This is an unbiased SendGrid vs. Nodemailer comparison guide. You’ll discover why I switched to GetResponse, which is a much better alternative tool that’s easier to use.
SendGrid is a managed email service that is a good choice if you’re looking for cost-effective email hosting for a small team.
However, you can also use a free open-source alternative, Nodemailer.
Although both are inexpensive, Nodemailer is free to get started (but a bit complicated) while SendGrid is easy to use but costs some money.
Truly, Nodemailer is a very versatile tool. It supports a large range of transports and can be extended with plugins.
The main transport is SMTP, but it can also be extended to use SendGrid, Mailgun, Postmark, and Amazon SES.
Verdict: SendGrid offers a ton of advantages for advanced email marketers. Unfortunately, it’s not ideal for beginners. The major drawbacks are slow customer service, and automation tools that are quite complex to use.
I use GetResponse and recommend it to my audience. Start a 30-Day Free Trial of GetResponse here.
SendGrid vs. Nodemailer: Pricing Table
| # of Contacts/Subscribers | SendGrid | Nodemailer |
|---|---|---|
| 0 – 1,000 | $45/month | $0 – $45/month |
| 1,001 – 2,000 | $800/month | $45 – $75/month |
| 2,001 – 10,000 | $3,600/month | $70 – $85/month |
SendGrid Email Service Review
SendGrid is an email marketing service. If you’re looking for a simple email marketing tool to deliver exceptional email experiences, SendGrid might be an excellent choice.
This tool’s drag-and-drop email editor makes it easy to create a campaign in just minutes.
It also provides detailed email performance data and audience insights. Besides allowing you to compare mailbox providers, it also allows you to create custom reports and export data as CSV files.
There are a few drawbacks, though. Although the SendGrid Free plan is great for getting started, it comes with limitations.
You can only store up to 2,000 subscribers and send 6,000 emails per month. Also, the Free plan offers limited signup forms and three email testing credits.
Other than that, it offers all the basic email marketing features. However, if you’re looking for advanced automation, you may have to upgrade to the paid plan.
SendGrid also offers comprehensive reporting features. This dashboard shows key data metrics. You can export data for sharing with collaborators.
Furthermore, you can access metrics and reports related to your email campaigns.
These metrics can be useful when comparing different mailbox providers.
The reporting system allows you to analyze your prospects with detailed audience information.
SendGrid vs. Nodemailer: Similar Features
- Hosted email API
- Send attachments via emails
- Unicode services
- Email delivery reports
- Integration with third-party web applications
- Bulk email marketing and transactional campaigns
Who is SendGrid Ideal For?
In 2021 alone, SendGrid processed more than 7 billion emails on Cyber Monday and 6.8 billion emails on Black Friday. 100+ billion emails are processed each month from over 80,000 customers.
Small businesses, eCommerce stores, and established brands use SendGrid to send secure emails. Some of the notable users are:
- Nextdoor
- Uber
- Spotify
- Yelp
- Instacart
- Glassdoor
Features of SendGrid
SendGrid offers a ton of features — which falls into two major categories: Email API and Marketing Campaigns:
Email API features:
- Send emails at scale via SMTP service (no need to use servers)
- Easily diagnose problems with searchable email activity feed
- Boost email deliverability rates with Email Validation API
- Encourage team collaboration and measure success with a clean interface
And more.
Marketing Campaign features:
- Create highly engaging emails with HTML code, use the drag-and-drop editor, or combine both to create beautiful emails.
- Engage your email subscribers with approachable, time-saving automation
- Capture more leads with branded sign-up forms embedded on your site.
- Send pixel-perfect emails with integrated testing
And more.
Sendgrid Plans & Pricing
Email API Plans:
| Free | Essentials | Pro | Premier | |
| Features | ||||
| Price | $0/month | $19.95 – $34.95 | $89.95 – $749/month | Get a quote |
| Emails | 100 emails per day | 0 – 100k+ emails per month | 0 – 1.5m+ emails per month | Custom |
| APIs | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| SMTP Relays | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Webhooks | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Email Validation | No | No | 2,500 Validations | 5,000 Validations |
| Dedicated IP | No | No | Included | Included |
| Single Sign On | No | No | Yes | Yes |
SendGrid Marketing Campaigns Plans:
How SendGrid Started
SendGrid is a customer communication platform headquartered in Denver, Colorado. It provides transactional and marketing email services.
The company was founded by Isaac Saldana, Jose Lopez, and Tim Jenkins in 2009, and was incubated as part of the Techstars accelerator program.
The three men teamed up to develop a product that helps businesses send email messages to their customers.
Saldana and Lopez both worked at other companies before settling on SendGrid.
During this time, they hired James Franklin as CEO. While Franklin now oversees the day-to-day operation, Saldana continues to work on product development.
That means doing things like tinkering with the SendGrid product and seeking out new product avenues.
To build a successful product, it’s important to create a good team. The company’s founders must have a passion for solving a problem.
