9 Best Sendgrid Alternatives: Bigger, Better, Cheaper? (2025)

Paul Newham 18 November 2024

SendGrid is a transactional email service provider that specialises in bulk sending. It’s trusted by some huge enterprises like Uber, Spotify and Airbnb. The kind of businesses that send a lot of customer emails.

But SendGrid is by no means the only bulk email service out there. And just because it’s right for Uber, doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

In this article, I’ve picked 9 SendGrid alternatives. For each, I’ll show what they do better than SendGrid and who they’re best suited for.

Why people look for a Sendgrid alternative

SendGrid runs SMTP servers. SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It provides reliable email delivery at high volumes. Sendgrid can be used for email marketing and for sending transactional emails like order confirmations, abandoned cart emails, and password reset mails. Find out more about SMTP or read our guide with the best free SMTP servers.

But there are also plenty of reasons why you might want to check out an alternative to SendGrid.

Cost, for one. SendGrid isn’t the cheapest SMTP option out there. 

It starts at $19.95, which lets you send up to 50k emails a month. Not too bad. But if you’re in a team, it’s per user. And you don’t get email validation, which checks you’re sending to legit email addresses. There is a free plan but limited to 100 emails a day. 

SendGrid’s email marketing platform isn’t the best out there. There is no way to automate campaigns until you sign up for the most expensive tier. Even then, they’re just basic drip campaigns. So there are plenty of reasons to look at SendGrid alternatives.

SendGrid Alternatives Overview

With all the reasons to look at SendGrid alternatives. Here’s a quick summary of what the 9 best have to offer.

The 9 Best SendGrid Alternatives in 2025

The 9 SendGrid alternatives below are different types of platforms. Some are SMTP servers. Some specialise in email marketing. Some cover both. But all are here because they beat SendGrid in one way or another.  Let’s dig into the details of each great SendGrid alternative. 

1. SMTP2GO – Best for Deliverability Reporting and Testing

SMTP2GO is a global email delivery service. It’s an SMTP bulk-sending service with extras, geared towards high deliverability.

There are lots of tricks and techniques for helping emails avoid junk folders. SMTP2GO does most of them. It monitors blocklists and ‘spam traps’, tools email clients use to ‘catch’ unsolicited sending.

It constantly monitors not only its own servers but all major email clients, too. If there are any issues, SMTP2GO takes care of them.

This means SMTP2GO can offer in-depth reporting. You can see what has been delivered, what has bounced, what has been tagged as spam and more for every email. Before you send, you can also check how your email looks in 40 different email clients. And if there is anything to do that increases your mail to pass spam filters.

On price, SMTP2GO beats SendGrid. It starts at $15 a month for 40,000 emails. There is a free plan with 1,000 emails per month.

Try SMTP2GO for free here

2. Brevo – Best for Free Email Marketing and Transactional Emails

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) is an excellent alternative to SendGrid based in Europe. Like SendGrid, it offers email marketing alongside an SMTP server. Brevo is a stronger option for email marketing campaigns. It’s got high-quality pre-made email templates plus a useful drag-and-drop editor. Automation for campaigns is far better compared to Sendgrid. You’re not limited to simple autoresponders. Conditional workflows make it easy to send emails triggered by contact behaviour.

Brevo’s SMTP server makes it very easy to start. Just a simple three-step process. You can also use the API for automated sending from your website. Once configured, Brevo’s SMTP server tracks all emails for delivery, opens, clicks etc. Find out more in our full Brevo review. 

Brevo pricing starts at $9 a month. That gives you 5,000 emails with 500 contacts. And Brevo is better value for bulk sending over 100,000 emails a month. Learn more about costs in our Brevo pricing guide.

Brevo also has a great free plan. You can send up to 300 emails a day to 100K contacts. All core transactional and email marketing features are included.

Get started with Brevo for free here

3. SMTP.com

SMTP.com is a SendGrid alternative that’s been around for 20+ years serving 100K+ businesses. It combines a cloud SMTP relay with an API. For developers, it promises simple and fast integration. Migration templates make switching to SMTP.com from another relay like SendGrid easy.

