It’s no secret that email is getting bigger and more important every single year. In fact, the number of email users is expected to reach 4.3 billion by the year 2023.
So it would make sense that you had a solid email marketing plan in place wouldn’t it?
When building email campaigns for your online business there will come the time when you need to send out transactional emails. Transactional emails include emails like account registration and password confirmations.
It is vital that you have an email tool that has high deliverability rates when it comes to these transactional emails.
Finding the right transactional email marketing tool can be a hassle, however, there are two tools that stand out when it comes to sending these sensitive emails. They are SendGrid and Mailgun.
In this SendGrid vs Mailgun comparison, I will be taking an in-depth look at both of these marketing platforms and revealing which is better!
So without further ado, let’s dive straight into the article.
Table of Contents
What is SendGrid?
SendGrid is a cloud-based customer communication platform that drives business growth and engagement. Moreover, SendGrid prides itself on having a high and consistent deliverability rate.
SendGrid was built with the developer and marketer in mind with the end goal of building a system that is driven by scalability.
Today they have over 80,000 customers worldwide and successfully deliver over 70 billion emails every single month with amazing email deliverability.
Furthermore, they have even served some of your favorite brands like Airbnb, Pandora, Hubspot, and Uber!
Related: The Complete SendGrid Review
What is Mailgun?
Mailgun is an email delivery and deliverability service that was built for developers.
Moreover, Mailgun was designed to help developers seamlessly integrate emails into their apps. This integration opens a wide range of possibilities such as private user mailboxes, email-driven comments, discussion groups, and much more!
They built everything API first which allows users to send, receive, and track with ease.
Today Mailgun is trusted by over 225,000 businesses worldwide and has worked with some very big names such as Dell, Microsoft, NHL, and Lyft.
Related: The Complete Mailgun Review
What are the best features of these tools?
Let’s take a close look at the key features of these tools and what makes them stand out against each other.
SendGrid Best Features
SendGrid is perfect if you’re looking for an email deliverability service that has great email marketing features.
That being said, let’s take a look at two features from SendGrid that stood out to me.
Email Templates
The first one has to be the email templates. As mentioned before SendGrid offers a large range of email marketing functionality which makes it easy for marketers to send emails.
That being said, it would only be right if they provided industry-leading templates as well.
SendGrid equips you with a library of pre-built templates that have a modern touch. Moreover, you are given full creative freedom to customize these templates exactly how you see fit. This is done through the intuitive Design Editor.
I also like the fact that the email templates have built-in CTAs that were designed to increase engagement.
These templates are also responsive across all devices so that means your emails would look great regardless of where you open them.
For the developers, you can also import your own custom templates by using the drag and drop builder or just pasting the HTML code into the code editor.
Email Automation
Automation is the backbone of any successful email marketing software. If you are using an email marketing tool that doesn’t have email automation then you need to find another email marketing software.
SendGrid provides fully functional and comprehensive email automation features. Through the automation offered you can build relationships with your subscribers through personalized experiences.
You can use the automation to build out the popular welcome series or customize the automation journey in the best way that you see fit.
Setting up the automation is easy thanks to the triggers that help you build out your automation series in no time at all. This also allows you to create high-converting recurring emails without ever duplicating.
You are also provided with all the analytics and statistics you need in order to make smart decisions about the future of your email campaigns. These statistics show you requests, delivered, unique opens, unique clicks, and the subscribe rate.
Mailgun Best Features
On the other hand, Mailgun has some great features that really make it stand out against SendGrid and other email marketing tools.
Here are three features that stood out to me when I checked out Mailgun.
Email API
Mailgun boasts of having the best email API solution built for developers which gives you the power to send out transactional emails with ease. This is made possible through Mailgun’s SMTP relay and flexible HTTP API.
The best part?
Regardless of the number of emails that you send out Mailgun is engineered to grow with your business.
The only downside is that it doesn’t have as many email marketing capabilities as SendGrid but that’s okay as they clearly state that their platform was built for developers and not marketers.
Email Validation
This is another feature that stood out to me when I was doing my research on Mailgun. In a nutshell, this software allows you to verify that an email address actually exists before you send it out.