The goal of SendGrid should be to provide a solution to that problem. After identifying the problem, they need to find the right team to build it.
SendGrid was acquired by Twilio, a global platform for innovation. Its stock jumped 17% after the announcement.
What is Nodemailer (An In-depth Review)?
Nodemailer is an open-source email service that allows you to send and receive emails from your server. The core module has zero dependencies and is extensible through plugins.
In addition, it has DKIM support, which is useful for encrypting email messages. This allows you to keep your email addresses secure by signing them with a unique DKIM key.
In order to use the service, you must first install the Nodemailer package from npm.
Once installed, you must specify the transport method, such as POP3, SMTP, or SMTP. Once this has been done, you can send emails and get notifications of errors.
Nodemailer also supports attachments. When an email contains a link to an image, the attached image is automatically fetched.
It will then replace the image’s URL in the HTML message with the appropriate cid string. You can also set optional properties for your content, such as a filename or CID.
Nodemailer provides a simple yet powerful email client. It has many options and settings, including HTTPS and DKIM.
It is safe to use and maintain, and you can add plugins to add new features or extend existing functionality. The NodeJS implementation of many APIs makes Nodemailer extremely flexible and secure.
Who is Nodemailer For?
Nodemailer is for anyone who wants to send and receive emails from their server through Node.JS applications.
It can be used by online marketers, entrepreneurs, eCommerce companies, and anyone who’s on a budget — but desires to deliver emails to customers’ inboxes.
Key Features of Nodemailer
- Sign messages with DKIM
- A single reliable module with zero dependencies. It comes with easily auditable code and no dark corners.
- Primary focus on security, no need to deal with RCE vulnerabilities.
- Easy to use HTML content and plain text alternative
- Intuitively add attachments to messages
- Unicode support to utilize many characters, including emojis.
- Windows support. Installable via npm with Windows just as you would any other module, with zero compiled dependencies.
- Embedded image attachments for HTML content — prevent your design from being blocked.
- Proxies for SMTP connections.
- Secure email delivery via TLS/STARTTLS.
- Sane OAuth2 authentication
Nodemailer vs. SendGrid: Major Differences & Summary
SendGrid is a popular email service that assists over 80 million businesses to improve their customer relationships. It offers transactional emails, marketing automation, and SMS messaging.
They also support over 700 open-source projects. Many Fortune 500 companies use SendGrid as part of their email marketing strategy.
Nodemailer is a free open-source alternative to SendGrid. It offers greater flexibility, ease of use, and support for most types of email.
How Nodemailer Started
Nodemailer is an SMTP mail server that runs on NodeJS. It is a simple and secure email server with various options and settings.
It was created by Andris Reinman in 2010. Since the inception of Node.js, Nodemailer has been a reliable system for sending email messages for Node. js users.
It supports multiple transports and includes plugins to extend its functionality. It uses SMTP as its main transport but can also support other methods like Gmail and Postmark.
Nodemailer has many transport plugins to use, which allow it to handle various email providers.
This makes switching between the various email providers easy. It also has a free “starter” tier, which allows users to send email messages for free.
You can also pay for a subscription to use more advanced features, like sending large numbers of emails.
Nodemailer also recently introduced NodeMailerApp, a convenient interface for email debugging. It includes POP3 and SMTP local servers, an email preview, and a catchall domain service.
SendGrid vs. Nodemailer Key Features Tables
| Features | SendGrid | Nodemailer |
|---|---|---|
| Attachments | Yes | Yes |
| Unicode | Yes | Yes |
| Email delivery report | Yes | Yes |
| Bulk email marketing | Available | Available |
| Transactional emails | Yes | Yes |
| Email API | Available | Available |
| SMTP relay service | Yes | Yes |
Nodemailer Plans & Pricing
For many years, Nodemailer has been made available under a restrictive license. This means that you can use it for free, test it out, then upgrade.
To purchase Nodemailer, you can do so from Kreata OÜ.
The license fee (excluding VAT) for a 12-month (1-year) license costs $820
SendGrid vs. Nodemailer: FAQs
Here are answers to some of the frequently asked questions (FAQs) about SendGrid and Nodemailer:
SendGrid vs. Nodemailer: Which is Better?
SendGrid and Nodemailer work with SMTTP, the Internet standard for email.
This technology has been used extensively for email marketing campaigns and is considered the backbone of email flow on the Internet. The process of delivering emails is very similar to traditional mail delivery.
SendGrid requires you to authenticate with your username and password before you can send emails.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll be taken to your SendGrid dashboard. From here, you’ll need to set up an API key. This API key is used for sending emails through SendGrid.
Both services support the use of attachments and Unicode. The content type can be a string, buffer, stream, or data URI.
You can also specify optional properties for the content. For example, you can specify that inline images can be stored, or that attachments are inline.
If you want an easier-to-use email software that functions like SendGrid, then GetResponse should be your next consideration. Start a free 30-day trial today.