SendGrid is a popular email marketing platform used by businesses to create, send, and track email campaigns. However, the solution may not be the best fit for every company’s needs or budget.
This article aims to showcase some of the top SendGrid alternatives that can enable businesses to save money, maximize deliverability, simplify creation processes, target more effectively, drive higher engagement, and receive specialized support.
Brevo
Brevo is equipped with various tools to help you handle all your email marketing requirements
Omnisend
If you're looking for an eCommerce email marketing solution - Omnisend is a great choice
HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the best email marketing options for email automation integration support
ActiveCampaign
If you want to automate marketing workflows with ease and efficiency, choose ActiveCampaign
AWeber
AWeber is an ideal choice if you're looking for the best email deliverability metrics out there
1. Brevo
Best Overall Sendgrid Alternative (Free, then $25/Month)
Brevo is a relative newcomer to the email marketing space that offers an intuitive drag-and-drop editor, automated welcome campaigns, and advanced analytics. Key features that attract users include customizable templates, contact management tools, A/B testing, and integration with major CRM, e-commerce, and payment platforms.
What makes Brevo a better alternative than SendGrid?
- More affordable pricing tiers start at just $15 per month for up to 500 subscribers compared to SendGrid’s higher minimum costs.
- Easier to create professional emails without coding knowledge through the drag-and-drop editor focused on simplicity.
- Better inbox placement and delivery rates are ensured through automatic and instant warm-up of dedicated IP addresses.
- More effective customer segmentation with custom tags and granular behavioral filtering options in the platform.
- Superior automation capabilities for sending timely, relevant follow-ups tailored to contact activity.
The biggest advantages of Brevo are the lower costs, intuitive interface, improved deliverability guarantees, flexible contact management, and robust automation tools that outperform SendGrid’s offerings – especially for small or new email marketers.
2. Omnisend
Best for E-Commerce Brands (Free, Then $16/Month)
Omnisend is an email and SMS marketing platform built specifically for e-commerce brands. It enables targeted campaigns based on customer behavior and product attributes through customizable filters and segments.
What makes Omnisend a better alternative than SendGrid?
- Lower-cost monthly plans starting at $9 to manage small subscriber lists.
- Automated post-purchase follow-up flows with personalized product recommendations.
- Easy integration with all major shopping carts and affiliate platforms.
- Superior analytics focused on revenue impact rather than just open-and-click rates.
- Responsive, hands-on setup support and ongoing customer service included.
Shopify stores, online brands, and retailers receive more tailored functionality from Omnisend centered on driving repeat purchases and increasing customer lifetime value compared to SendGrid.
3. HubSpot
Best for Marketing Automation Integration (Free, Then $20/Month)
HubSpot offers an all-in-one inbound marketing, sales, and CRM platform with powerful email capabilities built-in. Key features include lead scoring, email sequencing, landing page, and form builders, integrated calling, and in-depth analytics.
What makes HubSpot a better alternative than SendGrid?
- Unified solution to capture, analyze, segment, engage, and convert leads from one dashboard.
- Smart content optimization and personalization tools leverage customer data.
- Superior deliverability with automatic IP warming and domain authentication like SPF/DKIM.
- Detailed reports on audience engagement to fine-tune lead nurturing performance.
- Ongoing training, implementation guidance, and technical support included.
By bringing together email, landing pages, forms, workflows, and CRM in one robust system instead of distinct tools, HubSpot empowers businesses to create more targeted, effective marketing and sales processes to foster growth.
4. ActiveCampaign
Best for Automating Marketing Workflows ($29/Month)
ActiveCampaign specializes in advanced email marketing automation paired with built-in sales and CRM capabilities. Key features include drip campaigns, site tracking, SMS marketing, landing pages, and sales pipeline views.
What makes ActiveCampaign a better alternative than SendGrid?
- More affordable monthly pricing, starting at $9 for 500 contacts.
- Superior automation for sending emails based on site/sales activity.
- Deep integration with webinar, membership, e-commerce, and payment platforms.
- Customizable real-time sales and lead tracking right inside the platform.
- A dedicated account manager provides onboarding and ongoing optimization.
