Share your experience using SendGrid

SendGrid is used to maintain all dynamic templates that are used throughout various channels and modes of campaigns and communication channels for student relations, parent relations, or any brand of education that we want to highlight or push promotions and campaigns. It serves as our email aggregator and email services management system, which we use to build our email reputation and send out communications.

SendGrid is mostly used for email campaigns, and we also use it for mass mailing to students and parents. For example, if we are observing a class that is going to get canceled for a particular holiday on a particular day, we would want to send out an email campaign to those particular classes getting affected so that the students are properly notified, along with the parents.

The best feature that we use right out of the box is the dynamic templates feature and the ability to create a dynamic template from scratch by using HTML code or by using any of the templates from the design library, which makes it very easy to build emails right out of the box with custom parameters that can be passed based on each different user that the same email is going to be sent out to. The second best feature would probably be the activity feed and the email logs that are maintained properly, which shows us when a particular email was sent out, when it got delivered, and when the user opened the email.

SendGrid also provides the option to create unsubscribe groups, which we set to particular communications so that it won't be spamming people who are not in need of that communication. Users can opt themselves into the subscription or un-subscription group, and they would be automatically excluded.

We are now able to handle multiple different emails which still belong to the same SMTP because we would ideally be handling everything in a single inbox, but the emails that get sent out would be specific from different brands. For example, a student that is currently enrolled for education subjects would get an email from education@thedomain.com versus a student which is enrolled for a particular UCAT course would be getting an email from ucat@thedomain.com. In that way, we are able to send out emails to multiple people, and the from address can be the same SMTP but different labels or domain names, which helps create a more professional view for the end user.

Primarily, the best item that has impacted us is the dynamic templates feature, which helps us create a particular template using HTML and CSS along with certain parameters so that we are able to send out the same structured email to multiple different students but with different data points.

The activity log is a little slower at times, but that is probably just nitpicking an issue. Overall, in general, there are not really very difficult pain points. There are certain issues sometimes when we are trying to handle a very big campaign; we might end up having a little bit less reputation in terms of bounces or spam reports that get detected when we send out the emails. Apart from that, there is not anything that would become a significant pain point.

If you don't really have an advanced subscription for SendGrid, it might take a while for you to reach the customer support.

I have been using SendGrid for almost about one and a half to two years or probably more than that.

We definitely have had a very good email delivery rate where we have been handling, for example, in the last week itself, we have had a 98.83% delivery rate of emails, and we have done almost about 121,000 requests by using SendGrid.

With our last to last year's inflow, we were handling around somewhat around 1,000 students, so we were dealing with a minimum of 5,000 or 10,000 emails in a month. To the next year's when we moved into having around 5,000 students, our daily monthly average was almost around 100,000 emails considering all the campaigns and the one-time mass emails that we sent through. Now we are handling close to 7,000 to 8,000 students, and our monthly emails are reaching up to 150,000 to 200,000 emails, considering we have certain projects that need mass communication to both students and parents.

When we are setting up a new account, we have to do all of the DNS setup, the API keys, and all the webhook configurations, which might be a little intimidating for someone who is just starting out and may not have a technical background. Considering our company and the team that uses SendGrid is primarily the tech team, they did not really have an issue with this.

In terms of other communication platforms, such as Mailchimp, SendGrid is probably quite good in terms of being the market leader and also having capabilities of Twilio that recently acquired SendGrid. All of that combined makes it a very good tool for handling marketing campaigns or any emails. SendGrid is a very good, reliable system for handling multiple or high-volume emails.

Considering Twilio acquired SendGrid, it comes as a good package deal, and someone looking to make their entire communication flow streamlined should definitely opt for it.

SendGrid allows us to handle multiple different emails which still belong to the same SMTP because we would ideally be handling everything in a single inbox, but the emails that get sent out would be specific from different brands. For example, a student that is currently enrolled for education subjects would get an email from education@thedomain.com versus a student which is enrolled for a particular UCAT course would be getting an email from ucat@thedomain.com. In that way, we are able to send out emails to multiple people, and the from address can be the same SMTP but different labels or domain names, which helps create a more professional view for the end user.

Primarily, the best item that has impacted us is the dynamic templates feature, which helps us create a particular template using HTML and CSS along with certain parameters so that we are able to send out the same structured email to multiple different students but with different data points.

I would rate SendGrid an 8 out of 10.

Our main use case is integrating SendGrid with Sentinel, and we use the .NET API.

For SendGrid with the .NET API, any use case can work. We can accomplish anything, but for example, contact forms with some Lambda functions. We are using it for more simple sites.

When a user submits a form, it is a perfect use case because when you create an account, there are very well-defined instructions on how to integrate with the API using your specific language that you have a project in. When a user submits the form, it uses the SendGrid client and secret token. It sends a request to SendGrid backend, and there the magic happens.

I do not have anything specific to add about my main use case or anything unique about how my team uses SendGrid.

In my experience, the best features SendGrid offers include the dashboard, which is very nice to review if emails were delivered or if something was wrong. For example, I did not know that they have templates, but we made our own. We used to send full HTML through our API. We just input the user message into the template, and then it looks beautiful when the email arrives.

I find the dashboard useful because it is very extensible. You can slice and dice data. You can have a quick peek at the latest information, so you can use it for quick checks but also for deeper investigations if you want to gain more insights.

SendGrid has positively impacted my organization as we moved to it from our own email servers, though it also gives us less control over everything.

I think SendGrid is great already as it is. If they keep developing it, that would be beneficial. If I were a power user, then I would probably have some ideas, but it is perfect for my use case.

SendGrid can be improved with better user interface design. By default, there is a white, hard-for-the-eyes background. A dark mode by default would be nice. I have not visited the dashboard in quite a while, but I think they do not follow the system color preference. That would be a nice addition. Otherwise, I think they are pretty good, and they are popular for a reason.

I do not have more to add about needed improvements. If there was something significant, I would create a ticket, so my use case appears to be covered.

I have been working in my current field for almost four years.

In my experience, SendGrid is stable. I do not recall any issues with it.

I am sure SendGrid's scalability is good; however, we did not need this feature. Of course, I would imagine any large email service is able to handle that. It should be, of course. SendGrid is designed for both small businesses and large ones, so I cannot provide feedback, but I imagine it is covered.

I never had to contact SendGrid's customer support. There is nice documentation that answers a lot of questions, as well as frequently asked questions and a lot of examples outside of the documentation. Usually, everything is covered.

I used an on-premises solution before SendGrid.

I cannot speak to the return on investment from using SendGrid because I am not involved in that. It is also very hard to see the effect of implementing it. SendGrid gives us some business opportunities sometimes if someone reaches out to us through emails sent through SendGrid. It is really hard to estimate.

I was not the person choosing the tech stack, but at least to me, SendGrid is the option I would choose. There are also others, such as Twilio. In our company, we search for multiple options and spend some days to evaluate which one is better for our team and which covers our needs the most.

My advice to others looking into using SendGrid is to think about whether you actually need to use it or if you can use something different. Spend time researching other options. Then, if you are sure you need SendGrid, spend time designing the code architecture so that it is easy to send emails from anywhere in the code and it is not hard-coded. Consider integrating with templates, as they are available. Make sure that everything is configured correctly. Spend time reading the documentation and learning the tool properly before attempting to do something, because it can cost you money and time later to refactor.

I think SendGrid is also useful for solo developers or people who want to learn web development and need a tool to allow them to send emails without setting up their own server, which can be difficult and also be spam-filtered. There is also a free tier for people like that, so it is great to learn it. I would be happy if another company that I join in the future will be using it. I give this product a rating of nine out of ten.