SendGrid alternatives for broadcast and bulk email
SendGrid Essentials is $19.95 at 50,000 emails and Pro jumps to $89.95 at 100,000. Nine alternatives priced against both its Email API and Marketing Campaigns.
Short answer
Anyone shopping for a SendGrid alternative should first decide which SendGrid they mean, because it is two products with two price lists: the Email API and Marketing Campaigns. For senders who are leaving because that split, plus the price steps between plans, is hard to budget, my pick is Postmark: one account, one bill, and Basic at $245 for 300,000 emails against SendGrid Pro's $249. If the trigger is plain cost and you have an engineer, Amazon SES at $0.16 per 1,000 turns that same 300,000 into $48. If you leave for the marketing side only, jump to the three newsletter tools near the end.
Which SendGrid are you leaving?
SendGrid's Email API pricing page lists a free trial of 100 emails a day for 60 days, Essentials from $19.95 and Pro from $89.95, plus a custom Premier tier beyond 2,500,000 emails. Its volume selector reads $19.95 for Essentials at 50,000 emails, $34.95 for Essentials at 100,000, then $89.95 for Pro at 100,000, $249 at 300,000, $499 at 700,000, $799 at 1,500,000 and $1,099 at 2,500,000. Pro includes dedicated IPs. Taxes and overages are listed as possible extras on both paid plans.
The Marketing Campaigns page is a different bill: a free plan for 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month, Basic from $15 (selector up to 100,000 contacts and 300,000 emails), Advanced from $60 (up to 200,000 contacts and 1,000,000 emails, with dedicated IP access), and a custom tier above that.
Two kinds of leaver follow from this. The first runs application mail on the Email API and trips over the step from Essentials to Pro. Going from 100,000 emails on Essentials to 100,000 on Pro is $34.95 to $89.95, a $55 a month difference, $660 a year, for the same count of messages; what the money buys is dedicated IPs and the Pro feature set. The second sends newsletters from Marketing Campaigns and finds that a free trial, a free plan and a paid plan all exist side by side with different limits, so it is unclear which one a given send is billed against. Whichever you are, set a cost line for each product separately, as the Postmark vs SendGrid comparison does.
One thing this page cannot judge is support. A pricing page does not show response times, and I did not test any vendor's help desk, so I make no claim about it either way. Where support is your reason for leaving, ask each shortlisted vendor which plan includes a human reply and how fast.
Quick comparison
| Alternative | Best if you | Billing unit | Price at two sizes | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Postmark | want one account and one bill for transactional and broadcast mail | Emails, slider stops | $55 at 50,000; $245 at 300,000 (Basic) | 100 emails a month |
| Amazon SES | want the lowest rate and will build the rest | Emails sent | $16 at 100,000; $48 at 300,000 | 6-month free plan, up to $200 credits |
| Mailgun | need inbound routing, longer logs or an EU region | Emails, plan tiers | $75 at 100,000 (Foundation); $215 at 250,000 (Scale) | 100 emails a day |
| SparkPost | want the same Essentials/Pro shape for less | Emails, plan tiers | $30 at 100,000 (Startup); $175 at 250,000 (Growth) | 1,000 emails a month, 50 a day |
| Resend | want a developer API plus a contact-priced marketing tab | Emails, or contacts | $35 at 100,000 emails; $80 at 10,000 contacts | 3,000 emails a month, 100 a day |
| MailerSend | want templates and bulk sending in one API | Emails, plan tiers | Starter $31.50 at 50,000 (yearly display) | 500 emails a month |
| Brevo | want campaigns and application mail in one account | Emails per month | Starter $9, Standard $18, from 5,000 emails | 300 emails a day |
| Mailchimp | have a marketing team that wants an editor, templates and integrations | Contacts | Standard $100 for 2,501-5,000 contacts; $135 for 5,001-10,000 | 250 contacts, 500 sends a month |
| MailerLite | want simple newsletters at a modest price | Subscribers | Comfort $49 at 5,000; $89 at 10,000 | 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails |
Alternatives for the Email API side
1. Postmark: fewer products, no step surprises
Postmark's pricing page uses slider stops, and its stops read Basic, Pro and Platform at $15, $16.50 and $18 for 10,000 emails; $55, $60.50 and $66 for 50,000; $115, $126.50 and $138 for 125,000; and $245, $269.50 and $294 for 300,000. A sender at 10,000 emails a month pays $15 on Basic, and there is no like-for-like SendGrid figure to set beside it, because the Email API's Essentials selector starts at its 50,000 tier at $19.95. At 50,000 emails the comparison can be made: Basic's $55 is $35.05 above Essentials, $420.60 a year. The page also lists 45 days of default data retention (up to 365 days on higher plans), inbound email processing, and a dedicated IP from $50 a month for senders at 300,000 emails or more on Pro or above.