Send marketing and transactional emails. Like remarketing campaigns, win-back emails, email notifications, registration emails, order confirmations, status updates, and authentication emails. SMTP.com has a reputation defender that suppresses invalid email addresses before you send. This keeps your list healthy and your domain and IP reputation high. It’s a clever tool, taking the weight of list hygiene and sender reputation off businesses.

SMTP.com integrates with 12 apps, like Shopify, WordPress, Trello, Wufoo, Slack, and Airtable. Integrations also include Google products: Docs, Sheets, Forms, Lead Form Extensions, Calendar, and Gmail.

The SMTP.com support team comprises experienced email delivery experts with decades of collective expertise. You’ll be in great if you ever need support.

SMTP.com pricing starts at $25/month for 50K emails, email relay API, detailed reporting, shared IP, email, and phone support. 100K emails with a dedicated IP cost $80/month. The reputation defender add-on costs 20% of your plan. If you go over your monthly limit, you can keep sending and SMTP.com will charge you for the extra emails in the next billing cycle.

Get started with SMTP.com today

4. MailerSend – Best Value for Teams

MailerSend is a straight-up transactional email service. It’s the sister service of email marketing software MailerLite. It borrows MailerLite’s drag-and-drop email builder. And its templates. Learn more about the editor and templates in our full MailerLite review.

A lot of SendGrid alternatives overlook email design. The assumption is a transactional email doesn’t have to look great. Receipts, order confirmations, delivery updates etc are purely functional. That’s a myth. A good-looking transactional email reinforces your brand and gives visual consistency. A professional template also makes the recipient feel secure. This is important for security, too. It’s much easier for a scammer to copy a plain email for phishing with minimal design.

MailerSend’s templates support dynamic content. You can personalize the same template to show different content to different contacts.

MailerSend has an email verification tool for removing unused or fake email addresses. This improves email deliverability rates. Its API lets you set up email sending within your website. You can also use MailerSend as your inbox with inbound email routing.

MailerSend pricing starts at $30 a month. For this, you can send 50,000 emails and verify 100 emails. This also gives you 20 users on the account, making it much better value for teams than SendGrid. It continues to be a good value as you scale email sending. There is a free plan, too. This lets a single user send 3,000 emails a month for free. 

Try MailerSend for free here

5. Moosend – Best Value for Small Businesses

Moosend is a great email marketing service for small businesses. But it also comes with an SMTP server to help with high-volume campaigns. An API lets you send emails directly from a web host, like WordPress. And you can use it for transactional emails. Get the full picture of what it has to offer in our complete Moosend review. 

Moosend’s email marketing tools are slick and user-friendly. Some are also pretty advanced. It offers advanced automations and lead tracking. Especially good for ecommerce businesses. You can connect your digital store and drop product listings straight into emails. And it helps achieve high email deliverability rates with tools like its spam test.

As an alternative to SendGrid, Moosend has a stand-out advantage. It’s excellent value for money. Moosend pricing starts at just $9 a month. For this, you can send unlimited emails to 500 contacts.

You can try Moosend out with a 30-day free trial but you can’t use the SMTP server in the free trial.

Get started with Moosend for free

6. ActiveCampaign – Best for Advanced Email Marketing Automation

ActiveCampaign is a great SendGrid alternative for marketing automation. If you are looking to scale your email marketing, it should be right at the top of your list. It has a transactional email service called Postmark.

ActiveCampaign has a good reputation for deliverability. it’s one of the longest-running email marketing services. And it has made running a reliable high-volume email server one of its core USPs. It offers built-in list-building tools. And various features that help you avoid being flagged as spam.

The email marketing tools are high quality. In particular, it has some of the best email automation tools out there. Including hundreds of pre-made automation templates. You can find much more information in our in-depth ActiveCampaign review.

It’s also great for ecommerce businesses. You can add sales CRM for a fully integrated sales and marketing set-up. Even with these advanced features, it’s all easy to use and learn.

ActiveCampaign pricing starts at $15 a month. The number of email sends is 10x the contact limit on paid plans and can increase to 15x if you are on the Enterprise plan. So it’s ideal for small to medium-sized businesses looking to grow their email marketing. Try ActiveCampaign with a 14-day free trial.

