Amazon SES vs Twilio SendGrid

Likelihood to Recommend

We use Amazon Simple Email Service to auto-respond to users that submit messages through a contact form. We are using Amazon Simple Email Service with our self hosted python application to send our marketing emails, get feedback for our services, and Hackathons.

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Verified User

Employee in Engineering

Information Technology & Services Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Twilio SendGrid Email Marketing is perfect for organizations both big and small that may be on a lower budget. It is a very affordable solution for users with a large number of email addresses. While other providers may offer "free" storage for email contacts... the cost to send campaigns to those contacts can be very costly. While they do not offer widgets or other integrations for websites/social media... it is very easy to import and manage contacts. Additionally, they offer a comprehensive self-help support section online, but it's also easy to hop on the phone or on chat with a rep if you ever need technical support or assistance. Twilio SendGrid Email Marketing may not be the most affordable solution for users who are not currently sending email campaigns to their users, but are simply storing email contacts

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Verified User

Partner in Corporate

Information Technology and Services Company, 1-10 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

WYSIWYG email editor

Dynamic content

Ability to test dynamic content

Landing pages

A/B testing

Mobile optimization

Email deliverability reporting

List management

Triggered drip sequences

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Dashboards

Standard reports

Custom reports

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

URL Validation

Link Tracking

Image Validation

Inbox Display

Email Accessibility Tools

Spelling and Grammar Check

Spam Testing

Email Previews

Pros

Amazon Simple Email Service is a much lower cost than most other solutions and truly makes cost a non-factor in most situations where we consider implementing it.
The API is so well documented that implementing Amazon Simple Email Service in nearly any application or codebase is achievable with basic coding knowledge.

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Verified User

Vice-President in Information Technology

Marketing & Advertising Company, 501-1000 employees

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Drag and drop email designer for transactional emails - super nice even though I do code, it's much quicker and easier to implement without code.
Very simple implementation. Only a few lines of code need to be added in our backend and boom we were up and running in less than a day.
Listening to customer feedback. They regularly send emails about new features and ask for feedback to improve their software.
Some of the cheapest and best dedicated IPs.
Easy integration and setup between marketing and transactional emails. Super helpful to have everything in one place.

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Evan Laird

Chief Marketing Officer

DinelyInternet, 1-10 employees

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Cons

Even if you do not want to spam, you cant send an email to the unverified users.
Integration with other services is a bit tricky. To watch the trail, handle bounced emails, save emails on S3 are not straightforward to implement.
When you want to send a lot of emails (in bulk), it takes a significant amount of time.

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Apurv Doshi

Senior Solutions Architect

InfostretchInformation Technology and Services, 1001-5000 employees

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Actually viewing previous emails dispatched. SendGrid does not have this feature - although it provides numbers on emails dispatched within 3 days for the cheapest plan.
The service asks you to pay more (although a minimal amount) to have visibility on email activity upto 30 days in the past.
The API doesn't allow an export of a report of email activity over a period of time. It can be quite frustrating at times to be limited in this way.
Their customer support isn't the best. Certainly some room for improvement there.

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Verified User

Program Manager in Product Management

Human Resources Company, 11-50 employees

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Usability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Twilio SendGrid 1.0

Based on 4 answers

It has the potential to be really cool. However, it feels as if it was created by developers for developers (and I work with developers, yet even for me the instrument was somewhat not easy to use - just read SendGrid's help manuals...) However, if you are into data and your way of thinking is more mathematical rather than lyrical, you'll enjoy this instrument

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Zee Gimon

Digital Operations Manager

The App SolutionsInformation Technology and Services, 51-200 employees

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Support Rating

Amazon SES 8.5

Based on 11 answers

We did not have the need of contacting Amazon for support. The documentation they provide is of great quality. Examples are easy to follow. One thing to have into consideration is we didn't have the premium support for AWS, so I can't provide details on how good or bad this service is, but in general, the basic support I had was great.

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Diego Turcios Lara

Devops Engineer

Acklen AvenueComputer Software, 51-200 employees

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Twilio SendGrid 7.0

Based on 13 answers

Twilio SendGrid Email API is everything we want it to be, and we have no reason to look for any other solution. Features and pricing match exactly what we need. As developers for SaaS products, Twilio SendGrid Email API provides a great service. I hope that they stay this way and don't inflate the service with too many marketing oriented features, because there are other tools for that and Twilio SendGrid Email API is a API for sending email first and foremost.

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Bryan McAnulty

Owner / Founder

Velora StudiosDesign, 1-10 employees

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Alternatives Considered

We have used a dozen services. They are almost all more expensive. Some force you to wait one week to approve/deny your account if they suspect that the email database is not legal. I have very important clients with legal databases that were rejected by other companies and could send emails from Amazon SES without problems.

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Francisco Mosse

Director

Efemosse SistemasInternet, 1-10 employees

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With ExpressPigeon, SendGrid stacks up very well and actually provides just as much functionality for us as ExpressPigeon, but costs surrounding that use was advantageous with ExpressPigeon. SendGrid has recently added functionality that brings it closer to Act-On, specifically on the marketing automation end. This really allows users to create long-term campaigns.

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Verified User

Administrator in Information Technology

Internet Company, 201-500 employees

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Return on Investment

SES is still more cost effective than other email services like Mailgun.
Unless we have a high-traffic month, staying within the free tier is very nice for our bottom line.
Not having to spend time worrying about SES reliability saves us frustration and money.

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Joe Hakooz

Owner

Innovah LLCInformation Technology & Services, 1-10 employees

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Our clients experience significant ROI from their web forms - without receipt of forms, many of them would not still be in business.
As a solution for clients' sites, we find SendGrid is a fast installation and a 1 stop problem solver, saving us man-hours.

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Darcy Knapp, MBA

Owner

seo web mechanicsMarketing & Advertising, 1-10 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Amazon SES Editions & Modules

Edition

Sending Emails from an Application Hosted in Amazon EC2	Free¹
Sending Emails from an Application Hosted in Amazon EC2	$0.10 ($0.12)²
Sending Emails from Another Email Client or Software Package	$0.10 ($0.12)³
Receiving Email	Free⁴
Receiving Email	$0.10⁵

for first 62,000 emails
for every 1,000 emails after 62,000 (for each GB of storage)
for every 1,000 emails (for each GB of storage)
for the first 1,000 emails
for emails after the first 1,000

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Twilio SendGrid Editions & Modules

Edition

Free	Free
Basic	15.00²
Advanced	60.00²

Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Likelihood to Recommend

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Feature Rating Comparison

WYSIWYG email editor

Dynamic content

Ability to test dynamic content

Landing pages

A/B testing

Mobile optimization

Email deliverability reporting

List management

Triggered drip sequences

Dashboards

Standard reports

Custom reports

URL Validation

Link Tracking

Image Validation

Inbox Display

Email Accessibility Tools

Spelling and Grammar Check

Spam Testing

Email Previews

Pros

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Cons

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Usability

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Support Rating

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Alternatives Considered

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Return on Investment

Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Amazon SES Editions & Modules

Edition

Additional Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Twilio SendGrid Editions & Modules

Edition

Additional Pricing Details

Rating Summary

Add comparison