Integrations · SendGrid

SendGrid
without the markup.

Ubiquitous, well-documented, and honest about what shared IPs cost you.

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Best for teams who want the most documented option
At a glance

SendGrid, in six lines.

Pricing checked against the provider's own page on 1 August 2026 and stated as an approximation — always confirm current rates before you commit.

Provider type
sendgrid
Approx. cost
Essentials and Pro tiers priced by monthly volume, with per-email overage above the included allowance. Materially cheaper than Postmark, materially dearer than SES. Confirm on the pricing page.
Two products
Email API (priced per send) and Marketing Campaigns (priced per contact) are separate purchases. For SendNectar you want the Email API.
Setup effort
Low — verify a domain, generate an API key
Dedicated IPs
Available on higher tiers; SendGrid suggests roughly one IP per 3–4M messages per day
Support
A paid add-on at every tier — budget for it separately
Best fit
Teams who value documentation and ecosystem over per-message cost
Honest assessment

Where it wins, where it does not.

Strengths
  • The most widely deployed email API there is, which means every integration question you have has already been answered somewhere.
  • Genuinely excellent documentation and SDK coverage across every language you are likely to use.
  • Mature event webhooks for delivered, open, click, bounce and complaint — which is what SendNectar's suppression handling consumes.
  • Straightforward domain authentication with clear DNS instructions.
Trade-offs
  • Support is a paid add-on at every tier. On the cheaper plans you are relying on documentation and community answers.
  • Shared IP pools mean your reputation is affected by co-tenants. SendGrid's own documentation says so plainly — worth reading before you assume a shared pool is fine.
  • Substantially more expensive per message than SES once volume is meaningful.
  • The Twilio acquisition has folded SendGrid's identity into a larger product surface, and the docs and pricing pages now redirect between two domains.
Setup

Connecting SendGrid.

01

Pick the Email API, not Marketing Campaigns

SendGrid sells two separate products. Marketing Campaigns is a bundled platform priced per contact and duplicates what SendNectar does. You want the Email API, priced per send.

02

Authenticate your sending domain

Add the domain in SendGrid's sender authentication flow and publish the CNAME records it generates. Use a subdomain such as news.yourbrand.com to keep marketing reputation separate from corporate mail.

03

Create a scoped API key

Generate a key with Mail Send permission only — not full access. If it leaks, the blast radius is sending rather than account control.

04

Connect it in SendNectar

Add a provider connection with type sendgrid, set its purpose to marketing, transactional, or both, and submit the key. Credentials go to a dedicated endpoint and are encrypted server-side; the API never returns them afterwards.

05

Run the connection test

Validate against real health checks before production mail moves through it. Then create a sender profile pinned to the verified domain and provider identity.

06

Decide on a dedicated IP

If you are sending serious volume, a dedicated IP removes the co-tenant problem. Below roughly 100,000 messages a month it usually is not worth it — a dedicated IP with low volume struggles to build reputation at all.

When SendGrid is the right call

Choose SendGrid when integration surface matters more than per-message cost. It is the default answer in most engineering teams, which means the library exists, the Stack Overflow answer exists, and nobody has to learn anything unfamiliar.

That is worth real money on a small team, and it is the honest reason to pick it over SES despite the price difference.

The shared pool question

SendGrid’s lower tiers put you on shared IP pools, and their own documentation is candid that a co-tenant’s behaviour affects your reputation.

This is not a criticism unique to SendGrid — it is true of every shared pool everywhere, and most providers are less forthcoming about it. But it is the single most important thing to understand before you commit, because it is precisely the class of problem you cannot fix from your side.

If your volume justifies a dedicated IP, take one. If it does not, understand that some portion of your deliverability is outside your control, and weight your provider choice accordingly.

Two products, one confusing name

SendGrid sells an Email API priced per send and a Marketing Campaigns product priced per contact. They are billed separately and they are not the same thing.

For SendNectar you want the Email API. Marketing Campaigns is a bundled platform that overlaps almost entirely with what SendNectar does — you would be paying twice for audience management and getting neither system’s full picture.

Notes for multi-brand senders

Authenticate a domain per brand. SendGrid will happily send for several brands from one authenticated domain. Do not let it — reputation accrues per domain, so a shared identity means the least careful brand sets the ceiling.

Use separate API keys per brand where your setup allows it. It costs nothing and it means revoking access for one client does not interrupt the others.

Watch the account-level view. As with most providers, sustained bounce and complaint problems are assessed against the account, not the individual brand — which is a strong argument for keeping SendNectar’s frequency caps and suppression enforcement in the path.

Other providers

Compare the alternatives

Amazon SESHigh volume on a tight budgetRead on →PostmarkOperators who value setup speed and supportRead on →MailgunDeveloper teams who need inbound routingRead on →

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