Unlike SendGrid’s sole email abilities, ActiveCampaign enables small businesses to automate complete marketing workflows across channels within one unified platform for lower cost.
5. AWeber
Best for Email Deliverability (Free, Then $12.50/Month)
As an industry leader, AWeber has over 25 years of proven email marketing experience and deep ISP relationships that ensure superior deliverability. Robust features include drip campaigns, broadcast messaging, integrated shopping carts, and surveys, plus automated social media posting.
What makes AWeber a better alternative than SendGrid?
- More affordable subscription plans based on total subscriber count.
- More mature email technology for improved inbox rates over competitors.
- Allows third-party developers and apps to extend its core capabilities.
- Tailored onboarding and ongoing optimization from personal account strategists.
- End-to-end email encryption ensures complete and secure deliverability.
AWeber’s extensive expertise across consumer-based companies means companies see better results at lower costs when choosing this alternative over platforms lacking considerable industry experience like SendGrid.
6. MailerLite
Best for Solopreneurs and Small Teams (Free, Then $10/Month)
MailerLite prioritizes an easy-to-use interface and streamlined feature set of email marketing must-haves for smaller audiences. Core capabilities include customizable templates, sign-up forms, contact management, drag-and-drop builder, automation triggers, and basic analytics reporting.
What makes MailerLite a better alternative than SendGrid?
- More affordable entry-level pricing at $10/month for 1,000 subscribers.
- Superior ease of use with a simple, intuitive dashboard perfect for non-technical users.
- Better deliverability through simple mail transfer protocol and automatic warm-up and dedicated IP addresses to protect sender reputation.
- Hands-on onboarding from email marketing experts to optimize initial setup.
- A lightweight interface enables speedy creation without unnecessary complexity.
For solopreneurs and early-stage startups, this email delivery service provides an easy-to-start yet still robust email solution focused purely on core essentials over SendGrid’s learning curve and clunkier interface.
7. Campaigner
Best for Email Customization ($59/Month)
Campaigner enables large marketing teams to create and manage highly sophisticated, personalized email campaigns with advanced workflows, dynamic content, and custom coding capabilities.
What makes Campaigner a better alternative than SendGrid?
- Scales to support reliable email delivery to tens of millions of contacts with enterprise-grade deliverability.
- Customizable modules allow businesses to extend functionality as desired.
- Automates complex, multi-step campaigns tailored to each subscriber segment.
- Tracks detailed engagement metrics across channels to hone large-scale initiatives.
- Dedicated IP addresses are properly warmed up for protection from blacklisting.
For segmenting millions of contacts into targeted email journeys, Campaigner surpasses SendGrid through superior customization for the granular personalization that large corporations require.
8. BigMailer
Best for High-Volume Senders (Free, Then $5/Month)
With customized enterprise-grade plans, BigMailer stands out as an email service purpose-built for extremely large email programs sending upwards of 100 million messages per month.
BigMailer’s robust dedicated servers and IP infrastructure provide unmatched delivery speed and inbox placement rates for mammoth subscriber lists. Compliance monitoring protects send reputation while granular analytics into every send provides real-time actionable optimization insights.
What makes BigMailer a better alternative than SendGrid?
- Scales easily to billions of monthly emails with predictive growth modeling tools.
- Ensures maximum uptime and delivery speed through geo-redundant data centers.
- Compliance experts coach senders to stay within regulations and best practices.
- Visibility into individual IP and sender domain performance for precise troubleshooting.
- Hands-on management including IT, deliverability consultants, and account reps.
While BigMailer costs more than SendGrid, for mega-scale email programs delivering hundreds of millions of emails, BigMailer’s reliability, compliance, analytics, infrastructure, and dedicated support team surpass anything SendGrid offers. Their specialized solution gives the biggest email senders the visibility and confidence needed to manage massive subscriber engagement month after month.
9. Constant Contact
Best for Small Retailers (Free Trial, Then $12/Month)
Constant Contact sends email campaigns and provides a full suite of multi-channel marketing tools specifically for small e-commerce businesses selling in-store and online.
