SendGrid Alternatives for Email Sequences

SendGrid is two products, and the right exit depends on which one you are leaving. If it is Marketing Campaigns, whose Automation starts from list membership, locks most of a series once it is live and is missing from the Basic card, go to Loops. If it is the Email API, go to Postmark for transactional mail, or Resend if you want both halves from one vendor. Stay if you send transactional volume and want the low bill: Essentials reads $19.95 for 50,000 emails, level with Resend Pro and under Mailgun ($35) and Postmark ($55).

Which SendGrid are you leaving?

Twilio SendGrid sells the Email API, a developer-facing sender priced on monthly email volume, and Marketing Campaigns, a marketer-facing product priced on stored contacts and emails. The vendor says so on its Marketing Campaigns pricing page, which adds that emails sent through Marketing Campaigns are counted separately from emails sent through the Email API. Two products means two meters and, in practice, two sets of limits. This page is about the sequence side of both: what you give up leaving Automation, and what you do about the API sender behind your own app.

The Email API page lists Essentials from $19.95 a month for 50,000 to 100,000 emails, Pro from $89.95 for 100,000 to 2,500,000 and Premier on custom pricing, with a free trial of 100 emails a day for 60 days. Marketing Campaigns lists a free plan, Basic from $15, Advanced from $60 and Custom.

What a sequence is, inside each product

In Marketing Campaigns, a sequence is an Automation series. Per SendGrid's Get started with Automation guide you choose Welcome or Custom, set entry criteria (a list or a segment), set exit criteria (received everything, no longer meets the entry criteria, or meets a condition you build), pick an Unsubscribe Group, then add emails separated by waits set in days or hours. The steps in the guide include no if-then branch. It advises keeping a workflow to 10 messages because longer ones risk server timeouts and save failures. The Email API pricing page lists sending volume, email validation and dedicated IPs, with no automation features, so a series there is whatever your application or an outside scheduler decides to send, one API call at a time.

Why people leave: five points from SendGrid's own pages

1. Automation is not on every Marketing Campaigns plan. The cards on the pricing page list Automation for the free plan, Advanced and Custom, and not for Basic. SendGrid's support article on automation limitations states that Basic accounts need to upgrade to Advanced for it. At 10,000 contacts the selector reads $25 for Basic and $60 for Advanced.
2. A live Automation is mostly frozen. The same article lists what you cannot change once a series is live: entry and exit criteria, the list or segment, the intervals, the order of emails, adding or deleting emails, unsubscribe groups, categories and the IP pool. The workaround is to disable it, and even then intervals, order and deletions stay locked, so the real fix is duplicating the series.
3. Existing contacts cannot be dropped into a new series. The article says you cannot set an Automation live against a list that already holds contacts. You create a new empty list, set the series live, then add people, or export and re-upload the audience. A welcome series is easy to start; a re-engagement series for last year's signups is a chore.
4. Two meters, plus overage arithmetic. Marketing Campaigns plans carry a contact limit and an email limit (Basic gives 3 emails per contact of headroom, so 5,000 contacts include 15,000 emails), and the overage table lists $0.0040 per extra email or contact on the Basic 5K plan. Sending 18,000 emails there is 18,000 - 15,000 = 3,000 extra x $0.0040 = $12 on top of $15. The Email API has its own meter and says overages may apply.
5. Suppressed addresses burn credits. The suppression documentation says each email attempted to a suppressed address consumes one credit. Dirty lists cost money, not just reputation.

Seven destinations, ranked for SendGrid leavers

1. Loops: the default for leaving Marketing Campaigns

Loops puts every feature on every plan: the free plan covers up to 1,000 of your newest contacts and 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days, and paid plans read $99 at 9,998 subscribers and $249 at 49,989 on its pricing page. Paid plans include transactional sends to people outside your audience, and no seat fees are charged. Against SendGrid you gain one price instead of two meters; its pricing page lists no dedicated-IP option, which matters if you are leaving a Pro plan. At 10,000 contacts it is $99 against Advanced's $60, which is $39 a month more. Compare it with Resend in Loops vs Resend.

