SendGrid alternatives

Reachkit makes a cold email tool. It isn’t on this list, because it doesn’t send app or transactional email, which is what most people use SendGrid for. I checked every published price on this page in October 2026, on each vendor’s own site.

Pick by the job SendGrid does for you today:

• A like-for-like email API: Mailgun, with a free plan of 100 emails a day and paid plans from $15 a month.
• Password resets and receipts that must arrive: Postmark, which keeps app email and bulk email on separate streams.
• The lowest cost per email at high volume: Amazon SES, if someone on your team is at home in AWS.
• A free plan that never runs out, or SMTP relay with a person on the phone: SMTP2GO.
• Replacing SendGrid’s address validation: Kickbox for checking signups in real time, ZeroBounce for validation with monitoring.
• Testing designed emails before a send: Litmus, sold through sales.

If price is your only complaint, look at Twilio Email before you migrate anything. Twilio sells it next to SendGrid, on the same underlying technology, and charges $0.0013 per email with no base fee. Sending 4,000 a month comes to about $5.20.

If your app sends email through SendGrid’s API or SMTP relay, entries 1 to 4 take over that job. All four require opt-in lists, as Twilio does.

Mailgun is an email API and SMTP relay that Sinch bought in 2021 as part of Pathwire. It sends, receives and logs email for software, from US or EU data centers, and passes incoming mail to your app through inbound routes.

Price (October 2026): a free plan sends 100 emails a day with one domain, one user and a day of logs, no card needed. Basic is $15 for 10,000. Foundation costs $35 for 50,000 or $75 for 100,000, and Scale runs from $90 for 100,000 to $1,250 for 2.5 million. Foundation and Scale start with a free month.

Strengths:

• A dedicated IP comes with Foundation 100k and Scale, and users are unlimited from Foundation.
• Mailgun’s pricing pages list address validation, inbox placement tests (Optimize, from $49 a month) and email previews (Inspect, from $99) as add-ons.

Drawbacks:

• More than one Capterra review tells of an account switched off with no warning or reason given, and Mailgun’s policy says whether an account breaks its rules is up to its “sole discretion”.
• Phone and chat support start on Scale; lower plans get tickets.

Versus SendGrid: SendGrid is cheaper at 50,000 emails ($19.95 against $35), and at 100,000 on shared IPs ($34.95 on Essentials). With a dedicated IP at 100,000, Mailgun costs $75 against SendGrid Pro’s $89.95, though extra IPs cost $59 rather than $30. Mailgun rates 4.1 on Trustpilot from 1,539 reviews, against SendGrid’s 1.1. Mailgun profile

Postmark sends app-triggered email, like password resets, receipts and alerts, through an API or SMTP. It has been sending since 2010 and has been owned by ActiveCampaign since 2022. Opted-in newsletters go through a separate Broadcast stream, and Postmark says the two kinds of traffic never mix, IP ranges included.

Price (October 2026): Postmark’s free Developer plan allows 100 emails a month, meant for testing your integration. Three paid plans are priced by volume: for 10,000 a month, $15 (Basic), $16.50 (Pro) or $18 (Platform). For 50,000 they’re $55, $60.50 and $66, and for 1.5 million $775 to $930. There’s no annual billing, and emails you don’t use expire with the month.

Strengths:

• Every plan keeps 45 days of message history, against 3 or 7 days of searchable activity on SendGrid’s Email API.
• G2 reviewers rate its ease of setup above 9 out of 10.

Drawbacks:

• A person reviews each new account, and until then it can only email addresses on your own verified domains. Postmark says that takes under 24 hours on weekdays; some reviewers report waiting longer.
• Trustpilot shows 2.0 from 47 reviews, where complaints center on slow support, approvals and closed accounts. G2 (4.6) and Capterra (4.7) rate it highly.

Versus SendGrid: Postmark costs more per email at volume ($55 against $19.95 at 50,000). A dedicated IP is a $50 add-on on Pro and Platform, and only from 300,000 emails a month; Postmark says its shared pools work best for most senders. Postmark profile

Amazon SES is the email-sending service inside Amazon Web Services: an API and SMTP endpoint your code sends through, with inbound mail handled by rules you set up. It has no newsletter editor and no reply inbox.

