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It’s no secret that the average expected ROI for email marketing is $42 for every $1 you spend.
This statistic alone shows the power of email marketing but building a successful email marketing campaign isn’t easy since it requires a lot of different steps.
One of those crucial steps is having a solid email marketing tool.
I recently did an article on the best email marketing tools of this decade, when doing my research I came across an email marketing tool that caught my attention.
It’s called SendGrid.
In this SendGrid Review, we will be breaking down the email delivery service and showing you its best features, its pros and cons, its price, and if it’s worth it overall.
So without further ado, let’s hop straight into this article.
Table of Contents
- SendGrid Review
- What is SendGrid?
- What are SendGrid’s best features?
- Email Automation
- Email Design & Templates
- Sign-up Forms
- Deliverability
- Email Testing
- List Management
- Reports & Analytics
- Integrations
- SendGrid Customer support
- SendGrid Pricing
- SendGrid Pros and Cons
- Verdict: Is SendGrid worth it?
- Best SendGrid Alternatives
SendGrid Review
What is SendGrid?
In a nutshell, SendGrid is a powerful cloud-based email marketing tool that drives business growth and engagement.
Founded in 2009 by Isaac Saldana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins, SendGrid quickly rose to become an industry leader in email deliverability.
Today they have over 80,000 paying customers worldwide and their cloud-based platform successfully delivers more than 60 billion emails every single month. They even support some of your favorite brands like Uber, Spotify, Airbnb & Yelp.
Here’s what the director of CRM at eBay had to say about SendGrid:
“With The Help Of SendGrid… We Have Transformed Email Marketing At eBay.”
This email marketing tool was made with the developer and marketer in mind and equips you with tons of tools and features that drive scalability and save time.
Let’s take a look at SendGrid’s best features!
What are SendGrid’s best features?
- Email Automation
- Email Design & Templates
- Sign-up Forms
- Deliverability
- Email Testing
- List Management
- Reports & Analytics
Now let’s take an in-depth look at each of these features.
Email Automation
Automation is the backbone of any email delivery service platform, automation essentially does all the heavy lifting so you can focus on the parts of your business you actually like to do.
When it comes to its automation feature SendGrid does an excellent job.
This feature allows you to send out emails automatically to your contacts depending on certain actions they might take.
For example, every time a new subscriber opts into your email list you can send them a warm welcome email thanking them for signing up.
You can also build email campaigns that:
- Engages with contacts who’ve downloaded an asset from you with follow-up content.
- Promotes an upcoming event to a list of invitees with a series of reasons to attend.
Moreover, setting up automation is super simple since you are equipped with pre-built templates that make the job 10 times easier.
Don’t worry you can let your creative juices flow by starting from scratch if you want. All you have to do is select the option that says Custom Automation.
There is also a visual drag and drop editor that makes creating the emails a walk in the park. However, if you love to get your hands dirty with code you can also take advantage of the HTML code editor.
All in all, SendGrid’s automation allows you to build custom personalized experiences and nurture your subscribers in their journey to becoming a paying customer.
That being said, when compared to other email marketing tools like ActiveCampaign and GetResponse, SendGrid’s automation looks super basic.
Email Design & Templates
Your email design and templates determine if a potential lead will opt into your email list.
So it would make sense if you had an amazing email design and great templates wouldn’t it?
Let’s take a look at the email design features and templates that are offered at SendGrid.
Designing your emails in SendGrid can be done in two different ways, by the design editor or code editor. You can even use both if you want to!
The Design Editor is extremely beginner-friendly and you can create amazing emails by simply utilizing the drag and drop tools.
This design editor gives you full control to design your emails exactly how you want to. All you have to do is drag a module from the left-hand sidebar to your email body. It’s as simple as 1,2,3.
On the other hand, the Code editor allows you to build out single send or automation emails with your own custom HTML.
With the Code editor, you can see how your email looks in real-time thanks to the live template preview.
My favorite part about the code editor has to be the fact that if it finds something inconsistent with best practices then it will place a small red ‘x’ on the margin of the line.