This means that you won’t waste your budget on email addresses that are no longer being used as well as reduce the email bounce rates.
How is this done?
You can do this through two different methods, real-time validation or Bulk list Validation. Real-time Validation verifies email addresses in real-time in order to reduce the chances of invalid signups.
The bulk list validation tool allows you to import an email list and clean the entire list before you even send out an email.
Inbox Placement
This is another really unique feature that allows you to predict the future performance of your emails so you can notice deliverability issues before they significantly impact your business.
In other words, this shows you where your emails are most likely to land like the inbox, spam, or any other tab.
Inbox Placement makes it easy to spot any issues with deliverability and take action to improve the overall performance of the email before sending it out.
This gives you deep insight into which mailbox providers you need to focus your optimization efforts on and improve your email delivery before you even send an email!
Pricing
Pricing plays a big role when it comes to choosing the right marketing software for your business, after all, we all want access to platforms that have amazing features at exceptional prices.
Let’s take a brief look at the pricing options offered at Sendgrid and Mailgun.
SendGrid Pricing
SendGrid’s pricing structure is super straightforward. 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 and you send up to 40,000 emails for 30 days and then 100 per day forever! This plan includes:
- APIs, SMTP Relay and Webhooks
- Delivery Optimization Tools
- Dynamic Template Editor
- Insightful Analytics
- Ticket Support
The prices of the following plans vary depending on the number of emails that you send out per month.
The Essentials plan starts at $14.95 per month and includes everything in the Free plan including :
- Live Chat support
The Pro plan starts at $89.95 per month and includes everything in the Essentials plan as well as:
- Phone Support
- 2,500 Email Validations
- Dedicated IP Included
- Subuser Management
The Premier plan varies in price and depends on your specific needs and the number of emails that you are sending per month.
This plan includes everything in the Pro plan as well as:
- Prioritized Support
- 5,000 Email Validations
Mailgun Pricing
Mailgun also has a very straightforward pricing model. There are 4 different plans that you can take advantage of, the Flex plan, the Foundation plan, the Growth Plan, and the Scale plan.
The Flex Plan allows you to send 5,000 emails per month for 3 months and then you pay $0.80 for every 1000 emails after that.
This plan includes:
- APIs, SMPT, and webhooks
- Suppression Management
- Email Tracking & Analytics
- 99.99% Guaranteed Uptime
- 5 Days Log Retention
- Detailed Documentation
- Limited 24/7 Ticket Support
The Foundation plan starts at $35 per month and allows users to send up to 50,000 emails per month. This plan includes everything in the Flex plan as well as:
- Inbound Email Routing
- 1 Dedicated IP
- Email Address Validations
- Inbox Placement Tests
- 1 Day Message Retention
The Growth plan starts at $80 per month and allows users to send up to 100,000 emails per month. This plan includes everything in the Foundation plan as well as:
- 1000 Email Address Validations
- 10 Inbox Placement Tests
- 15 days log retention
- 3-day message retention
- Instant Chat support
The Scale plan starts at $90 per month and allows users to send up to 100,000 emails per month. This plan includes everything in the Growth Plan as well as:
- 5,000 email address validations
- 15 Inbox placement tests
- Send Time Optimization
- 30 days log retention
- 7-day message retention
- Live Phone support
Who has better pricing?
Well, both platforms have a similar price structure so it’s hard to say which one has the best price for you. It all depends on what you need and your overall budget. However, if you are looking for the least inexpensive option then SendGrid would be your best bet.
Ease of Use
What good is any marketing software if it isn’t easy to use?
Let’s take a look at how easy SendGrid and Mailgun are to use.
Mailgun Ease of Use
I have personally not been inside of Mailgun’s dashboard so I can’t speak on how it looks and how easy it is for me to personally operate.
However, they have received amazing ratings across multiple review platforms like Capterra and G2 Crowds.
Based on these ratings which boast of points of 8.5 and higher I can confidently say that Mailgun seems to be the more user-friendly platform.
