Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing SendGrid vs MailChimp, the Slant community recommends MailChimp for most people. In the question“What are the best email marketing software (SaaS)?” MailChimp is ranked 1st while SendGrid is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose MailChimp is:
With up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month, MailChimp can be used for free.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Excellent analytics
SendGrid offers amazing analytics and reports. You can check which messages are delivered, which are marked as spam and much more. SendGrid also lets you download the data in order to look through it locally.
Pro Great support for beginners and experienced users
If you are just getting started with email marketing and transactional emails or if you get stuck somewhere, SendGrid includes amazing videos and guides to help you work out any problem you may have. What's more, it also has phone, chat and email support available 24/7.
Pro Both newsletter and transactional emails
Usually when choosing a service to send your application's emails you need two. One to send the newsletter or news and promotions from the marketing team and the other to send you application's automatic emails and messages.
With SendGrid you don't have to choose two because it doubles both as a transactional and marketing platform at once.
Pro Has a free tier
12,000 free e-mails per month.
Pro Easy to use API
The API is very easy to use and very intuitive. On top of that, the documentation for the API is complete and very useful, covering everything you need to know.
Pro Free plan
With up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month, MailChimp can be used for free.
Pro Clean, easy to use UI
MailChimp packs a lot of functionality in a clean, usability-focused user interface.
Pro Detailed tracking
MailChimp offers detailed tracking reports so you know how well your newsletter fared.
Pro Easily integrates with other services
MailChimp offers an easy way to integrate with an impressive number of services.
Pro Multi-user accounts
MailChimp can be used by multiple people and offers control over who can edit and view what.
Pro Segmentation
You can split your contacts into groups to send focused newsletters.
Pro Knowledgebase
MailChimp provides videos and step by step instructions supplemented by images for common tasks, offers guidelines and insight into security and spam lawsuits, shares marketing reports, offers live chat support, etc.
Pro RSS-to-email
MailChimp can automate sending out a newsletter that's populated by content from your RSS feed. Create a template and control how much of that content and how often is sent out.
Pro Good form customization options
Easy to use, detailed form customization options.
Pro Free image hosting
You can upload an unlimited amount of images each up to 10MB in size.
Pro Geolocation
MailChimp allows delivering mail based on where the recipient resides.
Pro A/B testing
Decide whether you want to test for best subject lines, from names, delivery dates and times, then choose the size of your test group and MailChimp will perform the test and send the winning result to the rest of your readers.
Pro Delivery by time zone
You can set up a campaign to send out e-mails based on time zones.
Pro Mobile apps
iOS and Android mobile applications are available.
Cons
Con Port 2525 is not encrypted
Most cloud providers block ports 25, 465, and 587. Port 2525 is commonly open but SendGrid only allows unencrypted messages via that port.
Note: There are also so some certificate issues (see https://support.sendgrid.com/hc/en-us/articles/200182008-Certificate-verification-failed-for-smtp-sendgrid-net)
Con Poor deliverability of emails
Con Not suitable for people without a technical background
There are some features which are missing by default from SendGrid (sign-up forms or follow-up messages just to name a few). In order to implement those in your emails, you need to know how to program because you have to code them yourself through SendGrid's API.
Con No sandbox/test mode
Does not support test keys that can be used to check integration with SendGrid and that cannot be used to send real e-mail out. It means that either you don't cannot verify that your integration with SendGrid works during development, or you have to use real credentials which should not be shared widely across your team.
Con Can't view contents of sent emails
They do not capture the sent emails. This means you cannot check that the email was sent correctly, and it makes it harder to debug issues that arise.
Con Expensive when scaling
When having few 10k users, the plan becomes insanely expensive.
Con Awful sign up/log in process
Con No customer support via phone
