SendGrid Reviews

John Abelardo Manangan II:

Within the first three years, I only used SendGrid for email sending and for the custom applications I made previously. There are transactional emails and some of the marketing parts in the first three years. Then I got a client that wanted to transition into using SendGrid because they have been using Klaviyo, which is expensive on their budget. I think in 2020, and then I asked them how they wanted to use SendGrid. They told me that they wanted to use the solution for their email marketing. Also, they are an e-commerce store. They have an e-commerce store, so they want all the transactional emails that are related to their customer orders, and order updates, they want to be integrated with SendGrid.

I used the solution with WordPress. It's easy to integrate the solution with WordPress. My supervisor asked me if maybe it's possible to segment the customers from each other because they have several stores. I recommend using a contact list. For each signup form, and each campaign they want, we make a separate contact list, and then they ask me to integrate this with custom coding.

The most valuable feature is the conditions in automation. At each interval, each email can have something like a condition if a certain contact matches the condition, it will proceed to send in the email under the automation.

The contact limit alerts need to be improved. The way that I see the limits and the way they implement the limit alerts in the current month will be billed on the next month and it's just not really accurate if you check on the alerts.

The data field of contacts can use improvement, they are just straight labels and values. It would be better if you have the option to add an object that can be added to the custom field of contact. It will be better to display something on the email templates, and then the conditioning or logic in the automation.

I have been using the solution for seven  years.

The solution is stable. I haven't encountered any downtime. Most of the time, the emails are sent properly, and then I can also see the email deliverability, and I can see the status of each email.

The solution is scalable and we send about 20,000 plus emails.

The solution has excellent technical support and I always contact them whenever I need to implement something that the client wants.

Positive

We switch to SendGrid to lessen the expense of the email solutions because we already tried Klaviyo and Amazon SES previously and they didn't work well. We always use the spam rate and the reports that SendGrid has.

The initial setup is easy. Actually, The deployment takes 10 minutes to one hour. It depends on the domain and the type of the domain. Most of the time, when you add a domain on SendGrid, it seems like it's real-time. I have no problem with it.

The deployment was completed in-house with the help of the SendGrid technical support team.

We are using the Advanced plan,10K. That is about $100 per month but sometimes we do go over the limit of the plan. The license is not based on the number of users.

I give the solution a seven out of ten because it is the most reliable email sending I have been using for the past few years, and seven also because there are some features that are not available in the SendGrid, but it is also seven because other competitors are more advanced or they have more tools to cater. A seven also because of the pricing. SendGrid is the most cost-effective solution that I have been using.

Using the solution in the first two years was okay because my client was using credit from SendGrid. They are a startup and it came from venture capital. They were granted credit and we made use of it. Once the credits were all exhausted, my client told me that we needed to adjust the budget for the plans on SendGrid, and this is where we have something to do with SendGrid. My client's website and stores have colossal traffic every day, so they have trouble with contacts exceeding the plan limit. They asked me to solve the contact issue with the alert level showing on the dashboard on SendGrid which is a little bit of a hassle to do for clients who don't want to upgrade their plan. I think SendGrid is not ready with the email marketing part because, unlike Klaviyo, which has a diagram that you can drag and drop what happens to an email, and then there is also conditioning. SendGrid is all plug-and-play. You can add something like an interval on each email. I think that's the SendGrid automation. You can just set which contact list to use for the automation. I think it's not really that possible with email marketing. I think the easiest way to work with SendGrid is with segmentation and the deeper filtering of the emails when you want to send to some customers that already have this, or already received their orders. Also in the filtering of different emails or contacts that have something like data that might be unique from each other contact. 

We are a startup company and all of our stores use SendGrid which is made up of three users.

If you are thinking of using the solution for the first time you can start with the SMTP if you are just testing. If you want to have a dedicated IP so that your emails can have almost 100% deliverability, you can sign up for their plan, and also buy the dedicated IP. If you want to automate the emails for your customers, I advise you to use the automation feature in SendGrid.

My main use case for SendGrid is working on email notifications and push notifications, with most usage being emails through SendGrid.

A specific example of how I use SendGrid in my workflow is that I have approximately two to five year reports annually, weekly, or monthly, transferred via email to the client. The client reviews the email, which looks like a ledger and other accepted reports, sent through SendGrid.

Through a cron job, we are sending emails step-by-step to the client. First, we select the email scheduler, then the email is sent to the client by scheduling jobs.

