SendGrid vs Campaign Monitor
Trying to choose between SendGrid vs Campaign Monitor as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 1.4 TrustPilot
- 4.2 Capterra
- 4 G2
Average 3.2 / 5
SendGrid
SendGrid is a cloud-based platform for transactional and marketing emails.
Pricing
Starting at $15/month, dynamic pricing, depends on the number of emails sent monthly and the contact list volume.
Key features
- Email automation
- Email builder with templates
- Email testing
- A/B testing
- Signup forms
- List management
- Dynamic content in emails
Support
Web form tickets, Twitter DMs, live chat support for paid users, phone support for users on Pro/Advanced plans and higher
- 4.6 TrustPilot
- 4.6 Capterra
- 4.1 G2
Average 4.4 / 5
Campaign Monitor
Campaign Monitor is a global technology company that provides an email marketing platform that’s easy to use yet extremely powerful. It powers media moguls, tech giants, nonprofits, and other industries.
Pricing
From $9 to $989 a month depending on the tariff and the contact list size
Key features
- No-code email editor
- Automated sequence builder
- List management and segmentation
- Personalization
- Analytics
- A/B testing
Support
Online support with limited working hours, the Help center on the website, video tutorials, courses
General info about company
SendGrid
SendGrid is based in Denver, Colorado, and it was founded in 2009. In 2019, the company was acquired by Twilio, the service for customer communications and data storage.
Campaign Monitor
Founded in 2004 by Ben Richardson, based in Nashville. Belongs to CM Group, along with other marketing software companies like Sailthru and LiveClicker.
Difficulty
SendGrid
SendGrid may require technical expertise to set up and start working, so it’s not 100% beginner-friendly.
Campaign Monitor
The email editor is WYSIWYG and the platform provides users with a great choice of templates and an automated email builder for your brand — no coding or design skills are required. Campaign analytics come in the form of digestible graphs that are easy to interpret for junior marketers.
Best for
SendGrid
Entreprises and tech companies
Campaign Monitor
Marketing agencies, small organizations, publishers
Free plan
SendGrid
SendGrid offers a free plan with a limit of up to 2,000 contacts and 6,000 emails sent per month. The free plan includes:
- Design & code editors
- Segmentation
- A/B testing & actionable insights
- 3 email testing credits
- 1 signup form
- Ticket support
- 1 user
- Automation
Campaign Monitor
No free plan, free trial only.
The free trial only allows sending test campaigns to 5 people or less, importing contact lists, and creating customer journeys without sending them
Pricing
SendGrid
Dynamic pricing, depends on the number of contacts, emails sent per month, the number of users, and the set of platform features:
Basic: $15–200/month, 5–100K contacts, up to 300K emails per month. Includes:
- Design & code editors
- Segmentation
- A/B testing & actionable insights
- 10 email testing credits
- 5 signup forms
- Ticket & chat support
- 1 user
Advanced: $60–900/month, up to 200K contacts and 1 million emails/month. Unlike the Basic plan, it includes:
- 60 email testing credits
- 15 signup forms
- Up to 1,000 users
The plan also unlocks access to:
- Automation
- Dedicated IPs
- Guaranteed response times on ticket, chat, & phone support
Custom: Custom pricing for high-volume sending over 200K contacts and 1 million emails/month.
Campaign Monitor
Dynamic, depends on the contact list size and the tariff type:
- Basic: $9–$299/month
- Unlimited: $30–$699/month
- Premier: $158–$989/month
All tariffs are limited to 50000 contacts.
Support
SendGrid
Support is available 24/7 in English via the following channels:
- Twitter DMs and web form tickets — for all users
- Live chat support — for paid users
- Phone support — for paid users on Advanced email marketing plan/Pro API plan and custom high-volume plans
SendGrid also provides a knowledge center for marketers and developers with screenshots and video tutorials. Articles in the knowledge base are partially translated to French, Japanese, Portuguese (Brazil), German, and Spanish (Mexico). The videos are only available in English.
Campaign Monitor
An in-app Digital Assistant tool. Support agents around the world are available in the following hours:
- America: Mon to Fri 6 am to 5 pm PST/PDT
- Australia and Asia: Mon to Fri 9 am to 5 pm AEST/AEDT
- Europe: Mon to Fri 9 am to 5 pm BST/GMT
Limited support (unspecified working hours) is available on weekends and during holidays. Support phone numbers are only available for Premier users.
