What Is SendGrid? Twilio's Email API and Marketing Campaigns
By Joris van Huët · Twilio SendGrid's own site
The short answer: if your product already sends receipts and password resets and a newsletter is next, Twilio SendGrid sells those as two products on two bills: the Email API from $19.95 a month on Essentials for 50,000 to 100,000 emails, and Marketing Campaigns from $15 a month on Basic for up to 100,000 contacts and 300,000 sends, with the drip builder, Automation, held back for Advanced at $60 (Email API pricing, Marketing Campaigns pricing, checked on 5 November 2026).
Disclosure: I may earn a commission through some links on this site. It does not change what this page says.
What decides it:
- Count in the unit each product bills. The API bills sends; Marketing Campaigns bills contacts and sends. For example, 8,000 trial signups a month receiving 5 onboarding emails is 8,000 x 5 = 40,000 sends, inside Basic's 300,000, but a series is an Automation, so the bill is Advanced's $60 (Marketing Campaigns pricing).
- The domain you already send from. Domain authentication adds SPF, DKIM and DMARC records at your DNS host, takes up to 48 hours to verify and removes the "via sendgrid.net" tag (domain authentication guide). Do it on day one.
- Where the events land. The Event Webhook posts delivered, bounce, open, click, spam report and unsubscribe events to a URL you run, retrying for up to 24 hours (Event Webhook guide, event types). Your database, not the dashboard, is the record.
Two products behind one login
Twilio's FAQ draws the line: Marketing Campaigns is "A visual platform for building, automating, and sending marketing email with no code required", the Email API "A developer tool for sending transactional and programmatic email through REST or SMTP", and many teams run both (Marketing Campaigns page). Templates and SMTP relay are on the API side; the editor, segments, signup forms and Automations on the campaigns side (Automation guide). It fits a product team whose engineers own the sending and whose marketer wants the drip and the newsletter on one reputation; Twilio says to skip the API "if you're only firing off a handful of personal emails" (Email API page), and a marketer with no engineer gets more from Brevo.
What it costs
Checked on 5 November 2026, in USD, before tax (Email API, Marketing Campaigns); both trials are $0 for 60 days at 100 emails a day:
| Product | Plan | From, a month | Allowance | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email API | Essentials | $19.95 | 50,000 to 100,000 emails | 2 event webhooks |
| Email API | Pro | $89.95 | 100,000 to 2,500,000 emails | Dedicated IPs, SSO, subusers |
| Marketing Campaigns | Basic | $15 | 100,000 contacts, 300,000 emails | No Automation |
| Marketing Campaigns | Advanced | $60 | 200,000 contacts, 1,000,000 emails | Automation, dedicated IP access |
Overage is charged per email above the plan and lands on the next invoice (overage article); the rate is not printed on the pricing pages.
The two trials end the same way: API keys stop sending and the Marketing console locks, the data kept but reachable only after an upgrade (trial article). Sixty days is enough to wire the domain, templates and webhook into your product, so when the clock stops, the part hardest to move is the part Twilio holds. If you are still deciding, export contacts and suppressions before day 60: they leave as CSV, while sender authentication and API keys have to be rebuilt elsewhere and a dedicated IP moves through support and is re-warmed (account migration guide).
How it compares
Brevo. Starter is $9 a month on monthly billing from 5,000 emails, with an MCP server for ChatGPT and Claude; automation starts on Standard at $18 (Brevo pricing). Choose it for marketing first.
Mailgun. Mailgun Foundation is $35 a month for 50,000 emails; Scale at $90 adds dedicated IP pools. Choose it for an API-only shop.
Postmark. Postmark Basic is $15 a month for 10,000 emails. Choose it for transactional mail only.
Amazon SES. SES charges $0.10 per 1,000 emails and $24.95 a month for a dedicated IP. Choose it if an engineer owns deliverability.
Resend. Resend Pro is $20 a month for 50,000 emails. Choose it for a developer team starting from zero.
Getting started
How to use SendGrid builds a trial-onboarding drip in Marketing Campaigns, fed by the Contacts API and read back through the Event Webhook.
FAQ
Is SendGrid still a separate company?
No. Twilio owns it, and sendgrid.com forwards to twilio.com (SendGrid homepage).
Does SendGrid do drip campaigns?
Yes, as Automations: a Welcome or Custom series from a list or segment, up to 10 messages, on Advanced (Automation guide).
Can SendGrid send one email in several languages?
Twilio documents no localization feature; the documented route is template versions and Handlebars conditionals, with "an example template that lets you have content in multiple languages" in its reference (Handlebars reference).
A senior operator doing the work: campaigns, channels, CRM and AI agents, live from day one.
With Joris van Huët, interim and fractional CMO in Utrecht. From EUR 5,000 a month, monthly cycles, a 30-day exit.