What should I use instead of SendGrid for app emails?

If you’re looking for alternatives to SendGrid for application emails (transactional email like signups, password resets, receipts, alerts), the best choice depends on whether you want simple sending, high deliverability, good APIs, or lower cost.

Good SendGrid alternatives

1. Amazon SES

• Best for: low cost, high volume, developers comfortable with AWS
• Pros:
  • Very cheap
  • Solid deliverability
  • Scales well
• Cons:
  • More setup complexity
  • Less friendly UI than SendGrid

2. Postmark

• Best for: transactional emails where deliverability matters most
• Pros:
  • Excellent deliverability reputation
  • Easy API
  • Great for app-generated emails
• Cons:
  • Usually more expensive than SES
  • Not ideal for large marketing campaigns

3. Mailgun

• Best for: developer-friendly email sending with strong API features
• Pros:
  • Good APIs and logs
  • Flexible
  • Suitable for transactional and some marketing use cases
• Cons:
  • Pricing can climb with volume
  • Some users prefer other providers for simplicity

4. SparkPost

• Best for: analytics-heavy teams and higher-scale sending
• Pros:
  • Strong delivery analytics
  • Reliable infrastructure
• Cons:
  • Less commonly chosen for smaller apps

5. Resend

• Best for: modern app/email workflows, especially if you use React/Next.js
• Pros:
  • Very developer-friendly
  • Simple API
  • Good DX for app emails
• Cons:
  • Newer than the others, so ecosystem is smaller

6. Brevo (Sendinblue)

• Best for: if you want transactional + marketing in one platform
• Pros:
  • Multi-purpose platform
  • Easy to get started
• Cons:
  • Not as focused on pure transactional email as Postmark/SES

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Quick recommendations

• Best overall for app emails: Postmark
• Best cheapest option: Amazon SES
• Best modern dev experience: Resend
• Best if you want lots of features/APIs: Mailgun

My practical advice

For app emails, I’d usually pick:

• Postmark if deliverability and reliability are top priority
• SES if cost matters most
• Resend if you want the cleanest developer experience

If you want, I can also give you:

1. a side-by-side comparison table, or
2. a recommendation based on your stack (Node, Python, Rails, Next.js, etc.).