SendGrid To Mailtrap:
A Migration Guide

Key Differences Between SendGrid and Mailtrap

1. Depending on the pricing plan, Mailtrap stores emails in the Email Logs for up to 60 days. Email content and historical data is stored and accessible between 3 and 15 days without any additional fees.
2. You can request annual billing/plan with Mailtrap, not only monthly-billed plans.
3. Mailtrap offers Email Testing. This is a separate product to inspect HTML/CSS, spam scores, etc. and debug emails in staging, dev, and QA environments before sending them to recipients.
4. Mailtrap doesn’t have the scheduled for later email sending option.

Terminology comparison

General step-by-step flow for migration

Getting started

To start sending emails with Mailtrap, you only need to create an account, then register, and verify your domain. Domain setup and verification is done from the Sending Domains menu.

Domain verification

• After you create an account and add your sending domain, it will take up to two business days to go through the security check.
• Make sure not to make any add-ons, fixes, and other alterations during the domain verification time since it could be seen as suspicious behavior.
• Until the domain is verified, the throughput of sending is limited to 50 emails per hour to prevent abusing the system with spam activities. Learn more about it in our Sending Limits article.
• The sending limits could be lifted by contacting the Mailtrap support team. In this case, you will have to provide answers to a number of questions to prove the trustworthiness and authority of your sending domain.

Sending with Mailtrap SMTP

SMTP Endpoints

live.smtp.mailtrap.io bulk.smtp.mailtrap.io	smtp.sendgrid.net

SMTP Ports

Port	Function	Mailtrap support	SendGrid support
587	recommended for encrypted TLS SMTP connection
25	May be problematic due to blocking by some mailbox providers to avoid abuse
2525	For unencrypted/TLS
465	For SSL SMTP connection

SMTP Configuration

After signing up and verifying your sending domain, select that domain and go to the SMTP/API Settings tab. Then, choose Transactional or Bulk Stream depending on the type of emails you’d like to send.

Copy and paste the SMTP credentials (for the stream you chose) into your app.

Note: Turning TLS on is mandatory as mentioned in the credentials.

Sending with Mailtrap API

Mailtrap API tokens

When you create a domain, a token is automatically created and named based on the following formula: [domain name] + [token] + [token ID]. Add or remove token permissions in the API Tokens menu under Settings.

Learn more on how to manage API tokens in our guide.

API Mapping

API type	Mailtrap	SendGrid
Email sending	Send email	Mail
User management	User management	Teammates
Email Testing	Email Testing API

API Libraries

At the moment there are five libraries available at Mailtrap.

API Authentication

We use Bearer authentication. Pass the API token into the code under the header Authorization.

Permissions/User management

You can add users to your account and manage their permissions if you are signed up for the Business price plan or higher. To add users, and assign and edit their permissions, click on the User Management menu under Settings, then the three dots on the right.

Note that a user needs Admin permissions to get authenticated and send emails via API.

Read more about managing users permissions

ActionMailer Balancer for smooth migration

For Ruby on Rails applications, Mailtrap offers ActionMailer Balancer that makes the migration smooth. ActionMailer extension allows proportionally distributing the email sending load between two different sending services and mitigating the sending risks.

After you install the Balancer to your application, and do some minor configurations, it will extend the sending method of ActionMailer.

For more detailed info on the boilerplate and use in development, read the Mailtrap ActionMailer Balancer Github page.