# Temps vs SendGrid

> SendGrid Essentials starts at $19.95/month, and its free plans were retired in 2025 in favour of a 60-day trial. Temps includes transactional email through Amazon SES, Scaleway or any SMTP relay (Cloudflare Email Service included), alongside deployments, analytics and error tracking.

Last updated 2026-10-08 · Competitor prices checked October 2026

Canonical: https://temps.sh/compare/vs-sendgrid

Send through your own provider, not a middleman.

## Short answer

SendGrid is a managed sending service at $19.95/month for Essentials and $89.95/month for Pro, with a vendor accountable for deliverability. Temps sends transactional mail through a provider you connect (Amazon SES, Scaleway or any SMTP relay), adding domain setup, bounce and complaint suppression on SES and opt-in open and click tracking inside the platform at no extra platform cost. Deliverability is inherited from whichever provider you pick. What SendGrid has that Temps doesn't: Dedicated IPs, IP warming, reputation management, managed bounce and complaint handling, and marketing campaigns. Temps is transactional only.

## TL;DR

| Dimension | Temps | SendGrid | Better fit |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Platform cost | $0 — included, your provider's rate applies | $19.95/mo Essentials, $89.95/mo Pro | Temps |
| Deliverability management | Inherited from your SMTP provider | Dedicated IPs, warming, reputation team | SendGrid |
| Bounce and complaint handling | Suppression list (bounces and complaints on SES) | Managed suppression lists | SendGrid |
| Marketing campaigns | Transactional only | Transactional plus marketing | SendGrid |
| Vendor lock-in | Swap SMTP providers at any time | Templates and lists live in SendGrid | Temps |

## Key differences

- **No permanent free tier to age out of:** SendGrid retired its free plans in 2025; what remains 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 through Amazon SES, Scaleway or any SMTP relay, such as Cloudflare Email Service, Mailgun or Postmark. SES in particular is much 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.

## Features

| Feature | Temps | SendGrid |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Transactional email | Yes (Amazon SES, Scaleway or any SMTP relay) | Yes (Managed sending API) |
| Deliverability engineering | No | Yes (The actual product — reputation, warming, compliance) |
| Dedicated IPs | No | Yes (Included from the Pro plan) |
| Email templates and editor | No | Yes |
| Marketing campaigns | No | Yes (Separate product line) |
| Bounce and complaint handling | Yes (Suppression list; automatic on SES) | Yes (Managed for you) |
| Open and click tracking | Yes (Opt-in per domain) | Yes |
| Deployments | Yes (Git-push PaaS) | No (Not a deployment platform) |
| Error tracking | Yes (Sentry-compatible DSN) | No |
| Analytics and session replay | Yes | No |
| Uptime monitoring | Yes | No |
| Permanent free tier | Yes (Self-hosted) | No (60-day trial, 100 emails/day) |
| Open source | Yes (MIT / Apache 2.0) | No |

## Pricing

| Item | Temps | SendGrid |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free | $0 self-hosted | 60-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 |
| Overages | Your provider's rate | Essentials $0.0013/email (50K) or $0.0009 (100K); Pro $0.0011–$0.0005 |
| Infrastructure | Free on your own VPS | $0 — hosted for you |

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.

## Choose Temps if

- You send low-volume transactional email — password resets, magic links, receipts
- You already have an SES, Scaleway or SMTP relay 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

- 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

## Migrating from SendGrid (medium)

Connect a provider in Temps (Amazon SES, Scaleway or any SMTP relay) and send with one authenticated request. 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.

[Step-by-step: send transactional email without SendGrid](https://temps.sh/blog/how-to-send-transactional-email-without-sendgrid)

## FAQ

### Does SendGrid have a free plan?

No. SendGrid retired its free plans starting May 27, 2025 and now offers a 60-day free trial at 100 emails per day. After the trial, Essentials starts at $19.95/month for 50,000 emails.

### 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 through Amazon SES, Scaleway or any SMTP relay, with bounce and complaint suppression on SES and opt-in open and click tracking. For deliverability engineering, dedicated IPs, marketing campaigns and managed reputation, no. Those are SendGrid's product.

## Sources

- [SendGrid Email API pricing](https://www.twilio.com/en-us/products/email-api/pricing)
- [SendGrid free plan retirement](https://www.twilio.com/en-us/changelog/sendgrid-free-plan)

## Further reading

- [Transactional Email via SES, Scaleway or SMTP](https://temps.sh/docs/transactional-email): Connect a provider, verify a sending domain and send from your app with one request.
- [Email provider API](https://temps.sh/docs/email-providers): Create, update and rotate the credentials of SES, Scaleway and SMTP providers.
- [How to Send Transactional Email Without SendGrid](https://temps.sh/blog/how-to-send-transactional-email-without-sendgrid): DNS authentication, SES versus an SMTP relay, and warming up a new sender.
- [Self-hosted email open and click tracking](https://temps.sh/blog/self-hosted-email-tracking-open-click-analytics): How open and click tracking works when the tracking domain is yours.

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Source: https://temps.sh/compare/vs-sendgrid · Index of all pages: https://temps.sh/llms.txt