If you’re looking for an email API service, you probably seek a solution that offers a compelling blend of features, reliability, and cost-effectiveness. Maybe you’re considering SendGrid, as a prominent player on the email market, or you’re using their services for a while and want a change. Either way, Elastic Email is a strong contender, presenting several advantages that make our email API an excellent SendGrid alternative.
In this article, we’ll delve into the key reasons why Elastic Email’s Starter plan stands out as a viable and often superior choice over SendGrid’s Essentials plan, drawing insights from a detailed comparison of their features and pricing structures.
Table of Contents
Cost-effectiveness, especially for mid-volume sending
One of the most immediate and significant advantages of Elastic Email lies in our pricing model, especially for users with mid-range email sending volumes. If you directly compare the Starter and Essentials plans, Elastic Email offers a highly attractive price point starting at $19/month for 50,000 emails. In contrast, SendGrid’s Essentials plan for 50,000 emails costs $19.95/month. Whereas such a difference is minimal, it grows with your sending needs. If you want to send up to 100,000 emails per month, you’ll pay $29 using Elastic Email and $34.95 using SendGrid.
Not to mention the SendGrid Essentials plan ends at the 100,000 emails tier. If you want to send more emails, you need to upgrade your plan to the Pro plan. The next tier is at 300,000 and costs $249. At Elastic Email, you can stay on the Starter plan no matter how many emails you send. There are tiers at 150,000, 200,000, and 250,000 before you hit the 300,000 email sending limit. And even that, to be able to send up to 300,000 emails per month, it’ll cost you only $109! The pricing scales intuitively and steadily, allowing you to send even 10,000,000 emails per month (or even more if you ask for a custom offer).
50,000
$19.95 (Essentials)$19
100,000
$34.95 (Essentials)$29
150,000
–$59
200,000
–$79
250,000
–$99
300,000
$249 (Pro)$109
*Elastic Email “Starter” plan
As for free options, both Elastic Email and SendGrid offer free versions of their platforms. However, with Elastic Email, you can benefit from it forever, as long as you need to test out our functionalities. If you want to start sending emails to your audience, you need to upgrade your plan. In SendGrid, you get 100 emails/day to send, but it’s a free trial lasting only 60 days. After that, you need to upgrade your plan.
Enhanced Control and Transparency with Infrastructure
At Elastic Email, we distinguish ourselves by emphasizing our in-house Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) and our own DMARC generator. This commitment to owning and managing core infrastructure components suggests a higher degree of control over the email delivery process and authentication mechanisms. SendGrid also utilizes its own proprietary, cloud-based MTA to manage email delivery. However, Elastic Email stands out because of our own DMARC generator. It’s extremely helpful given the authentication requirements of companies such as Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo. It could be a differentiator for organizations that value direct oversight and transparency in how their emails are handled, and for those who prefer a provider that offers tools for advanced email authentication.
Broader API language support for developers
For developers, API language support is a crucial factor in choosing an email service provider. At Elastic Email, we can boast API libraries for an impressive 12 programming languages, offering a wider range of options compared to the 7 languages explicitly listed for SendGrid’s quickstarts. This broader support means that developers working with a more diverse set of programming languages, or those utilizing less common frameworks, may find Elastic Email to be a more accommodating and developer-friendly platform. The availability of comprehensive libraries across a wider array of languages can significantly streamline integration processes and reduce development time, making Elastic Email a more versatile choice for a broader developer community.
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World-class quality 24/7 human customer support
Reliable customer service is critically important when using an email API service. While technical capabilities of the API are the core offering, excellent customer support is what differentiates a tool and gives users a sense of assistance and care. And Elastic Email can pride itself on the outstanding customer support – available 24/7, human, and free, from day one. Whether you’re using the free version of our email API or the paid plans, you can reach out to our customer service team via email or chat. We also have a lot of positive feedback as proof of the high quality of our customer support:
Bradley spent a long time walking me through some of the intricacies of fixing my DNS records. He replied in minutes and stayed responsive until the issue was fixed. He was fantastic. Could not have been more helpful. Top class customer support. – Rob
What makes it excellent is the great customer service that has responded quickly when we needed help – IT Hippoland
The customer service is amazing, they respond within minutes even after the jet, all the executives are helpful and they make sure your issue is resolved quickly– Parag N
SendGrid also offers customer support, but it’s only ticket support on the free trial. Its Essentials plan includes “Ticket & Live Chat” support, providing direct access to their support team through these channels. However, looking at reviews on platforms like Trustpilot, SendGrid’s customers often address issues with difficulty contacting support or getting timely responses, a lack of helpful support resolution, and limited support channels at lower tiers, as well as the inability to escalate issues quickly.
Elastic Email vs. SendGrid – features comparison
Email API & SMTP Relay
Email Designer
Free Email Templates
Suppressions Management
Email Verification Service
Email Log Storage
Detailed Documentation
DMARC Generator
API Libraries & SDKs
7 (PHP, Python, Node.js, Java, C#, Go, Ruby)12 (Typescript Angular, Typescript Axios, Ruby, Java, Go, Rust, Bash, C#, PHP, Perl, JavaScript, Python)
Customer Support
24/7 Ticket & Chat24/7 Email & Live Chat Support
Features comparison for SendGrid’s “Essentials” plan and Elastic Email “Starter” plan
Let us also point out that both Elastic Email and SendGrid offer email marketing products apart from email API. Our Email Marketing product also offers access to email API and SMTP relay. If you’re considering choosing this product, check our email marketing pricing and feature list.
How to migrate from SendGrid to Elastic Email
What to migrate from SendGrid to Elastic Email? Congratulations and welcome on board. We want to make the switch as seamless and hassle-free as possible, so we prepared for you an API Migration Guide. We will walk you through all the essential steps to integrate with our email API and start sending.
Elastic Email – your best SendGrid alternative
In conclusion, while SendGrid’s Essentials plan remains a powerful and widely used email service, Elastic Email’s API Starter plan presents a compelling alternative that offers distinct advantages in several key areas. For businesses and developers, Elastic Email’s API Starter plan stands out as a robust, affordable, reliable, and often more advantageous choice for their email sending needs.
Ula Chwesiuk
Ula is a content creator at Elastic Email. She is passionate about marketing, creative writing and language learning. Outside of work, Ula likes to travel, try new recipes and go to concerts.