2. Resend: API-first like SendGrid, with marketing on a second tab

Resend's pricing page covers both halves. Transactional: free at 3,000 emails a month (100 a day); Pro $20 at 50,000 and $35 at 100,000; Scale $90 at 100,000 and $160 at 200,000. Marketing tab: free at 1,000 contacts with 10,000 automation runs and 3 segments, $80 at 10,000 contacts, $250 at 50,000 and $450 at 100,000. For a team already calling the SendGrid API from code, this is the smallest conceptual move. The lost item is SendGrid's marketer-oriented depth, such as 15 signup forms and 60 email-testing credits on Advanced.

3. Customer.io: when the sequence is the product

Essentials reads $100 at 5,000 profiles, $145 at 10,000 and $505+ at 50,000+, billed monthly, with transactional email in every plan and 1 million emails included (pricing page). Its billing documentation says a profile that exists at any point in a billing period counts even if deleted, so clean before importing from SendGrid. The page does not put managed deliverability on Essentials. Choose it if your series branch on behaviour; see Customer.io vs Loops.

4. Postmark: the best-defined exit for the Email API half

Postmark's pricing page reads Basic $15, Pro $16.50 and Platform $18 at 10,000 emails, $55, $60.50 and $66 at 50,000, $115, $126.50 and $138 at 125,000, and $245, $269.50 and $294 at 300,000. The free plan is 100 emails a month. Dedicated IPs start at $50 a month per IP and are offered at 300,000 emails a month or more on Pro or higher. It has no sequence tooling, so pair it with one of the tools above. Read Postmark vs SendGrid before you commit.

5. Mailgun: a like-for-like API sender with EU hosting

Mailgun's pricing page lists Basic from $15 for 10,000 emails, Foundation at $35 for 50,000 after a free first month (and $75 at 100,000), and Scale at $90 for 100,000, $215 at 250,000 and $400 at 500,000. It states US and EU sending from one account, and one dedicated IP comes with Foundation 100k, Growth and Scale plans, with extra IPs at $59 a month. See Mailgun's pricing page and SendGrid vs Mailgun. It is a sender, not a sequence builder.

6. Brevo: both halves, one volume meter

Brevo's free plan covers 300 emails a day, including transactional email, and Standard starts at $18 with marketing automation for unlimited contacts (help article). Its slider counts campaigns and transactional together, so a launch can eat your receipt headroom, and the 10,000-send tier stores up to 1,500 contacts. Dedicated IPs are an add-on on Professional ($499 a month and up) at $251 a year. Read Brevo's pricing page.

7. MailerLite: for newsletter-style series, not for APIs

Comfort reads $49 at 5,000 subscribers and $89 at 10,000, Power $69 and $129, with up to 100 steps per automation on Comfort and Power (pricing page and automation page). Transactional email is a separate product (MailerSend), so it replaces only the Marketing Campaigns half and costs more than Advanced at 10,000 ($89 against $60).

What each half costs, at three sizes

Email API first, in US dollars a month from each vendor's page on 7 October 2026. Cells say "no stop" where the vendor's selector has no matching reading.

At 100,000 emails, Essentials at $34.95 is $75 - $34.95 = $40.05 under Mailgun Foundation and 5 cents under Resend Pro. At 300,000 emails Pro at $249 is $4 above Postmark Basic ($245), $48 a year; but Pro includes dedicated IPs per its pricing page, while Postmark's IP starts at $50 a month and needs Pro, which reads $269.50 at 300,000: $269.50 + $50 = $319.50, or $70.50 more than SendGrid Pro.

Now the marketing half, by contacts. Brevo prices on sends, so its row assumes 2 emails per contact a month and uses the cheapest Standard tier that stores the list: 20,000 sends for 5,000 and 10,000 contacts, and 100,000 sends for 50,000 contacts.

At 10,000 contacts Advanced is $99 - $60 = $39 under Loops, $468 a year, and $80 - $60 = $20 under Resend Marketing, $240 a year. At 50,000 the three are level, $250, $249 and $250. Basic is cheaper than all of them at $120 (50,000 contacts), but without Automation it is a broadcast plan: the step to Advanced costs $250 - $120 = $130 a month, or $1,560 a year, at that size.

