SendGrid

Pros

The best thing about using the SendGrid Email API was the performance measured in terms of email deliverability and server uptime.

The dashboard provides good insights with respect to number of emails sent, delivered and opened. Thus helps a great deal in improving marketing campaigns.

From the deployment point of view, the integration of SendGrid with the existing email service was quite easy and can be completed easily without great efforts.

Cons

As far as technical aspects are concerned, there is nothing which I don't like.

On the pricing front, would like to add my views. Currently, the pricing plans are available as Free (100 emails per day), Essentials and Pro. The Essentials plan starts from 14.95$ per month for upto 40,000 emails a month and the Pro starts at 89.95$ per month. These plans are good for small and medium size websites.

Would be good to see if a new Basic plan is introduced for a low starting price of 4.95$ per month and offering upto 10,000 emails a month. Such a plan would be highly suitable for extra small website applications who have a limited customer base.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to SendGrid

Pros

The code editor and how everything is optimized for coding allows for truly beautiful e-mail marketing campaigns. SendGrid can accommodate beautiful e-mail templates that were created in HTML/CSS, you just have to know how to code for it to be useful for you.

Cons

They do not have a way to graphically edit particularly easily like with MailChimp.

To make a good looking e-mail marketing campaign you must know how to code, there are not a lot of templates provided for you to edit or drag and drop. It was not intended as a tool if you would like to drag and drop.

On the upside this got us to learn how to code better.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing SendGrid

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to SendGrid

Pros

Very easy to create email templates, and integrate with your website. The tool handles really well bounces & spams. We've never had problems with it.

Cons

In the reporting, the unique open email seems to be based on events happening from devices. So if I open the same email from desktop and then from mobile, it will be 2 unique opens. I think this should be based on the actual email.

Pros

None. Our account was locked with no explanation before we could log in for the first time (please understand, we were banned before we could ever try the actual service) and there is no explanation given, and no way to contact the company.

Cons

Sendgrid automatically banned our account - WITHOUT us ever logging in. I put in an email address, signed up, and then received notification that they "cannot support your account at this time" and "Thank you for your interest in Twilio SendGrid, best of luck with your future endeavors." I want to be clear. There was no communication. There was no explanation. There was no avenue for appeal. There was only an automated response from a system, and then to contact support you have to "log in" - well I was never able to log in, not once. They gather your user count on sign up. We are a small company, of fewer than 10 users. I have to wonder whether my user base had been 10,000 instead whether we would've been able to at least talk to someone... To find out why?

Pros

The media center I run submits three political op-eds per week to about 1,300 newspapers in the US (and sometimes another 1,200 internationally). Sendgrid delivers those emails in a timely manner and keeps track of bounces, etc.

Cons

Setting up to use the API from a custom email address is a bit cumbersome.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to SendGrid