Capabilities go far beyond SendGrid’s sole email offerings to empower retailers to unify their in-person and digital commerce through one platform. Store owners can create coupons, promote products, publish listings, track inventory, sync sales data, collect reviews, and more to turn casual shoppers into loyal repeat customers.
What makes Constant Contact a better alternative than SendGrid?
- Retail plans start at $20/month with free branded templates for establishing a shop aesthetic.
- Automatically segments and nurtures customers based on purchase history across touchpoints.
- Built-in coupon creator, product promotion tools, and loyalty programs to incentivize repeat purchases.
- Real-time inventory syncing across online and brick-and-mortar locations with POS integration.
- Provides deep visibility into customer lifetime value and sales performance by traffic channel.
Constant Contact goes beyond basic email into multi-channel automation to help retailers market products, fulfill orders, understand shopper behavior, and optimize promotions for driving growth consistently across in-person and digital storefronts better than SendGrid can.
10. Mailchimp
Best for Small Business Owners (Free, Then $10/Month)
Trusted by over 13 million users, Mailchimp is the world’s most widely-used email marketing platform. It has earned a sterling reputation for its easy-to-master interface and generous free-tier catering to small audiences.
Beyond an intuitive drag-and-drop builder and highly customizable templates, Mailchimp provides excellent deliverability to safeguard the sender’s reputation. Automation features help tailor the customer journey while ecommerce integrations make it simple for online shops to reach buyers. Deep analytics offer insight to optimize campaigns for results.
What makes Mailchimp a better alternative than SendGrid?
- The free tier allows up to 2000 contacts and unlimited emails to seed a small email list building.
- Extremely user-friendly visual dashboard enabling beginners to create beautifully designed emails.
- Built-in education center of tutorials and starter guides to learn email marketing skills.
- One-click integrations with major ecommerce platforms including Shopify, WooCommerce, and Squarespace.
- A dedicated deliverability team committed to supporting sender domain reputations through whitelisting and warming IPs with ISPs.
For entrepreneurs and small shop owners wanting an easy-to-learn email marketing solution capable of driving business growth goals without complexity, Mailchimp outshines SendGrid on user experience, education, and deliverability protection for new email marketers.
11. GetResponse
Best for Mid-Market Companies (Free, Then $15.60/Month)
GetResponse empowers mid-sized businesses to drive predictable revenue by capturing more leads, nurturing them with personalized messaging, and converting them into customers.
Robust email marketing capabilities like segments and automation level up with landing pages, forms, scoring, live chat, SMS, and analytics under one roof instead of fragmented systems. Sales teams gain actionable visibility while marketing tracks engagement across channels and lifecycle stages to optimize the entire customer journey.
What makes GetResponse a better alternative than SendGrid?
- Captures leads from email, chat, SMS, landing page forms, and even offline data imports.
- Scores and routes every lead to correct sales reps or nurture tracks in real time.
- Automate multi-channel, multi-step journeys tailored to hundreds of customer segments.
- Optimize messaging at each buyer stage based on historical performance data.
- Unified metrics provide complete visibility from lead to customer across departments.
With GetResponse, rather than basic siloed email functions, mid-sized companies gain deep behavioral customer intelligence and comprehensive automation across channels and the entire revenue cycle in one place – capabilities far greater than SendGrid alone can match.
12. Benchmark Email
Best for Rapidly Scaling Companies (Free Plan, Then $13/Month)
Benchmark Email specializes in high-touch educational services for emerging e-commerce brands rather than self-service tools alone. Their focus lies in designing custom IPs and sending strategies aligned to client growth and engagement goals through hands-on collaboration.
After launching, Benchmark’s deliverability engineers monitor and optimize ecosystem health including managing IP warming and domain authentication. Further accountability comes through quarterly account performance reviews to assess what’s working and optimize future initiatives to realize goals.
What makes Benchmark Email a better alternative than SendGrid?
- A dedicated onboarding manager guides email program launches based on the brand’s audience, products, and growth ambitions.
- Deliverability consultants architect multi-wave IP warmup strategies tailored to initial volumes and future projections.
- Ongoing monitoring of engagement metrics by subscriber segments and lifecycle stage to inform optimization.