Taking lists and suppressions out of SendGrid

1. Export suppressions first. The contact management guide says to open Suppressions and, for every link under it (bounces, invalid emails, spam reports, group and global unsubscribes), use the gear menu and Export CSV, then merge the files yourself, so expect several downloads rather than one.
2. Treat group unsubscribes as a decision. SendGrid's Advanced Suppression Management lets a recipient leave one Unsubscribe Group or all mail (the global group). A person in only the "newsletter" group still receives your other groups. Most replacements keep one marketing status per person, so choose now whether a group unsubscribe means suppress from all marketing; the safe default is yes.
3. Export each contact list. From Marketing, Contacts, use a list's action menu and Export. SendGrid emails you when it is ready, you collect it from the Active Exports page, and the download lasts 12 hours from when you started it.
4. Do not rely on Automation state. None of the articles read describes exporting a series or where each contact sits in it, so rebuild the series in the new tool and decide who restarts at step one.
5. Re-point your event consumers. The Marketing Campaigns table lists an Event Webhook. If your app reads SendGrid events for bounces or unsubscribes, plan to rewrite that handler for the new vendor's event format before you switch the send path.

A cutover schedule built around SendGrid's quirks

Day 0: decide which half moves first, export all suppression lists and the contact lists, and record your plan and renewal date. Days 1 to 3: set up the new sender or tool, authenticate your sending domain there, and import suppressions before contacts. Days 4 to 7: build the first Automation replacement; if you are leaving a Pro plan with dedicated IPs, warm up the new route with your lowest-risk traffic rather than all of it. Days 8 to 14: send 10 percent of one transactional stream, such as receipts, through the new vendor and compare delivery. Day 15: start new signups in the new marketing tool and stop adding contacts to the old entry list; contacts already in a live series carry on, but do not disable the old Automation for long, because the guide says a re-enabled series only resumes for contacts whose interval has not elapsed. Days 16 to 26: raise transactional to 50 percent, then 100. Day 27: export suppressions once more and import the delta. Day 30: cancel. More general guidance in the migration guide, with Stripe email integration if billing emails are among what you move.

When staying on SendGrid is the better call

Stay if you send 100,000 transactional emails a month for $34.95, already have webhooks, templates and IP reputation built on SendGrid, and your sequences are three or four fixed-timing emails that Advanced handles for $60 at 10,000 contacts. Rebuilding that for a saving of a few dollars is poor value. Also stay if you never edit a series after launch, since the locked-after-live rule then never bites. The wider field is in the alternatives directory and the tools directory.

Questions about leaving SendGrid

Does SendGrid have email sequences?

Only in Marketing Campaigns. Its Automation feature sends a drip series to contacts when they are added to a linked list or segment, with waits set in hours or days and an exit rule. The Email API has no sequence feature on its pricing page: it sends what your code tells it to, so any sequence is a scheduler you write or a separate tool that calls the API.

Which Marketing Campaigns plan do I need for a drip series?

On the pricing page the free plan, Advanced and Custom cards list Automation and the Basic card does not, and SendGrid's support article on automation limits says Basic accounts must upgrade to Advanced to use it. Advanced reads $60 a month at 10,000 contacts against $25 for Basic, so a drip series adds $35 a month, or $420 a year, at that size.

Can I move marketing and keep SendGrid for transactional mail?

You can, and many teams do, because the Email API and Marketing Campaigns are priced and counted separately. The catch is suppressions: an unsubscribe in the new marketing tool does not reach SendGrid's global unsubscribe group, and a SendGrid group unsubscribe does not reach the new tool. Decide which system owns opt-outs for which mail and keep the exported suppression files with your records.

Do unsubscribes and bounces export from SendGrid?

Yes, but separately from contacts. SendGrid's contact management article says to open Suppressions, export each list shown as a CSV from the gear menu, and merge the files yourself, and its lists export arrives by email notification with a download that lasts 12 hours. That makes the suppression files the first thing to export and the last thing to re-export before you cancel.

Do emails to suppressed addresses cost me anything?

SendGrid's suppression documentation says each email you attempt to send to a suppressed address consumes one credit from your account. If you have not cleaned bounces, invalid addresses and spam reports out of your lists, you pay for the attempts, which matters most on the Email API where the plan is priced by volume.