The best feature in SendGrid is that it shows if the email is delivered or readable; its status is a big feature of SendGrid.

The tracking status helps me in my day-to-day work.

SendGrid has positively impacted my organization because it is best for email purposes. All of the projects include SendGrid, and the company uses it because SendGrid is the most reliable resource and provides the services.

I think SendGrid is providing much better services and could also provide webhooks for the developer to retrieve data from it, as webhooks are needed and important for us.

The documentation is not fine, so I believe the documentation needs to be improved.

I have been working in my current field for approximately eight years.

SendGrid is stable.

The customer support for SendGrid is better.

Positive

Before choosing SendGrid, I evaluated other options, including Twilio, which is the best alternative to SendGrid.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for SendGrid is that it is easy to purchase the accounts.

There is both price reduction and time savings. It is easy to implement, and the developer saves much more time on implementation as it also has a cheaper rate, which is a big thing that the requirement is better for us.

We are not switching; we are currently working through SendGrid, as it is actually the best solution for our organization.

SendGrid is a most powerful third-party tool to use for email sending, and it improves the delivery rates compared to other services.

I would advise others looking into using SendGrid that it is the most reliable resource and provides the best services through email, with no emails bouncing except for some due to a lack of an email address, it being invalid, or the network not being fine; SendGrid is the best solution.

I'm using SendGrid for marketing and transactional emails.

Easy API documentation is the most valuable feature of SendGrid, including its deliverability rate.

SendGrid has room for improvement in the UI/UX or dashboard usability for users. It still needs to improve in advanced features.

Another area for improvement in the tool is its conditional logic facilities.

The response time of SendGrid technical support needs improvement.

The scaling-up process for SendGrid needs to be self-serve, so this is an additional feature I want to see in the next version of the tool.

I also want to see more advanced features, such as conditional flows in SendGrid, on the user account directly.

I'd give the tool a rating of eight out of ten because of its ease of deployment and stability.

I'm a SendGrid customer.

I've been using SendGrid for four years.

SendGrid is a stable product; once deployed, you don't have to look at it again.

SendGrid is easy to scale, but the only problem is you need to get in touch with support to unlock higher sending rates. It's not self-serve.

I'd rate the technical support for SendGrid as seven out of ten because it's not chat support, so you have to wait for about two days to receive a response.

Neutral

My company went with SendGrid because of the high delivery rates, and many other large enterprises use SendGrid.

The initial setup for SendGrid is easy, and the tool took one month to deploy.

An in-house team implemented SendGrid for the company.

In terms of seeing ROI from SendGrid, it's a seven out of ten for me.

My company pays for SendGrid monthly, and though I cannot share the amount, my feedback is that the vendor should accept other modes of payment apart from a credit card.

The tool does get expensive if you scale it.

I've been using the V2 API of SendGrid. I started with V1 API and then moved over to V2 API.

Five to six applications rely on the SendGrid email service. My company has a technical team with five people that takes care of the maintenance of the tool.

I'd advise anyone thinking about using SendGrid for the first time to go for it, but you need to account for all the setup processes and do the setup correctly.

The usage depends on the project and different scenarios. Most of the time, we have been using it to embed and forward emails. 

Specifically, I've been using it in one of my e-commerce stores. I use that, too, for e-customer orders, customer invoices, follow-ups, and things like that. I've been using SendGrid for that purpose. 

I work with a Germany-based client. They are also using SendGrid to forward training-related emails, marketing campaigns, and stuff like that. We have been using SendGrid there too.

It's comparatively quick and easy to configure as compared to other solutions. For example, Mailchimp is a popular competitor. I find it quite easy comparatively, with less configuration is required. You just need to get the key that's embedded in your code, and you are good to go. 

Other than that, in one of my projects, I use it to import the pre-configured templates and stuff like that. That was pretty easy, and the simplicity was beyond my expectations. We don't use it, particularly in development. However, we had a good experience.

The UI is fine.

It is easy to set up.

I find the solution to be stable.

So far, this solution meets my requirements. 

A long time ago, I may have had an issue, and I had to wait for support, which wasn't that helpful. However, that was a very long time ago. Overall, I've had a good experience. 

I've been using the product in a couple of my projects for six or seven years. 

It's very stable. It's rare that I would see an email fail, for example. It's very reliable, and the performance is excellent. 