- Quarterly account performance analysis includes delivery ecosystem checkups, recommendations, and goal setting.
- As growth accelerates, capacity planning and infrastructure evaluations ensure scalability.
For rapidly expanding mid-market brands, Benchmark Email’s high-touch educational approach backed by tailored solutions outpaces SendGrid’s largely self-service lack of customization and consultative delivery expertise.
1. Ease of Use
Ease of use should be a top priority when evaluating any technology for running email marketing campaigns. If the platform has an overly complex user interface with a steep learning curve, it will slow down email campaign creation and performance.
Specific areas of importance for an intuitive user experience include campaign builders that use drag-and-drop functionality to create emails using customizable templates. This removes the need to code messages and speeds up design work.
Automation workflows should also be visualized step-by-step without deep technical configuration requirements for user self-sufficiency and scalability over time.
Additionally, platform navigation should include tidy, logical menus instead of feature sprawl across the dashboard to minimize the time required to find critical functions. Contact management and list administration capabilities should make simplifying and segmenting large recipient lists easy through rules-based groupings.
Detailed onboarding checklists, online training courses, community forums, and knowledge bases must provide intuitive self-education options for independent troubleshooting before needing to submit external support tickets.
Using too complex of an email marketing system almost always backfires through user frustration, failure to send campaigns, and inability to optimize the tool’s capabilities. Selecting an intuitive interface with visual builders for core functions dramatically impacts long-term adoption and performance across client teams.
2. Design and Customization
A transactional email service provider must have on-brand, engaging email marketing content that uniquely represents company identity like all other customer communications channels. Without the ability to tailor templates or leverage both existing and new creative assets, generic messaging falls flat. Specific design and customization functionality to evaluate include:
Message templates need to offer a range of layouts and formats covering use cases from promotions to announcements while still providing ample space for branded elements. Preferably, modifying colors, fonts, imagery, content sections, call-to-action buttons, and more should be point-and-click simple using a drag-and-drop email builder.
The ability to export HTML files or common designs from other workflows empowers larger creative teams. Many stakeholders use preferred tools for content creation.
The ease of integrating customized assets like images, logos, and color schemes from outside sources makes room for existing branding investments instead of restrictive one-size-fits-all looks. Support for interactive content types raises engagement.
In terms of quality and breadth offered, some email solution design editors feel lackluster or outdated compared to modern expectations. Audit the galleries and flexibility before committing to ensure a rich canvas capable of representing unique brand identities comes supported out of the box.
Without proper design customization, even the most thoughtful marketing messages will miss their performance potential and risks damaging carefully crafted company images through disjointed experiences. Prioritize these needs from the start when selecting a service so you can optimize your marketing and transactional emails.
3. Blogging Tools
While SendGrid focuses solely on email functionality, many modern email marketing platforms integrate built-in blogging tools and content features that provide additional value. Specifically evaluating the incorporation of CMS publishing, SEO optimization, lead capture forms, integration with email campaigns, and engagement analytics is advised.
Natively creating informational and promotional posts that nurture subscribers and attract organic search traffic can bolster email efforts substantially.
For example, leveraging email content within blog posts boosts engagement while integrating sign-up forms on posts fosters list growth. Linking campaign assets like ebooks and webinars from relevant articles encourages readership and lead generation.
Reviewing the content site builder, custom domain capabilities, and whether basic on-page SEO controls exist ensures a company can shape an owned media presence optimized for driving traffic and subscriptions over time. Monitoring how many new site visitors, form fills, and assets are accessed from published posts gauges interest and informs future content efforts to maintain relevance.
With blogging and email marketing software working hand-in-hand together, an integrated content hub keeps customers engaged across self-owned channels while providing data to connect insights between consuming behaviors. Evaluating tools that allow coordinating initiatives in a combined platform is wise.
4. E-commerce Capabilities
For online retailers, seamlessly syncing email marketing services with their e-commerce store’s product catalogs, order data, and customer information is essential to coordinate post-purchase automation and cart abandonment re-targeting.