Who should switch: teams that want to stop reading two price pages. Postmark keeps transactional and broadcast mail inside one account, which the message streams page describes as separate streams, so a newsletter complaint does not land on your receipts. What you lose is the cheap middle: 100,000 emails is not a stop, and the free plan is 100 emails a month with no overage, against a 60-day trial of 100 emails a day. Migration is a day of work if your code uses a thin send function: authenticate the domain, port templates by hand, rewire your event webhook handlers to Postmark's payloads, and import the suppression export before the first live send.
2. Amazon SES: the number that ends the argument
Amazon SES's pricing page lists Essentials at $0.16 per 1,000 emails. Apply it to the volumes where SendGrid's Pro selector stops: 300,000 emails are $48 (300 x $0.16), 700,000 are $112, 1,500,000 are $240 and 2,500,000 are $400. SendGrid Pro lists $249, $499, $799 and $1,099 at those four stops. At 2,500,000 the difference is $699 a month, or $8,388 a year. Even adding a standard dedicated IP at $24.95 a month brings the 300,000 case to $72.95.
The saving is real because SES is a pipe, not a product. Nothing on the page equals SendGrid's dashboard or its Marketing Campaigns product, so you need your own bounce processing, suppression handling and reporting; the SES page does list deliverability monitoring and Mail Manager inbound processing. New AWS customers get a free plan for 6 months with up to $200 in credits. Choose it if an engineer will own the integration, because the moving parts (SNS or event destinations, IAM, DKIM) are all yours.
3. Mailgun: the closest like-for-like rival
Mailgun's pricing page reads Basic at $15 for 10,000 emails, Foundation at $35 for 50,000 and $75 for 100,000, and Scale at $90 for 100,000, $215 for 250,000 and $400 for 500,000. At 50,000 emails Foundation's $35 is $15.05 above the $19.95 on SendGrid's Essentials. At the Pro tier the picture is better. Mailgun Scale at 100,000 emails is $90, level with SendGrid Pro's $89.95. At 250,000 emails Mailgun's $215 sits under the $249 on SendGrid Pro's 300,000 stop.
What you gain is log retention that scales with the plan (1 day on Free and Basic, 5 on Foundation, 30 on Scale), inbound routing, 5,000 email validations on Scale and a single account that can send from the US or the EU. One dedicated IP is included from Foundation at 100,000, with extras at $59 a month. What you lose is the free-for-60-days trial: Mailgun's Free is 100 emails a day with one custom domain, and Foundation and Scale give a free first month. Our SendGrid vs Mailgun page goes through the full list.
4. SparkPost: the same two-step ladder for less
SparkPost's pricing page has a shape close to SendGrid's: Startup at 50,000 to 100,000 emails and Growth beyond. Its readouts are Startup at $15 for 50,000 and $30 for 100,000, and Growth at $80 for 100,000, $175 for 250,000, $295 for 500,000 and $530 for 1,000,000. Set against Essentials at 100,000 ($34.95), Startup saves $4.95 a month, $59.40 a year; against Pro at 100,000 ($89.95), Growth saves $9.95 a month. The two vendors do not share every stop, so 250,000 and 500,000 emails cannot be matched line for line.
The small print matters. Free is 1,000 emails a month capped at 50 a day. Retention is 30 days and message size is limited to 20 MB on every plan. A dedicated IP is $24.95 a month each and only on Growth (up to 5), and the default overage ceiling is five times your plan, after which sends pause unless you agree other terms; for a marketing blast that cannot fail mid-flight, ask about that ceiling before committing. Migration resembles any API-to-API move: new keys, domain records, suppression import and template rewrites.