Try ActiveCampaign for free

7. Mailgun – Best for Managing When and Where Emails Land

Out of all our SendGrid alternatives, Mailgun is perhaps the most direct competitor. Like SendGrid, the core of its service is an SMTP relay server and accompanying API. It has a similar lineup of big-name clients. Microsoft, Etsy, Lyft and more. And similar features.

In a straight SendGrid vs Mailgun contest, SendGrid is a better option for email marketing. Mailgun lacks email marketing tools to send marketing messages. Although you can sign up for its sister service, Mailjet. Check out our full Mailjet review to learn about the email marketing features.

But Mailgun fights back with its InboxReady tools. This is a full suite of deliverability features. It includes email verification, pre-send testing, and inbox placement. This last tool tells you where messages will land. For example, in the Promotions tab of Gmail or the Inbox. All of these work together to increase your deliverability and open rates.

Mailgun also features send-time optimization. It uses AI to pick the best time to send emails. User tracking also supports flexible and in-depth analytics. You can use tagging and tracking to dig down into contact behaviour stats at an individual level. Find the details about the features, pros, cons, and pricing in our full Mailgun review.

Mailgun pricing starts at $35 a month for 50,000 emails. For $75 a month, you get a dedicated IP address and 100,000 emails. There’s a one-month free trial, limited to 5,000 emails.

8. Amazon SES – Best for Scalable Sending

Amazon Simple Email Service is a SendGrid alternative built on Amazon’s giant cloud infrastructure. Which means you get enormous scalability.

SES works with any cloud application. It can be used for email relaying or transactional emails. Its Virtual Deliverability Manager (VDM) tools automate inbox placement and send optimization. In-depth statistics cover all sending and deliverability metrics.

It also features a Mailbox Simulator. This lets you test specific scenarios like bounces or getting flagged as spam. The idea is to let you test-run how to handle such issues that harm your sender reputation.

What makes SES unique as a SendGrid alternative is its open-ended scalability. Amazon uses it for its own transactional emails and marketing campaigns. It sends out billions of emails every month. But its pay-as-you-go pricing structure means you only pay for what you send. So however big or small your business is, however many emails you send, the cost is customised to your needs. And changes as your needs change.

Amazon SES charges a flat rate of $0.10 per 1000 emails sent, plus $0.12 for each GB of attachments. But if you run applications on Amazon’s EC2 cloud, you can send up to 62,000 emails a month free of charge.

9. Elastic Email – Best for User-Friendly Bulk Email Sending

Elastic Email is a user-friendly SendGrid alternative. It offers an SMTP relay API so you can send emails from your website or app. It includes a range of features to ensure high deliverability rates, including email verification. Dedicated IP addresses are available. They come with extra deliverability features like IP warm-up.

Backing up these deliverability tools, Elastic Email offers in-depth analytics. These include insights about why contacts unsubscribe.

For email marketing, Elastic Email features all the tools you would expect. Everything is straightforward to use. You get the email builder and templates to build emails that fit your brand but the customization is a bit limited. 

The Elastic Email API plan starts at $9 a month for 10,000 emails. The email marketing plan also starts at $9. You can send up to 60,000 emails a month to 2000 contacts. Both have free plans limited to 100 emails a day.

SendGrid Alternatives: which is the best?

So here’s my take on the best SendGrid alternatives out there. But which one is the best email delivery service for you?

It’s easier to have an email marketing and transactional email service combined. Especially for small businesses. SendGrid offers both but isn’t the most affordable.

Best for email marketing and transactional email combined:

Best alternatives to SendGrid for transactional emails only:

Frequently Asked Questions

About Paul Newham

Paul Newham is a content writer specialising in business blogging, report writing, software reviews, and online copywriting. He has 5+ years of email marketing, marketing automation and software review experience. He tested over 60 business software including email marketing tools, CRMs, outreach services, SMTP providers, email verification, and AI writing tools.
With a background in journalism and PR, he understands business content from both sides. And knows what makes for great, engaging copy, but also understands that for businesses, the written word is all about driving value.

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