Having campaign templates and segmentation specifically tailored to map common retail scenarios such as abandoned carts, browse abandonment, post-purchase reviews, loyalty rewards, seasonal promotions and more demonstrates email specialization for driving store revenue.
Examining whether subscriber lists automatically update when new orders roll in or customers sign up via the store’s newsletter connects digital and physical systems to maintain clean centralized data. Further automation based on actions like items put in carts or wishlist triggers streamlines the launching of contextually relevant messages.
Finally, e-commerce reporting detailing performance metrics attributed to email campaigns such as sales influenced, average order value changes season-over-season, and total customer lifetime value growth over time framed against email initiatives provides accountability and optimization foresight.
With native support guiding retail email success, choosing a platform suited for this purpose avoids needing disjointed add-ons down the road. Inventorying must have integrated tools upfront to secure the foundation for revenue through subscriber engagement.
5. SEO Tools
While SendGrid itself does not offer SEO capabilities, many top email marketing platforms provide integrated SEO tools for optimizing campaigns for search visibility. Evaluating the inclusion of SEO planning templates, AI-powered topic research, content editor markup cues, slug recommendations, and performance tracking is key.
By determining the focus keywords and supporting terms for each campaign theme ahead of buildout, email marketers can strategically incorporate this SEO content within the copy, calls to action, and landing pages to boost organic visibility. AI assistance accelerates the exploration of reader intent and trending interests.
As scripts are composed in email editors, on-page markup reminders to utilize header tags, alt text, structured data, etc. ensure nothing gets missed for later indexing. Seeing how many template fields and custom modules allow SEO enhancements point to long-term growth capability.
Following sendout and engagement, monitoring open rates from organic searches along with clicks to linked landing pages gauges whether efforts are yielding an SEO return beyond direct email performance.
With CTRs from organic dwarfing social media, nurturing this channel in tandem with email drives findability and metrics while showcasing advanced digital sophistication vs dated broadcast-only systems.
6. Integrations
Email marketing cannot exist in a silo to drive growth effectively. It must connect with other systems powering operations from the CRM, e-commerce store, and marketing automation to the payment processor, web analytics, and customer support.
When selecting an email provider, assessing the native and third-party integrations offered ensures aligned data flows and coordination tools exist to execute multi-channel strategies from one dashboard without complex custom coding projects.
Specifically, core integrations like CRM and marketing automation simplify transferring subscriber data and campaign outcomes to extended platforms detailing lifecycle stage, activity metrics, and overall value segmentation.
E-commerce plugins instantly sync product catalogs with creative assets and order updates to trigger behavioral automation. Analytics and custom model connections pass email attribution and predictive intelligence.
Additionally, turnkey integrations from community app marketplaces enable adding niche functionality over time like reviews management, events promotion, appointment scheduling, form building etc to the ecosystem. Evaluating what pre-exits prevents gaps.
With leading solutions integrating 150+ common platforms spanning the martech stack, having ample connectivity secures flexibility minus extra costs as ambitions grow.
7. Analytics and Reporting
To continually optimize deliverability, relevance, and results from email campaigns, robust analytics and reporting are imperative. When comparing alternative providers, ensure in-depth tracking and custom reporting across key metrics exist beyond surface-level email sends and opens alone.
Specifically, assess analytics tied to clicks, conversions, unsubscribes, spam complaints, browse/cart abandonment re-targeting, attribution modeling, predicted lifetime value forecasting, churn risk alerts, and audience content consumption preferences. Advanced segmentation by factors like geolocation, purchase history, social activity, visit recency, and more strengthens insight depth.
Evaluate self-service custom reporting builder tools going past templates to fully own visualizing granular datasets for sharing insights across the business – beyond IT bottlenecks. Compare abilities to schedule and automate report delivery to affected departments for visibility sans manual repetition.
Overall, analytics tied purely to generic email performance hamstring the opportunity to connect efforts to wider business objectives, model the future, course-correct subscriber engagement issues preemptively, and showcase true ROI from the channel itself. The deeper the visibility, the better-armed everyone becomes.
8. Customer Support and Community
When relying on any martech across teams, prompt access to troubleshooting and best practices education is vital in the startup phase and over time. Comparing service inclusion, access methods, and available community knowledge strength between competing email providers informs the customer experience expected.