SendGrid Ease of Use
SendGrid isn’t for individuals who haven’t had any experience with email marketing. That being said, SendGrid is not as easy to use as Mailgun based on a variety of different reviews and ratings.
However, SendGrid has a great customer support system in place that will help you cross any roadblocks that you may have with the email delivery service.
Which one is easier to use?
I have to say based on the multiple reviews that Mailgun is the easiest one to use!
Deliverability
Deliverability determines whether or not your email actually makes it to your subscriber’s inbox, so it would make sense that you.
Let’s take a brief look at the deliverability rates offered at SendGrid and Mailgun.
Mailgun claims to have an average of 97.4% delivery rate and an average bounce rate of 0.42% which is significantly lower than the industry standard of 2%.
Mailgun also gives you access to your own personal account manager whose goal is to help you optimize your emails for increased deliverability.
On the other hand, SendGrid also has solid deliverability expertise. They claim that they have a deliverability rate of 97% which is great compared to the industry standard.
All in all, both of these email marketing tools provide amazing deliverability rates so I wouldn’t base my decision on which is the better one on the deliverability rate alone.
Customer Support
Customer Support is a big thing for me. If I find a great product but it has poor customer service I always look in the next direction.
That being said, let’s take a look at the customer support options offered at SendGrid and Mailgun.
SendGrid Customer Support
SendGrid has a huge knowledge base that has information on everything you need to know about SendGrid. This knowledge base is equipped with topics such as Sending emails and Managing contacts with marketing campaigns.
Aside from the knowledge base, you are also given access to Product Guides, API Documentation, and direct access to Email Experts.
SendGrid also has a wide range of resources that will help you solve any problems you may encounter. These resources include guides, blogs, videos & podcasts, and webcasts.
That being said, getting in contact with a customer support representative is fairly straightforward. SendGrid gives you access to ticket support, live chat support, phone support, and prioritized support.
The only downside is that in order to get access to the phone and prioritized support you have to be on the Pro plan or higher.
Mailgun Customer Support
Mailgun has a wide range of resources that were designed in order to help you get the most out of the email deliverability platform.
These resources include blogs, guides, videos, podcasts, events, a maverick program, and documentation.
There’s also an intuitive help centre that has information on everything that you need in order to have a smooth journey with Mailgun. You are given answers to all the questions you may have from “How to start sending an email” to “How to migrate a domain”.
Moreover, Mailgun has 24/7 Ticket support, live chat support, and phone support. However, if you want access to the phone support you have to be on the Scale plan.
All in all, Mailgun has an extremely comprehensive and customer support system.
Who has better customer support?
I would have to say that this round is a tie since both email deliverability services offer exceptional and comprehensive customer support.
What I like and don’t like about SendGrid and Mailgun
Like every other email marketing tool out there SendGrid and Mailgun have their fair share of pros and cons.
Let’s take a look at what I like and don’t like about SendGrid and Mailgun.
What I like about SendGrid
- Wide range of resources and guides
- Solid user interface
- A great platform for distributing transactional emails.
- There is a wide range of templates
- Offers robust email marketing tools
What I don’t like about SendGrid
- You don’t get access to phone support unless you are on one of the higher plans
What I like about Mailgun
- It’s easy to use
- They have a more generous free plan
- Amazing deliverability rates
What I don’t like about Mailgun
- Does not offer comprehensive email marketing capabilities
SendGrid vs Mailgun: Which one is better?
If I’m being honest this is an extremely hard decision, after all both of these email deliverability tools are extremely good at what they do.
They both have similar pricing plans, great support, and excellent features
That being said, the answer to this question is dependent on your business and what your goals are.
Here’s a brief summary of who SendGrid and Mailgun are for.
Who is SendGrid for? SendGrid is for developers who have some experience dealing with email marketing software since SendGrid offers more robust email marketing features than Mailgun.
Who is Mailgun for? Email is an email delivery service that is engineered for developers. It gives you a system that sends and tracks your transactional and marketing messages easily. However, it would not be my first recommendation if you are looking for an email marketing tool to send out marketing emails.
Related Comparisons:
