HubSpot vs SendGrid
Trying to choose between HubSpot vs SendGrid as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 3.4 TrustPilot
- 4.5 Capterra
- 4.4 G2
Average 4.1 / 5
HubSpot
A CRM platform that offers email marketing, content management, marketing automation, and customer service capabilities.
Pricing
Marketing tools only start at $18 a month for 1,000 marketing contacts
Key features
- Email automation, reporting, etc.
- Landing pages and forms
- Marketing automation
- Website builder and hosting
- CRM platform
- B2B commerce tools
- Customer service software
- Sales and operations software
- Integrations with various services
Support
24/7 support via email and chat on paid plans, phone support on professional and Enterprise plans. Community support only on the Free plan.
- 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
General info about company
HubSpot
HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006. Headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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.
Difficulty
HubSpot
The software may seem complex and even overwhelming. However, newcomers get service demos and tutorials for a smooth start. Overall, the interface is user-friendly and approachable.
SendGrid
SendGrid may require technical expertise to set up and start working, so it’s not 100% beginner-friendly.
Best for
HubSpot
Medium to big e-commerce companies that want an integrated software package with marketing, CRM, customer service, and website hosting all in one.
SendGrid
Entreprises and tech companies
Free plan
HubSpot
A free plan for 2,000 email sends per month. Available email templates and features are limited. No customer support, only the access to HubSpot Community.
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
Pricing
HubSpot
Billed monthly:
- Starter: $20 for up to 1,000 marketing contacts
- Professional: $890 for up to 2,000 marketing contacts (the starting price is $3,890 with a mandatory paid onboarding)
- Enterprise: $3,600 for up to 10,000 marketing contacts (the starting price is $6,000 with a mandatory paid onboarding)
Other pricing features:
- Users are only billed for their “marketing” contacts (actively in use) and can have many more inactive contacts
- Even if a user cancels the subscriptions, they will be billed for the rest of their commitment period duration
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.
Support
HubSpot
- Service demo for new users
- Technical support is available on paid plans only
- Access to the HubSpot Community on the Free plan
- Chat and email support on all paid plans
- Phone support only on Professional and Enterprise plans
- Mandatory paid assisted onboarding on Professional and Enterprise plans
- Advanced and Premier additional onboarding options
- Customer training
- Various courses with certifications
- HubSpot user groups
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.
Features
HubSpot
- Email automation
- Dynamic list segmentation based on various criteria
- Email reputation reporting and tracking
- Custom reporting dashboards
- Integrations with popular services
- Drag-and-drop email builder and pre-made templates
- Landing pages
- Live chat with website visitors
- A CRM app for iOS and Android
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
Templates
HubSpot
15+ email templates
Only 5 email templates on the free plan
Templates for:
- Welcome messages
- Sales
- Newsletter
- Event invitations
- Announcements
- Ebook emails
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.
Video/screenshots
HubSpot
SendGrid
Integrations
HubSpot
1,495 integrations including WordPress, Zapier, Canva, Facebook, Salesforce, Shopify, Stripe, and more.
SendGrid
100+ integrations with other ESPs like Klaviyo and Litmus, CRM systems like AgileCRM, content management systems like WordPress and Verst., and more.
Devices
HubSpot
- Website
- A mobile app for iOS and Android to manage the CRM
- Chrome extension for Gmail or G Suite
- Office 365 add-in and desktop add-in for Office 365
- No installable solution.
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
Languages
HubSpot
English
Chinese (traditional)
Danish
Dutch
Finnish
French
German
Italian
Polish
Portuguese (Brazil)
Spanish
Swedish
SendGrid
English
Automation
HubSpot
Many pre-built automations (called workflows) triggered by:
- Contacts
- Companies
- Deals
- Tickets (for support purposes)
- Quotes
- Conversations
- Feedback submissions
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.
Pros
HubSpot
- An all-in-one solution for e-commerce businesses: email marketing, CRM, CMS, and more
- 1,482 integrations
- Thorough onboarding and courses
- A strong global community
- Ability to store many contacts for free
SendGrid
- A solid transactional API
- Good choice of integrations
- Great testing tool
- Good for scaling businesses
Cons
HubSpot
- Steep prices
- Complicated feature system may cause additional spendings
- Overwhelming amount of functions
- Support isn’t accessible enough
- Email templates aren’t sophisticated
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
Reviews from experts
HubSpot
The fact that it’s so user-friendly is a big advantage to using HubSpot’s CRM platform. Its guided set-up wizard, demos and intuitive interface make it a great tool for all levels of experience. It’s still a huge software with a lot of bells and whistles, but taking all that into account, its usability is still outstanding. You’ll be particularly impressed with its lead management features.
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Anything above Starter gets very expensive and requires you to pay a high onboarding fee. In the case of the HubSpot Marketing Professional plan, this is $3,000 on top of the $890/month.
Surprisingly, HubSpot’s templates aren’t quite what you’d expect from such a popular, modern tool. I’d like to see some more design options for email and landing pages.
Overall: I'm 50-50 with HubSpot. I see it as a compromise and middle step until we are able to get more specialized solutions for each one of their offerings.
Pros: HubSpot is a good solution for organizations at their early steps. It provides all the necessary tools for website management and marketing activities. The contacts' management is good too.
Cons: It doesn't go in-depth on anything. For everything that HubSpot does there is a platform that does it better. But we would need many different tools so we stay with all in one but shallow approach (for now). It is also very expensive for what it is.
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.
*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.