Aside from online support, Campaign Monitor offers:
- Video tutorials for newbies and experienced users
- A 30-minute Getting Started course
- Email Academy — an email marketing course
- Resources for developers
- The in-app Help Center with documentation
Features
SendGrid
- Email marketing automation
- Signup forms
- List management
- Email editor: both no-code and code
- Email templates
- A/B testing
- Analytics
- Email testing
- Dynamic content
- Deliverability insights
Campaign Monitor
- Supports SMS notifications
- Advanced segmentation — available for Premier users
- Link Review — checks for broken links
- Free email template builder
- Campaign analytics
- CAN-SPAM compliance checker
- Integrations with CRM systems and more
Templates
SendGrid
60+ free templates for different campaign types and industries, including:
- Healthcare
- Traveling
- E-commerce
- Non-profits
- Emails for small businesses
SendGrid also offers templates for:
- Welcome emails
- Holiday emails
- Promotional emails
- Newsletters
- Transactional emails (i. e. order confirmation, shipping confirmation, etc.)
Some of these templates contain dynamic content.
Campaign Monitor
108 free mobile-friendly templates available without signing up, templates sorted by email types from announcements to transactional.
If you don’t like templates, you can build emails from scratch using blocks in the email builder.
Recently launched their own stock with free images.
Campaign Monitor also has an automated custom template builder where you fill in the questionnaire and get a bunch of email templates with the logo of your business and custom design.
Video/screenshots
SendGrid
Campaign Monitor
Integrations
SendGrid
100+ integrations with other ESPs like Klaviyo and Litmus, CRM systems like AgileCRM, content management systems like WordPress and Verst., and more.
Campaign Monitor
- Data for marketing: Salesforce, WordPress, Shopify +
- List growth: Intercom, OptinMonster, Unbounce +
- CRM: Raiser’s Edge NXT, Lexer, Qgiv +
- Advertising: AdRoll, Facebook Lead Ads, Rungopher+
More than 100 integrations are available for CRM, list management, surveys, and more
Devices
SendGrid
A web app and an iOS app with limited functionality (management and troubleshooting only), you can find an APK for Android but it’s not an official release
Campaign Monitor
- A web app accessible from phones
- No mobile app
Languages
SendGrid
English
Campaign Monitor
English
Automation
SendGrid
SendGrid offers a tool for building custom automated sequences and a pre-built welcome series. The automation editor allows users to select entry criteria, enable and temporarily disable the sequence, set conditions, and add as many emails to the sequence as they want.
Campaign Monitor
The drag-and-drop interface for creating automated email sequences that includes:
- Triggers — subscribers’ actions that start or continue the sequenc
- Yes/No rules for personalization
- Timers — for example, you can send emails 3 or more days after a certain subscriber’s action or the previous email in the sequence
The sequence is visualized like an activity diagram where every element is customizable.
Pros
SendGrid
- A solid transactional API
- Good choice of integrations
- Great testing tool
- Good for scaling businesses
Campaign Monitor
- Good WYSIWYG email editor interface
- Easy and simple email automation
- Easy-to-understand campaign reports with good infographics
Cons
SendGrid
- Slow customer support
- Many reviewers complain about deliverability issues like blacklisted IPs
- Bugs like no 2FA emails to log in to the platform
- Could be more user-friendly
Campaign Monitor
- No live chat support + no 24/7 support
- All of the tariffs are limited to 50000 contacts
- No functional free trial you can actually use for work
- Contact importing is difficult when matching custom fields
- Split testing only allows 2 email versions
- No landing page builder
Reviews from experts
SendGrid
SendGrid's email editor allows you to customize existing templates, build a new email newsletter with the drag-and-drop functionality, or code an email from scratch. You can customize the design of the email by changing attributes such as background color, text, and font, as well as add new content blocks, including buttons, images, texts, and snippets of code.
One of the most useful aspects of the email editor is the ability to add tags in the message, which allow you to add custom fields. This includes adding the recipient's name and location, date of last open, or any other information you collect on your subscribers, which enables a high level of personalization.
Sendgrid is a powerful email marketing tool that offers superior services to its customers. Sendgrid is a must-have tool for start-ups, eCommerce businesses, freelancers and corporates. One thing that separates Sendgrid from other email marketing tools is their scalability once our list grows. The free version of Sendgrid allows you to send 100 emails every day.
What I like most about Sendgrid is that most of the tools out there offer easy integration with Sendgrid. Some apps can even directly integrate with SendGrid without using automation software like Zapier.
Campaign Monitor
“Feature-wise, there’s not really much to fault it on, but ‘power’ email marketing users will find the A/B testing feature a bit basic and will notice the absence of a fully fledged landing page creator.”
“It’s easy to find all features, which means you can get up and running quickly and get the most out of the solution without having to spend days playing around with it. If you sell products online, you’ll love the focus on optimizing transactional emails and tracking their performance so you can understand what works in terms of customer engagement.”
*This information is current as of 02/13/2024. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