There is also syntax highlighting that highlights parts of your code in different colors depending on the type of syntax.
When it comes to templates offered at SendGrid I was pleasantly surprised. You are given access to an entire library of pre-designed email templates that you can choose from.
Needless to say, you can customize anything on these templates so that it seamlessly matches your brand and its colors.
Moreover, every email template looks amazing regardless of the device your subscribers are using to read your emails.
Sign-up Forms
Did you know that 74% of companies use web forms for lead generation, with 49.7% stating their online forms are their highest converting lead generation tool?
So that means if you aren’t taking advantage of sign-up forms then you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
Sign-up forms have to be one of the best ways that you can build your email list and SendGrid does an excellent job of making that happen.
All you have to do is create the signup form through the set-by-set process and embed it on your website. It’s as simple as that.
Moreover, you are given full creative expression to create sign-up forms that look amazing thanks to the entire customization options that you are equipped with.
The best part?
Once your subscribers opt into your sign-up form you can create an automation series that not only nurtures these leads but also segments them by interest so you can send them custom content in the future.
Deliverability
This is no doubt one of the most important parts of any email marketing campaign.
The deliverability rate determines if your emails actually even make it to your subscribers’ inbox. So you can see why it’s one of the most important metrics that you need to take into consideration.
After all, what good is an email marketing tool if your emails aren’t reaching your email lists’ inbox.
Despite the fact that no one can guarantee email deliverability SendGrid does an amazing job at optimizing your email delivery rate.
How do they do this?
Well, this is done through setting up the correct infrastructure, authentication and by building a solid reputation with Internet Service Providers.
For more information on their email delivery rates click here.
Email Testing
Now, this is a feature that I haven’t seen offered on many other email marketing platforms. Email testing allows you to preview exactly how an email is likely to perform across a wide range of inbox providers, devices and spam filters before you even send them off.
These tests include:
- Inbox Rendering Test
- Spam Test
- Link Validation Test
In order to do these tests, you are given email testing credits and the number of credits that you are given is determined by your plan.
That being said, you can purchase email test credits add-ons. The packages are:
- 30 Email Testing Credits per month for $18 USD
- 60 Email Testing Credits per month for $30 USD
- 100 Email Testing Credits per month for $40 USD
With the free plan, you are given 3 email test credits so you can see if you really like this feature.
List Management
In a nutshell, list management allows you to send your emails to the right contacts!
Having a solid list management system in place can help you build strong lifetime relationships with your email list.
Needless to say, this will prevent spam, blocks, and bounces!
SendGrid provides advanced list management that allows you to easily manage your contacts in a way that will give you the opportunity to send them the right content at the right time.
With List Management, you can customize every email so it appeals to each of your contacts so you can deliver to them the content that they want to see!
For example, you don’t want to be sending emails to someone who unsubscribed from your email list right?
Reports & Analytics
Knowing how your email campaigns are performing is CRITICAL to your long-term success!
Thankfully SendGrid provides you with analytics and statistics that will let you know exactly if your emails are being delivered to your lists’ inbox.
These statistics also give you insights on both marketing and transactional emails so you can make the right decisions that guide your email improvements.
You can also track your data such as unique clicks, unique opens, bounces, unsubscribes, and more all from your dashboard in real-time!
SendGrid also allows you to take it a step further by letting you run A/B tests which let you know which emails are performing better so you can scale what’s working and turn off what isn’t working.
Integrations
If you run an online business then you would know that there are tons of apps that you need to take advantage of in order to make your business successful.
SendGrid offers integrations with the majority of the most popular and major apps on the market including some of your favorites like Drupal and Klaviyo.
They also offer an integration with Zapier that gives you access to hundreds of different apps!
SendGrid Customer support
SendGrid has a huge library of resources that were designed in order to help you navigate the platform seamlessly.
These resources include guides, a blog, videos & podcasts, and webcasts. Each of these resources is PACKED with all the information you need to know in order to create successful email campaigns on SendGrid.