Review service level clarity. Are support hours and response methods defined? What channels provide quick assistance – phone, chat, web tickets, in-app messaging? Are strategic senior advisors appointed long-term or basic interaction with rotating general staff disrupting service continuity? Status pages detailing historical uptime also showcase reliability.
Examine the range of available support materials for self-resolve education before needing assistance. Beyond basics, do interactive courses with certification deepen platform and channel expertise over time? Do searchable knowledge bases offer answers an email away? Can users connect to share ideas highlighting customer maturity?
Inspect case studies and testimonials to confirm positive solutions experiences and insights are delivered consistently team-wide. Only by elevating capabilities internally through exceptional ongoing aid can any system fulfill its return promise in competitive digital experiences marketplaces. Evaluating these promises shows goodwill.
9. Pricing
When comparing the affordability of SendGrid against alternative email marketing platforms, assessing multiple angles beyond basic monthly fees per number of contacts is essential.
While entry-level rates may seem comparable at face value, tallying the total cost of ownership against present and future operational needs paints a complete fiscal picture. Consider contract lengths, feature-set restrictions, ancillary fees per emails sent/stored/imported, necessary add-on costs, and tools or special requirements included for free before deciding purely based on base plans.
Additionally, some solutions limit access to higher tier features like automation workflows unless upgrading packages. Others charge extra for dedicated IP addresses critical for protecting the sender’s reputation at higher volumes.
Benchmarking special rates for nonprofit groups is worthwhile. Factor in intrinsical scalability too – if fortifying foundational elements like deliverability necessitates splurging further down the line, initial perceptions get clouded.
While tempting to overweight base costs alone at first glance, enlarging the calculus across expected business scenarios informs a legitimate apples-to-apples comparative budgeting experience targeting the overlaps of pricing sustainability and intrinsic feature priorities. Dividing total yearly costs against the value culled clarifies return fairness.
10. Reviews and Reputation
While feature checklists showcase marketing functionality on paper, third-party validated social proof through online reviews and reputation benchmarks verifies real customer experiences beyond marketing fluff.
By examining ratings across evaluation hubs similar to G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius, impartial crowdsourced feedback flags recurring pain points, best use cases and overall platform satisfaction spanning multiple industries.
Sort beyond blanket star ratings into content themes and volume analyzing specific integration reliability complaints, customization constraints noted by creatives, suddenly discontinued essential features eroding enterprise reliance, degrading deliverability limiting audience reach, or compliance policy changes increasing costs unexpectedly.
Common threads over the years build factual patterns. Gauging average user sophistication across titles also contextualizes who stands benefiting most from adoption. Equally, case studies connect claimed strengths while expert-prepared reports study technical evaluations around deliverability, storage standards, and key performance deeper.
Without question, mixing analyst assessments against raw community experiences tests marketing promises, so reviewing research around SendGrid alternatives not only ensures feature-set alignment but also provides transparency into long-term platform stability beyond surface capabilities that passing trials alone prove over time through maturing digital priorities.
Summary and Top Picks
When evaluating alternatives to SendGrid for email marketing, several key considerations arise spanning ease of use, customization and design controls, built-in blogging and e-commerce capabilities, SEO tools, platform integrations, robust analytics and reporting, customer support options, pricing models, and validated reputation through reviews.
As this article outlined across 12 major providers, choices exist satisfying different specializations from simpler needs to more advanced use cases that each surpass SendGrid’s relatively basic standalone email toolkit based on unique business requirements.
The table below shows my top five SendGrid alternative recommendations based on common scenarios with the reasons they excel for those audiences:
Brevo
Brevo is equipped with various tools to help you handle all your email marketing requirements
Omnisend
If you're looking for an eCommerce email marketing solution - Omnisend is a great choice
HubSpot
HubSpot is one of the best email marketing options for email automation integration support
ActiveCampaign
If you want to automate marketing workflows with ease and efficiency, choose ActiveCampaign
AWeber
AWeber is an ideal choice if you're looking for the best email deliverability metrics out there