Price (October 2026): billing is per email. AWS added plans on July 21, 2026, and a new account now lands on Essentials, $0.16 per 1,000. You can move to the pay-as-you-go à la carte rate, $0.10 per 1,000, whenever you like. Pro costs $105 a month per region plus $0.22 per 1,000, Enterprise $500 plus $0.23. A standard dedicated IP costs $24.95 a month à la carte. AWS’s July 2026 announcement ends the SES free tier for new customers (its SES FAQ still describes the old one); AWS offers up to $200 of general credits.

Strengths:

• 100,000 emails a month cost $10 à la carte or $16 on Essentials, with no contract.
• The review thresholds are public: AWS looks at an account once bounces reach 5% or complaints 0.1%.

Drawbacks:

• Every account starts in a sandbox that only sends to verified addresses, 200 a day. Getting out is a manual review, and AWS promises a first reply within 96 hours.
• Setup is developer work. A Capterra reviewer calls it “not beginner-friendly”, and G2 reviewers name difficult setup and weak support.

Versus SendGrid: at 100,000 emails, SES costs $10 to $16 against $34.95 on SendGrid Essentials 100k. Its ratings hold up on review sites: 4.3 on G2 from about 200 reviews and 4.7 on Capterra from 123. Amazon SES profile

SMTP2GO is an SMTP relay and email API from Christchurch, New Zealand, running since 2006. It delivers mail from apps, Outlook, printers and scanners, so it suits IT teams and managed service providers as well as developers.

Price (October 2026): the free plan sends 1,000 emails a month, at most 200 a day, and never expires. Starter is $15 a month ($150 a year) for 10,000, with extra emails at $1.20 per 1,000. Professional is $75 a month ($750 a year) for 100,000 and includes a dedicated IP. Volumes in between are priced on a slider, so set it to your volume. Premier, over 3 million a month, is custom. Paid plans come with a full refund within 30 days.

Strengths:

• Ticket, chat and phone support on every paid plan, from $15.
• On paid plans, unlimited users and sender domains plus subaccounts, which suits one account relaying for many clients.

Drawbacks:

• New accounts are reviewed after their first 1,000 emails, and mail over that waits in a queue until SMTP2GO has checked the account.
• Low-star Trustpilot reviews keep returning to unexpected suspensions, in a profile that’s otherwise 4.8 from 1,911 reviews.

Versus SendGrid: SMTP2GO’s free plan lasts, where SendGrid’s trial ends after 60 days. At 100,000 emails a month, Professional’s $75 includes a dedicated IP, against $89.95 on SendGrid Pro, and extra IPs cost $19 a month against SendGrid’s $30. SMTP2GO profile

SendGrid’s Pro plan includes 2,500 address validations. If your new provider’s plan doesn’t include any, entries 5 and 6 cover it, and clean lists matter: SES reviews accounts at 5% bounces, and Postmark’s terms require a bounce rate under 10%.

Kickbox is an email verification service owned by Ziff Davis, which bought it in 2020 under its old name, J2 Global. It checks uploaded lists, lists pulled from 28 integrations such as Mailchimp and HubSpot, or single addresses through its API as they arrive in a signup form.

Price (October 2026): the first 100 checks are free. After that you buy credit packs: $5 for 500, $70 for 10,000, $500 for 100,000 and $2,999 for a million. There’s no subscription and no seat fee on the pricing page.

Strengths:

• If Kickbox can’t give a clear answer for an address, the credit comes back.
• Sandbox API keys spend no credits, and the API limits are published: 25 parallel requests per IP and 8,000 a minute.

Drawbacks:

• Accept-all domains, which take mail for any address, come back as risky rather than settled.
• Credits expire one year after purchase, and unused ones aren’t refunded.

Versus SendGrid: you pay per check instead of getting validations with a plan, and SendGrid’s Essentials plan includes none. Kickbox rates 4.5 on G2 from about 660 reviews. Kickbox profile

ZeroBounce is an email validation service from Santa Barbara, California, that also sells inbox placement tests, blacklist and DMARC monitoring, and inbox warmup. You check a list by upload, one address at a time, or through its API.