5. Resend: modern API, and a marketing tab that undoes the split
Resend's pricing page puts Pro at $20 for 50,000 emails and $35 for 100,000, and Scale at $90 for 100,000, $160 for 200,000, $350 for 500,000 and $650 for 1,000,000. The surprising part is how close that is to SendGrid. Essentials at $19.95 and $34.95 sits within a nickel of Resend's $20 and $35. SendGrid Pro's $89.95 against Resend Scale's $90 is a rounding error. So Resend is not a saving; it is a simplification, because its marketing tab (free at 1,000 contacts, then $40 at 5,000 and $80 at 10,000 contacts) lives on the same pricing page as the sending plans, instead of in a second product with its own selector.
The trade is the unit. SendGrid Marketing Campaigns advertises a contact ceiling and an email ceiling; Resend's marketing tab charges by contact, so a list of 25,000 is $180 whether you send once or twelve times. Choose Resend if your team writes code and wants one vendor page; stay with SendGrid if you need its dedicated-IP Pro tier at a volume Resend's slider does not show. Add-ons differ: a Resend dedicated IP is $30 a month for Scale customers above 3,000 emails a day. Our Resend vs Postmark and Loops vs Resend pages cover its neighbours.
6. MailerSend: bulk and templates, at a higher list price
MailerSend's pricing page shows Free at 500 emails a month (100 daily API requests, 1 domain, 1 user), Hobby at $6.30 a month for 5,000 emails, Starter at $31.50 a month for 50,000 emails and Professional at $99 a month for 50,000 with unlimited users and domains and 150 SMS. Those are yearly-billing displays: Starter is $378 billed yearly. Its own FAQ example puts 100,000 emails on Starter at a $68 subscription.
On price MailerSend loses to SendGrid: $31.50 against $19.95 at 50,000 emails, and $68 against $34.95 at 100,000. The case for it is the feature mix the page lists (email API, SMTP relay, bulk emailing, verification, analytics and an SMS API) in a cheap per-domain plan, with an overage of $1.30 per 1,000 on Starter. Pick it if you want email and SMS from one vendor, or have many client domains, since Starter allows 10 and Professional is unlimited. Skip it if the aim is lower cost.
Alternatives for the Marketing Campaigns side
7. Brevo: sends and storage, not contact tiers
Brevo's pricing page prices by email volume. Free is 300 emails a day with storage for up to 100,000 contacts, Starter is $9 and Standard is $18 from 5,000 emails a month, and Professional is $499 from 150,000 sends, with up to 2 million contacts. Standard adds automation, A/B testing and advanced reports; Starter has no daily limit. Compare that with SendGrid Marketing Campaigns, whose Free plan is 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month: Brevo's 300 a day is up to 9,000 in 30 days, but it counts differently, and its free plan is far more generous on contact storage.
The gain is one login for campaigns and application mail, something SendGrid sells as two products. The loss is the add-ons: the pricing page shows removing the Brevo logo as an add-on at $10.80 per month, and Brevo's help article puts each extra marketing seat on Standard at $9 a month. Migrating the marketing side means exporting contacts and custom fields, rebuilding automations, and re-adding your sender domain. Read Brevo vs SendGrid for the head-to-head.
8. Mailchimp: a campaign tool priced by contacts
Mailchimp's pricing page lists Free at 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day), Essentials from $13, Standard from $20 and Premium from $350, each for the 500-contact starting selector. Higher contact bands for Standard read $100 for 2,501 to 5,000 contacts (up to 60,000 emails a month), $135 for 5,001 to 10,000 contacts (up to 120,000) and $230 for 10,001 to 15,000 contacts. Monthly sends scale as 10 times contacts on Essentials, 12 times on Standard and 15 times on Premium.
The $20 Standard entry price is a little above the $15 that Marketing Campaigns shows for Basic. The reason to pay it is a marketing team that values Mailchimp's editor, templates and integration list. I did not record SendGrid's Basic price at a 10,000-contact selector, so I make no direct comparison at that size. Mailchimp's Free plan is small, so any list over 250 contacts needs a paid plan. Migration is straightforward for contacts and tags; reports and automations do not carry over.
9. MailerLite: the modest newsletter option
MailerLite's pricing page offers Free for 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month with 2 seats, and monthly-billed Comfort at $19 for 1,000 subscribers, $49 for 5,000, $89 for 10,000 and $179 for 25,000. Power is $39, $69, $129 and $239 at the same stops. Comfort allows 10 times the tier ceiling in emails each month, so the 10,000 tier sends up to 100,000.