I haven't really tried to scale the solution and, therefore, cannot speak to how helpful or responsive it would be. 

Currently, we are approximately 20 people. Everyone has, for now, used this product at some point. We are a services-based company, so we work for our clients, and it depends upon the client what service he will use. 

I had to contact support one or two times, and whenever I've reached out, they have been helpful and responsive. 

A long time ago, I might have had an issue where they were slow, however, that was very long ago.

Positive

I have been using different email services. However, SendGrid is also one of them.

We work for different clients and different companies. They are basically the decision-makers. Sometimes, we can just suggest a product for certain scenarios. They can compare options and choose what would work best for them.

The solution is very straightforward and simple. It's easy compared to other products I've used. 

I'd rate the ease of setup nine out of ten.

The deployment is just a matter of a few clicks. I just used it to get the API key and use that in my code. Other than that, for building templates, creating funnels, and stuff like that, I'm not handling that. I have not used that portion. 

I don't deal with licensing. I'm not sure what the cost of the product is. 

I am an end-user.

I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm using.

I would recommend the solution to others. I find it pretty easy to use, and working on it is fast. Anyone can use it.

I'm a happy customer. Therefore, I would rate the solution nine out of ten.

We have two separate things. One is marketing, where the contacts are maintained and certain emails are sent to people, and the second one is automated emails through API.

The API side of things is valuable. It is flexible enough to handle pretty much anything that needs to be done in an automated manner.

The biggest problem that we have faced is with the authentication during login. For certain people, SendGrid requires MFA, which is good as a security feature, but it doesn't always work in all geographies. We've got people and users who are based in Nigeria, and some of those people had real trouble logging into SendGrid because the MFA wouldn't send codes to people on their numbers. The security mechanism that they use for login doesn't work in all geographies. Our people in Nigeria had to figure out their own mechanism of how to get things set up on their end, but it was very difficult because SendGrid doesn't have an alternative for their security mechanisms. For example, if you look at some of the other players who do multiple authentications, you can either get a code or you can call, you can get different ways of doing that authentication. SendGrid doesn't allow anything else. There is exactly one way of initiating that authentication, and when that doesn't work, there is no way. Their system isn't built for handling anything else. So, even support people couldn't help us.

The Single Send that they have is not very intuitive for people who are not tech-savvy. Those who, for example, don't understand HTML find it a little difficult to build it. I've had cases where I've had to train our marketing folks to understand how to create that email.

I have been using this solution for a little more than two years.

I've never faced any issues. We are good there. 

It can scale. It just costs accordingly. We never got to a stage where we need to go to the enterprise level. So, we haven't really seen whether the costing scales appropriately.

Depending on the plan that you take, you can add a number of people. There are certain plans that allow for one team member, and there are plans that allow for up to 10 team members, and so on. At the moment, we've got one admin and one other person accessing it. That's the current usage, but we've had requirements where we've had to expand our plan and then scale back.

The only issue where we needed troubleshooting was the login issue for people in Nigeria, and the SendGrid team wasn't able to resolve it. The support people were quite helpful, but they couldn't solve it because the product itself doesn't allow them to solve it. There were probably some regulatory elements within Nigeria that caused that, and some people would get it and some wouldn't. It was not necessarily in SendGrid's control but because they didn't have any other way of doing it, they couldn't fix it. Overall, I would rate them a three out of five.

Positive

I've not used many other products, but I have used Mailchimp. We do have a subscription for both for different things. We have different reasons for using Mailchimp. Some of the things that need to be done are better done there.

What we like the most about SendGrid is the way APIs are set up. The API configuration is much cleaner in SendGrid. The marketing and Single Sends are comparable, and I don't see much of a difference. There is a cost difference because SendGrid can be scaled according to what you need, whereas even the lowest rate on Mailchimp is much costlier.

It was straightforward. It was not very difficult. The SendGrid documentation is good enough, and its setup is fine.

There are two different sides to it. The marketing and email side is straightforward. It is there by default. You just upload the customer contacts and start writing things. On the automation side, integration needs to be done. The documentation is straightforward.

In terms of duration, the marketing bit is off the bat, so it doesn't matter. For the API bit, it was not really a matter of any integrations to be done from the SendGrid side. It was just that the solution from our side took some time, but integration was never a problem. It was straightforward. Overall, I would rate its setup a four out of five.

