TempsTemps

Temps vs SendGrid

Researched and updated 2026-08-07

Send through your own provider, not a middleman.

SendGrid sells deliverability, and it is genuinely good at it — dedicated IPs, reputation management and the compliance work behind them. Temps does not replace that. It gives you transactional email as part of the platform, sending through SMTP, Amazon SES, Scaleway or Cloudflare, so you pay the provider rather than a layer on top.

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Monthly cost at a glance

Temps
SendGrid
Free
$0 self-hosted
60-day trial
Entry paid
$0
Essentials from $19.95/mo
Higher volume
$0
Pro from $89.95/mo
Overages
Your provider's rate
Essentials $0.0013/email
Infrastructure
~$6/mo on your own VPS
$0
$curl -fsSL https://temps.sh/deploy.sh | bash

The short answer

Choose Temps if you…

  • You send low-volume transactional email — password resets, magic links, receipts
  • You already have an SES, Scaleway or Cloudflare account and want to send at their rates
  • You want email included with the platform rather than as another subscription
  • You do not want a 60-day trial that turns into a bill
  • You want the sending app, its errors and its email in one system

Choose SendGrid if you…

  • Deliverability is business-critical and you want someone accountable for it
  • You need dedicated IPs, IP warming and reputation management
  • You send marketing campaigns, not just transactional mail
  • You want managed bounce, complaint and suppression handling
  • You send at volume where a deliverability problem costs more than $89.95/month

Why teams switch from SendGrid

No permanent free tier to age out of
SendGrid's free offering is a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day, after which Essentials starts at $19.95/month. Temps' email sending is included with the platform.
Bring your own sending provider
Send over plain SMTP, Amazon SES, Scaleway or Cloudflare. SES in particular is dramatically cheaper per email than a managed sending API, and you keep the relationship with the provider.
Email beside the app that sends it
Temps deploys the application, tracks its errors and sends its transactional mail, so a failed password reset and the deploy that broke it are in the same place.
No overage arithmetic
SendGrid bills overages per email — $0.0013 on the 50K Essentials plan, $0.0009 on the 100K plan. Sending through your own provider means one bill at their rate.

Feature comparison

What each platform includes out of the box, and what needs a separate subscription.

  • Transactional email

    Temps

    Yes
    SMTP, SES, Scaleway, Cloudflare

    SendGrid

    Yes
    Managed sending API

  • Deliverability engineering

    Temps

    No

    SendGrid

    Yes
    The actual product — reputation, warming, compliance

  • Dedicated IPs

    Temps

    No

    SendGrid

    Yes
    Included from the Pro plan

  • Email templates and editor

    Temps

    No

    SendGrid

    Yes

  • Marketing campaigns

    Temps

    No

    SendGrid

    Yes
    Separate product line

  • Bounce and complaint handling

    Temps

    No

    SendGrid

    Yes
    Managed for you

  • Deployments

    Temps

    Yes
    Git-push PaaS

    SendGrid

    No
    Not a deployment platform

  • Error tracking

    Temps

    Yes
    Sentry-compatible DSN

    SendGrid

    No

  • Analytics and session replay

    Temps

    Yes

    SendGrid

    No

  • Uptime monitoring

    Temps

    Yes

    SendGrid

    No

  • Permanent free tier

    Temps

    Yes
    Self-hosted

    SendGrid

    No
    60-day trial, 100 emails/day

  • Open source

    Temps

    Yes
    Apache 2.0

    SendGrid

    No

What it actually costs

For a low-volume app sending password resets and magic links, SendGrid's $19.95/month buys deliverability you would otherwise engineer yourself. At high volume it remains a reasonable deal, because reputation management is real work. The saving from Temps comes from sending through a provider like SES at cost, not from replacing what SendGrid actually does.

ScenarioTempsSendGrid
Free$0 self-hosted60-day trial — 100 emails/day
Entry paid$0 (included)Essentials from $19.95/mo — 50K or 100K emails
Higher volume$0 (included)Pro from $89.95/mo — up to 2.5M emails, dedicated IPs
OveragesYour provider's rateEssentials $0.0013/email (50K) or $0.0009 (100K); Pro $0.0011–$0.0005
Infrastructure~$6/mo on your own VPS$0 — hosted for you

Migrating from SendGrid

Medium difficulty

Point your application at Temps' email configuration and choose a provider — SMTP, SES, Scaleway or Cloudflare. The code change is small. The part that is not small is deliverability: moving off SendGrid means you inherit SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup, bounce handling and sender reputation. Warm up gradually and watch your bounce rate; this is the reason to stay on SendGrid if email matters commercially.

Frequently asked questions

Does SendGrid have a free plan?

SendGrid offers a 60-day free trial at 100 emails per day rather than a permanent free tier. After the trial, Essentials starts at $19.95/month.

How much does SendGrid cost?

Essentials starts at $19.95/month for 50,000 or 100,000 emails, and Pro starts at $89.95/month for volumes up to 2.5 million with dedicated IPs. Overages are $0.0013 per email on the 50K plan and $0.0009 on the 100K plan. Premier is custom-priced for 5 million or more.

Can Temps replace SendGrid?

For sending transactional email, yes — Temps sends over SMTP, Amazon SES, Scaleway or Cloudflare. For deliverability engineering, dedicated IPs, marketing campaigns and managed reputation, no. Those are SendGrid's product.

How we researched this comparison

SendGrid trial terms, Essentials and Pro pricing, volumes and overage rates read from Twilio SendGrid's public Email API pricing page. Temps capabilities from this repository. No benchmarks were run.

Disclosure: Temps publishes this page and is one of the products being compared.

Ready to switch from SendGrid?

Self-host Temps for free, or run it on Temps Cloud from ~$6/mo.

Read the quickstart guideSee pricing