Use it when the work is newsletters and a short welcome series, with no application mail attached. It will not replace the Email API half of SendGrid; keep that on Postmark, SES or Mailgun. The page says its data storage centre is in the European Union with an ISO 27001 certificate, which can matter for a European audience. Migration is a CSV of subscribers into groups, a rebuilt form and a re-tested unsubscribe link.
Cost at four sizes
| Emails per month | SendGrid Email API | Amazon SES | Postmark Basic | Mailgun | SparkPost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50,000 | Essentials $19.95 | $8 | $55 | Foundation $35 | Startup $15 |
| 100,000 | Essentials $34.95 or Pro $89.95 | $16 | Not a stop | Foundation $75 or Scale $90 | Startup $30 or Growth $80 |
| 250,000 | Not a read stop | $40 | Not a stop | Scale $215 | Growth $175 |
| 300,000 | Pro $249 | $48 | $245 | Not a read stop | Not a read stop |
SES cells are emails multiplied by $0.16 per 1,000; every other cell is a plan price from that vendor's own selector or slider, read on 7 October 2026. Where a vendor shows no stop at that size the cell says so rather than extrapolating.
Switching from SendGrid
Start by splitting what you send. Anything triggered by a user action (receipts, resets) is Email API traffic; anything you send to a list is Marketing Campaigns. Move one before the other, and move the transactional stream first, since its templates are usually fewer and its failures are noticed immediately.
What exports: contacts, custom fields and lists leave as CSV, and you should also pull your bounce, unsubscribe and spam-complaint lists. What does not: dynamic templates, marketing automations, signup forms and historical statistics need rebuilding, so screenshot the reports you rely on before cancelling. Event webhooks are the sharpest edge: every vendor sends its own payload shape and security scheme, so each handler needs a code change and a replay test before cutover.
Consent records and suppressions come before any send. Import bounced, unsubscribed and spam-complaint addresses as suppressed on day one, and keep the opt-in timestamp and source for each contact if you have them. The email deliverability guide and the bulk email sending guide explain warm-up when you change senders, and the broadcast guide covers list hygiene.
For the pilot, authenticate the new vendor's domain with its own DKIM selector while SendGrid stays live, route a low-risk transactional message through the new path for a week, then a small broadcast slice. Look at transactional email options if you are rebuilding that side, and the alternatives index for other vendors.
Which one to choose
- Choose Postmark if one bill and one account for both mail types is the point: $245 at 300,000 emails on Basic.
- Choose Amazon SES if cost decides and you have an engineer: $0.16 per 1,000.
- Choose Mailgun if inbound routing, 30-day logs or EU sending decide: $215 at 250,000 on Scale.
- Choose SparkPost if you want SendGrid's ladder with lower prices, and accept its 50-a-day free cap.
- Choose Resend if your team wants a code-first vendor with a contact-priced marketing tab.
- Choose MailerSend if SMS or many client domains matter more than the lowest price.
- Choose Brevo, Mailchimp or MailerLite when it is the Marketing Campaigns half you are replacing: Brevo for volume pricing, Mailchimp for the ecosystem, MailerLite for a low bill.
FAQ
Is there a free SendGrid alternative?
Several have a free plan: Amazon SES for 6 months with up to $200 credits for new AWS customers, Mailgun at 100 emails a day, Brevo at 300 emails a day, and Resend at 3,000 emails a month. SendGrid's own Email API offers a 100-a-day trial for 60 days, and its Marketing Campaigns free plan allows 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails a month.
Why does SendGrid cost more at 100,000 emails on Pro?
The pricing page shows Essentials at $34.95 and Pro at $89.95 for 100,000 emails. Pro's extras include dedicated IPs, so you are paying for infrastructure and features rather than volume. If you do not need a dedicated IP, Essentials is the cheaper stop at that size.
Can one vendor replace both SendGrid products?
Yes. Postmark, Brevo and Resend each cover application mail and broadcasts in one account, though they price them differently: Postmark and Brevo by email volume, Resend by emails on one tab and contacts on the other. Run a pilot of both traffic types before moving everything.
Will my SendGrid templates and automations move?
No. Contacts and suppression lists export as files, but dynamic templates, automations and forms are rebuilt in the new tool. Budget a few days for webhooks and templates on the Email API side, longer for marketing automations.