There is also a huge Knowledgebase that has tons of tutorials on how you can take full advantage of the email delivery service.
Now, getting in actual contact with support is a tricky one.
If you are on the Free plan you are limited to only Ticket support which can be seen as a huge disadvantage especially if you have an issue that you would like addressed immediately.
If you want at least live chat support you need to be on the Essentials plan. That being said, if you want to take advantage of phone support then you will need to be on the Pro plan.
This can be seen as a HUGE disadvantage especially if you prefer to have phone support but you don’t want the features of the Pro plan.
The best part?
Well, the support is available 24/7 so that means there is always a customer service representative on standby to assist you with any problems that you may have.
SendGrid Pricing
SendGrid pricing is pretty straight-forward and fairly reasonable compared to other email marketing tools I have reviewed.
There are 4 different plans that you can choose from the Free plan, the Essentials plan, the Pro plan, and the Premier plan.
The Free plan is of course free but you are limited to sending out only 100 emails per month. However, you can send out 40,000 emails for free for 30 days.
This Free plan includes:
- APIs, SMTP Relay, and Webhooks
- Delivery Optimization Tools
- Dynamic Template Editor
- Analytics
- Ticket Support
The Essential plan starts at $14.95 per month and varies depending on how many emails you send out per month.
For example, if you send out 50,000 emails per month you will pay $14.95 per month and if you send out 90,000 emails per month you will pay $29.95 per month.
This Essential plan includes all of the features of the Free plan as well as live chat.
The Pro plan is the most popular plan and starts at $89.95 per month and varies depending on the number of emails that you send out every month.
For example, if you send out 250,000 emails per month you will pay $89.95 per month and if you send out up to 650,000 emails per month you will pay $249 per month.
The Pro plan includes everything in the Essential plan as well as:
- 2500 Email Validations
- Dedicated IP Included
- Subuser Management
- Phone Support
The Premier plan was designed for businesses that send out over 1,500,000 emails per month! In order to get the accurate pricing for this plan, you have to contact support at SendGrid.
The Premier plan includes everything in the Pro plan as well as prioritized support and an additional 2500 email validations giving you access to a total of 5000 email validations in all.
SendGrid Pros and Cons
Like every other email marketing tool out there SendGrid has its fair share of pros and cons.
Let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of SendGrid
Pros
- They have a free plan
- The platform is beginner-friendly
- They offer a wide range of modern templates
- They offer sign-up forms
- They offer email testing which estimates how your email is going to perform before you even send out your first email
Cons
- If you want phone support you have to be on one of the more expensive plans
- They don’t offer as many automation features as other email marketing tools
Verdict: Is SendGrid worth it?
You’ve made it to the end of this SendGrid Review!
What do you think of this email delivery service?
All in all, I must say that SendGrid is a solid email marketing tool.
They have quite a few features that make it a force to be reckoned with.
The email design editor is extremely beginner-friendly and I believe anyone can get the hang of it pretty quickly regardless of if this is your first time building an email or if you’re a seasoned veteran.
Needless to say, if you are looking for more advanced automation features then I would suggest that you check out GetResponse or ActiveCampaign.
However, if you are looking for an email marketing tool that provides phone and live chat support regardless of the plan you are on then I would suggest you check out Ontraport.
All in all, you can take advantage of the free trial which allows you to send out up to 40,000 emails every single month so you can make a concrete decision on if this is the right email marketing tool for you or not.
Related: The 9 Best Email Marketing Tools of this Decade!!
Best SendGrid Alternatives
If you are looking for an email marketing tool that’s inexpensive but has great functionality then I would highly recommend you check out our review on MailerLite.
If you are looking for an email marketing tool that has exceptional customer service then you should check out our review on Ontraport.
If you are interested in an email marketing tool that has advanced automation features then I would highly recommend you read our review on ActiveCampaign and our review on GetResponse.
If you are a blogger, YouTuber, artist or any creative then I would suggest you read our review on the email marketing tool designed for creators, ConvertKit.
If you run an e-commerce store then definitely check out our review on Drip and our review on Omnisend.
