Managed shared IPs	✅	❌
Dedicated IPs	✅	✅
In-depth analytics	❌ Only via API	✅
Email validation	✅	✅
Webhooks	✅	✅
Email marketing features	❌	✅
Types of emails	Transactional	Transactional Marketing
Integrations	.NET Java Node.js PHP Ruby Go Elixir	Java Python Node.js PHP Ruby C# Go

Pricing 

Free plan: 100 emails/month

Having only 3 different tiers and a slider for selecting the number of emails you want to send and receive each month, Postmark doesn’t seem to beat around the bush with its pricing model. 

Plan	Monthly cost	Email limit	Key features
Basic	From $15,00	10,000+	Up to 4 users,  SMTP & Rest API,  Up to 5 servers and domains,  Email templates
Pro	From $60,50	50,000+	Up to 6 users,  Up to 30 streams,  Up to 10 signature domains,  All event webhooks,  Stats & open/link,  tracking APIs
Platform	From $138,00	125,000+	Unlimited users,  Unlimited servers,  Unlimited streams,  Unlimited signature domains,  All event webhooks

Postmark also offers optional add-ons, which include dedicated IPs ($50/month per IP), custom activity retention ($5/month), DMARC monitoring ($14/month per domain).

For more details, please consult the official Postmark pricing page.

Pros 

• No-frill approach to sending
• High deliverability rates
• User-friendly interface
• Wide range of analytics
• Real-time email delivery tracking
• Message streams for categorizing emails
• Simple pricing plans
• Customizable templates

Cons

• Dedicated IP is a bit more expensive than the competition
• Lacks basic email marketing features (e.g., segmentation, A/B testing, etc.) 
• Limited analytics, although you can retrieve some metrics via Stats API 

Customer experience

When it comes to customer experience and Postmark, I didn’t have to look far since the platform displays positive customer reviews on its homepage. 

Moreover, people seem to show Postmark love even on social media. Some praise its easy integration, while some have even found it a great SendGrid alternative!

Wrapping up

And that’s that folks!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it, and I hope it painted you a clearer picture of the best SendGrid alternatives out there.

Keep in mind that all of the platforms on the list have a free plan, so be sure to check them out, send some emails, and see which one is the perfect fit for your business. 

Further reading:

• Best SMTP Services for Email Marketing
• Best Free Email Marketing Services
• B2B Email Marketing Software
• Email Marketing Software for Startups