Twilio SendGrid pricing keeps climbing, what else is there?

Yes — if SendGrid’s pricing is getting painful, there are quite a few alternatives depending on what you need: transactional email, marketing campaigns, deliverability, API simplicity, or low cost.

Popular alternatives to SendGrid

1. Amazon SES

• Best for: Lowest cost, high volume transactional email
• Pros: Extremely cheap, solid deliverability, scales well
• Cons: More setup/ops work, less beginner-friendly UI
• Good if: You already use AWS or send a lot of emails

2. Postmark

• Best for: Transactional email with excellent deliverability
• Pros: Very reliable, great developer experience, fast support
• Cons: More expensive than SES, not meant for marketing blasts
• Good if: You care about inboxing and clean APIs more than lowest cost

3. Mailgun

• Best for: Developer-focused transactional email
• Pros: APIs, logs, inbound email features, flexible
• Cons: Pricing can also get high depending on volume/features
• Good if: You want SendGrid-like functionality with a different pricing model

4. Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)

• Best for: Marketing + transactional in one platform
• Pros: Often cheaper for mixed use, includes automation/CRM features
• Cons: UI can feel more marketing-oriented than dev-oriented
• Good if: You want email campaigns and transactional mail together

5. Resend

• Best for: Modern app/email workflows
• Pros: Simple API, good developer experience, React/email-component friendly
• Cons: Newer platform, fewer legacy features than SendGrid
• Good if: You’re building a product and want something clean and modern

6. SparkPost

• Best for: Deliverability and analytics
• Pros: Strong analytics, scalable, good for larger senders
• Cons: Can be more enterprise-y
• Good if: You need deeper email performance visibility

7. Mailchimp Transactional (Mandrill)

• Best for: Existing Mailchimp users
• Pros: Easy if you’re already in that ecosystem
• Cons: Not usually the cheapest, tied to Mailchimp setup
• Good if: You already use Mailchimp heavily

Quick recommendation by use case

• Cheapest: Amazon SES
• Best transactional deliverability: Postmark
• Best modern developer experience: Resend
• Best mixed marketing + transactional: Brevo
• Closest “SendGrid replacement” feel: Mailgun or SparkPost

Things to compare before switching

• Monthly volume pricing
• Included contacts / send limits
• Dedicated IP costs
• Deliverability reputation
• Webhooks, suppression lists, and logs
• Ease of migration
• Support quality
• Whether you need marketing automation or just transactional email

If you want, I can also give you:

1. a side-by-side pricing comparison,
2. the best option for your send volume, or
3. a migration plan from SendGrid to another provider.