It was implemented in-house.

For the basic things, it's not really free. There are a few small things that are free, but there is a cost involved. When we were using it at the peak, we were paying a decent amount. Among the other options out there, SendGrid is decently affordable. They have competitors that are much costlier, but it depends on how much they're used, and the pricing is dependent on the right use.

You have to plan in advance as to what it is that you're budgeting to use. The way they do it is that at a fixed price point, you buy a certain block, and if you exceed what you paid for, they charge you dynamically. You have to then plan for it. If you're planning to use more than what you're currently paying for, just change or upgrade your plan.

Its cost can vary. It can go as low as $10 or $15 to $1,000 depending on how much you use it.

I would rate it a seven out of ten.

I use it for sending transactional emails for a couple of Fintechs. We use SendGrid to inform the clients, and we lead during the onboarding process and during the transactional period of time. We'll be doing the life cycle of financials for the client through the onboarding and during the business relationship with the financial entity concerning any activity that happens with their funds or during the onboarding process.

They enable us to automate all the communication with our clients around commercial campaigns, marketing activities, and also during transactional tasks, basically, any transaction that happens on the account. It is the main preferred way to communicate with the client.

My integration team likes that it's very easy to integrate and very easy to automate based on activities that happen on our core banking application. The ease of integration with an external application is something that we appreciate.

Also, I like the dashboard. You can check one by one if you need to see the messages that SendGrid sent. That was also a nice feature.

The solution is stable. The performance has been good.

It can scale well.

Maybe they could have a mobile application to give to admins, so they could see some insights related to the data. That could be nice. With SendGrid, if you need to check some info, you need to go to the website. It would be easier if it was just an app.

If they could make it easier to develop a communication tree, that would be ideal.

I've been using the solution for four years.

We haven't sent a lot of emails since the two projects were not so big in terms of the quantity of clients and the quantity of messages. However, I've noted they send tons of emails daily. In order to have some problem with the performance, you would have to be playing with millions of customers, and maybe, in that case you need to coordinate with the technical team of SendGrid. However, we are not that big and haven't had any issues with stability at all.

It's a SaaS, and it totally scalable.

We don't have anyone that is totally working on it since it's a part of the process; however, when we used to run the project, it was usually an assignment to someone on the technical team and me on the pro side and maybe someone on the marketing team. That was only when it was needed to send something. It's something that you only need to run when you need to send a message. It's something that happens automatically just based on the API integration, so you don't need a lot of users.

We are using it in general for all our emails. We used to use to send all our emails ourselves. We increase usage when we increase the number of clients. We are also increasing usage when we are trying to send more messages around marketing or launching a new product.

We haven't used support much. We used them a little three years ago, and it was okay. When we set up our subscription, we signed an agreement with the technical support of SendGrid, and they assigned someone to help us. At the end of the month, this person will send us the total hours logged and our usage of the support, and they charge based on that.

We have used MailChimp as well. We use SendGrid for transactional emails and MailChimp for marketing communication. The marketing team is in charge of the MailChimp account.

The implementation process varies in difficulty. If you only want to try to connect it with something very simple, it's easy. It's based on the applications that you have on your side and the complexity of the message that you want to send.

You need to develop a tree of communication, and also that will be a factor. If the tree is complex, the setup will be complex.

For example, if you want to only send an email each time a client buys something and send a thank-you message after the purchase, and you don't need to personalize anything, that will be very quick. If you are on the other side and based on a lot of complex rules, maybe for a financial investor on a stock change and you need to send a lot of warnings on the information of operation, that could be tougher.

That said, in general, it's very easy to integrate, and it's something that, even if you didn't work with it in the past, you could learn easily.

Since it's software as a service, we only need to check that it's working. When the endpoint sends an error message, we need to check on that. Other than that, it doesn't require maintenance.

We did the setup ourselves.

In a couple of companies, we have an IT team to take the request and assign someone to enter details into SendGrid and make the connection or upload the designs in HTML to have the right design for some messages.

I haven't calculated an exact ROI. We'd have to compare against someone manually doing the work; however, it's not easy to compare since SendGrid is 24/7 for $90 a month, and having a person available wouldn't be possible at that price, so it's a no-brainer.

We do have dedicated paid support from SendGrid.

It's a software as a service and therefore you're paying for what you use. The price depends on the volume of emails.