Price (October 2026): signups with a business email domain get 100 free checks every month. Credit packs start at $39 for 2,000 and reach $129 for 10,000 and $649 for 100,000. ZeroBounce ONE costs $99 a month, or $79 billed yearly, for 10,000 credits plus 100 placement tests, 10 blacklist monitors and one DMARC domain each month.

Strengths:

• Unknown results cost nothing.
• ZeroBounce says standard checks now give a valid or invalid verdict on many catch-all addresses at Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and major security gateways. Its newsroom dates this to June 2026, its facts page to December 2025.

Drawbacks:

• Small packs are expensive: $19.50 per 1,000 at the $39 minimum, and $129 for 10,000 against $70 at Kickbox.
• Credit sales are final, and its terms say that on accounts created after June 1, 2026, credits lapse two years after the latest purchase unless a ONE subscription is running. The pricing page still says credits never expire.

Versus SendGrid: SendGrid includes 2,500 validations with Pro and 5,000 with Premier, while ZeroBounce sells them with no sending plan attached. Ratings are high: 4.8 on Capterra from 597 reviews and 4.8 on Trustpilot from 2,136. ZeroBounce profile

If you built newsletters in SendGrid’s Marketing Campaigns and used its email testing credits, this is the specialist tool for that step.

Litmus is a pre-send testing platform. It shows how an email renders in more than 100 email clients, many with dark mode, checks links and images, and runs a spam test against 25+ filters. It doesn’t send: you keep an email provider and send your test to Litmus. Validity bought Litmus in April 2025 and now sells it inside Validity Engage.

Price (October 2026): not published; the pricing page is a sales form. Core, the last plan with a list price, was $500 a month as of August 2025. Buyers who shared their deals with Vendr paid a median of $17,500 a year (61 purchases, data updated February 2026).

Strengths:

• Wide client coverage, and since February 2026 Litmus says plans have no seat limit and unlimited seed tests.
• Inbox placement monitoring now runs inside Litmus, and Validity’s blocklist and sender reputation tools are part of the same Validity Engage suite.

Drawbacks:

• No public price and no trial on its site.
• Under its standard terms, annual plans auto-renew with a 7% increase each year unless your contract says otherwise, and unused time isn’t refunded.

Versus SendGrid: SendGrid includes testing credits with some plans (60 a month on Email API Pro), and its Marketing Campaigns pricing sells more from $18 a month for 30. Litmus is a separate contract at a much higher price, so it fits teams where a broken layout reaches a large list. For a self-serve option, Mailgun Inspect costs $99 a month for 1,000 previews. Litmus profile

Start with what you send and how much:

• A few alerts a day or a side project. SMTP2GO’s free plan (1,000 a month) or Mailgun’s (100 a day). Postmark’s 100 a month is meant for testing.
• An app sending tens of thousands of emails. Mailgun or Postmark, priced at your own volume. At 50,000 a month, SendGrid Essentials ($19.95) still costs less than Mailgun ($35) or Postmark ($55).
• Millions a month. Amazon SES, if you have a developer who can handle the sandbox, DNS and AWS permissions.
• Newsletters from Marketing Campaigns. The four senders are built for email your code sends; Mailgun’s FAQ puts it as “There’s no send button in Mailgun.” Postmark’s Broadcast stream and Mailgun’s template builder (from Foundation) handle opted-in newsletters, but you may still want an email marketing tool for editing and signup forms.
• Cold outreach. Switching providers won’t help. Mailgun, Postmark, SES and SMTP2GO all require recipients who opted in, which rules out bought lists, as Twilio does.

Whichever you choose, authenticate your domain on the new provider and send a small share of traffic through it before you move everything. More on SendGrid’s plans and limits in our SendGrid profile.

I’d only move if you can name what SendGrid is costing you. If it’s the lost free plan, SMTP2GO’s free tier covers a few alerts a day. If it’s an account review that stopped your password resets, Postmark or Mailgun are where I’d test first (both review accounts too), and I’d keep my lists clean with a verifier either way. If it’s the bill at millions of emails, SES is hard to beat on price.

One case none of these solves: cold email. If that’s why SendGrid stopped you, it needs real Google or Microsoft inboxes on separate domains, which is what I built Reachkit for (how that setup works).

Related: Mailgun, Postmark and Google Workspace alternatives.