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SendGrid

Twilio's email API and marketing platform for sending at scale.

Transactional email
Website Official pricing
Price
From $19.95/month (Essentials)
Free plan
No
Setup
Needs a developer
Up and running
An afternoon to send the first email, once the domain DNS records are in place.

What SendGrid is for

SendGrid is Twilio's email service: your app calls it to send transactional email (login codes, receipts, alerts), and a separate product, Marketing Campaigns, sends newsletters with a visual editor. It handles volume well and sits on the same Twilio account as SMS and WhatsApp, but it no longer has a free plan, only a 60-day trial.

How it plugs into your product

  1. 1Create an account (the 60-day trial starts right away) and authenticate your domain by adding the DNS records SendGrid gives you.
  2. 2Create an API key with send permission and keep it on the server.
  3. 3Send from your backend through the API or SMTP, using dynamic templates if you want marketing to edit the layout.
  4. 4Upgrade to a paid plan before day 60, or every integration using your API keys stops sending.

Does it fit your idea?

It fits if

  • A SaaS that already uses Twilio for SMS or WhatsApp verification and wants email on the same bill.
  • A product sending 50,000 to 100,000 transactional emails a month, where $19.95 to $34.95 a month is cheap per email.
  • A team that will grow into dedicated IPs and many teammates on the Pro plan.

Look elsewhere if

  • You are validating an idea and want email free for months: the trial ends at day 60 and sending stops.
  • You need to look back more than 3 days to debug a missing email without paying for Pro.
  • You want one simple product for receipts and newsletters: here they are two plans billed separately.

What people only find out after building

Read this before you build on it. Each item links to the official page that says so.

  • There is no free plan anymore. The trial sends 100 emails a day for 60 days; when it ends, every integration using your API keys stops sending until you upgrade.

    Official source: support.sendgrid.com

  • The old free plans were retired in 2025: sending was paused and accounts with more than 100 contacts had them deleted, with no way back after upgrading. A sign of how fast a free tier can go.

    Official source: twilio.com

  • Essentials keeps only 3 days of activity history and has no dedicated IP; 7 days and an included IP start at Pro, from $89.95/month.

    Official source: twilio.com

  • Downgrading Marketing Campaigns to the free plan deletes every contact in the account, so export first.

    Official source: twilio.com

Price

From $19.95/month (Essentials)

No permanent free plan; a 60-day trial sends 100 emails a day.

Free tier
60-day trial, 100/day
Price for 50k emails/month
$19.95/month (Essentials, 50k)
Setup
REST API, SMTP and SDKs; dynamic templates

Checked on Oct 28, 2026 · official pricing

What it costs in practice

A SaaS sending 30,000 transactional emails a month fits Essentials 50k: $19.95/month. At 100,000 it moves to $34.95. Rough estimate; newsletters are billed on top.

Estimate from the official price. Check it before you decide.

At a glance

  • Free plan: no
  • Open source: no

“Not stated” means the official site doesn’t say.

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