They have the packages on the website. Costs will depend on the volume and also on some special requirements. You may need some extras for, be able to integrate or something, for example, however, it is very clear on the price. They have an API plan and that is the common way to use it.

The licensing is easy to understand. They have a free version and five more plans and you need to see which would be most suitable for you. The last of these five is custom pricing when you need to talk with an expert in case you need something special.

I use the essential plan which is $20 a month. After that, we use the pro which is $90 a month, and had all our costs bundled in.

We looked for solutions, and it appeared SendGrid was the leader in the space, so we went with the leader.

I'm a customer and end-user.

I'm not sure which version I'm on. It's a SaaS, so it will be the one available from 2018 to 2022.

New users should consider the tool and what they need it to do, and under which team. They need to look at if they need API integration and if they have a technical team that can manage the product or if they only have a non-technical person. It's a good idea to have someone that is very technical, who can understand it well, and be able to look at the insights and data and be comfortable with the dashboard. You may need someone who understands HTML as well. You need someone who is technical, operational and understands marketing. Or, you need three people, one to cover each of these aspects.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

We use the solution to send the client emails. We create different email templates for various use cases using it. Thus, instead of coding multiple emails in the back end, we just set the template in SendGrid.

The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to allow the user to use different components through just one endpoint.

They should add a categorization feature to the solution. There should be a folder system to segregate the designs. They should make the solution more user-friendly. Presently, the template designs created by one user aren't visible to other users using the same account. Also, they should make the solution version-based instead of subscription-based.

We have been using the solution for one year.

It is a stable solution. 

It is a scalable solution. We have 2000 users of the solution at our organization.

We never had contact with the solution's support team, as the documentation was enough to resolve any issues.

The solution's initial setup is straightforward. It takes only a few minutes. Once you upload the sample code to your back end, you can begin using the solution.

The solution is relatively inexpensive. We have to purchase only one license.

It's a good product as it is scalable and fulfills all our use cases. Even if there is any email drop, we can learn and find the reason immediately.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it as an eight.

Portability to whatever programming language you are using. RESTful API that can be invoked really easy. We use SendGrid from .NET and JavaScript.
Don't have to think of HTMLs anymore.

Our UX Designers create the templates at SendGrid web, and they give us (development team) the GUID of the new template so we can use them in our applications.

If any modification is needed, we do not have to make a deploy. The UX Designers make the necessary modifications at SendGrid Web and it's done!
The excellent dashboard and information that SendGrid provides at their web of the emails that were sent is a very useful plus.

Basically, we have replaced our SMTP server with this solution. (We had three SMTP servers, for development, testing, and production environments).

In the past, every time that there was a bug reported from users telling that the notifications weren't triggered, it was because of an SMTP server or configuration problem (our team does not have any responsibilities on it, it's a matter of infrastructure team).

With SendGrid, we have found a perfect solution to that scenario, and we don't have to involve infrastructure team anymore.

• Development
• Design
• Marketing

For about two years now.

No. Never had a connection problem with SendGrid API or Web.

Not really a scalability issue, but some kind of limitations. We have encountered some problems in order to make some dynamic templates (for example, we needed a grid with dynamic columns, and we had to make some magic to get it done).

So, don't think that you could do anything with SendGrid on email matters. The templates limit you a lot sometimes!

Honestly, we have not had to contact technical support yet, so I don't really know.

Yes, but as I said, it was a bunch of things that were replaced by SendGrid. HTMLs, SMTP Server, and a lot of repeated code (MailHelpers) in some applications are doing exactly the same thing (send emails).

No setup needed. You don't have to install anything, just use a very well documented API. Also, with .NET framework, there is an official Nuget package that makes the use of SendGrid even easier.

But on the other hand, it could be very complex if you decide to move all the emails that your applications generate to SendGrid. You will have to make a lot of code changes.

We decided to start by using SendGrid only on new notifications. And if we had to alter an old email template, we take advantage of that and make it through SendGrid also.

I think that also the GUI for creating the templates is very simple. I only have used it a couple of times so not really a review on that function here.

Sorry, but I don't know how much it costs, or the licensing matter. I asked for it and it was approved and also paid for by the company.

Yes. MailChimp and others. But they were more designated for marketing emails. The majority of the emails that we send are for internal and external notifications only. And SendGrid satisfies the two worlds.

Go ahead! It is pretty simple to use.

It is not that it does much, but what it does, it does well.