SendGrid vs ConvertKit
Trying to choose between SendGrid vs ConvertKit 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
- 4.7 GetApp
- 4.7 Capterra
- 2 TrustPilot
Average 3.8 / 5
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is a tool for marketing automation and monetization for independent creators.
Pricing
- Email marketing automation
- Landing pages
- Sign-up forms
- Analytics
- A/B testing
- Tools for content monetization
Key features
- Email marketing automation
- Landing pages
- Sign-up forms
- Analytics
- A/B testing
- Tools for content monetization
Support
Community support for all users, email and chat support for paid users
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.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit was founded in 2013 and is based in Idaho, the US. It was created by Nathan Barry, a blogger and creator who needed a better way to promote his books and courses.
Difficulty
SendGrid
SendGrid may require technical expertise to set up and start working, so it’s not 100% beginner-friendly.
ConvertKit
Not beginner-friendly, since you need to code while creating emails.
Best for
SendGrid
Entreprises and tech companies
ConvertKit
Bloggers, coaches, course creators, writers, and everyone who makes content for living.
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
ConvertKit
The forever free plan includes the contact list of up to 1,000 subscribers and the following features:
- Unlimited landing pages
- Unlimited forms
- Unlimited “broadcasts”, or one-off email campaigns, sent right away or scheduled
- Audience tagging and segmentation
- Selling digital products & subscriptions
- Community support
- Free recommendations
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.
ConvertKit
Dynamic pricing depends on the size of your contact list and the features of interest.
Creator: $9–1,916/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the free features plus:
- Live chat & email support
- Paid recommendations
- Free migration from another tool
- Automated email sequences
- Visual automation builders
- Third-party integrations
- One additional team member
Creator Pro: $25–2,166/month billed yearly for 300–400,000 subscribers. Includes all the Creator features plus:
- Newsletter referral system
- Subscriber scoring
- Advanced reporting
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.
ConvertKit
Community support:
- The internal forum where you can ask questions and receive answers from ConvertKit support specialists and other platform users
- Available even on the free plan
Email and live chat support:
- Available for Creator users
- Priority support via email and live chat available for Creator Pro users
ConvertKit also provides a knowledge base and a YouTube channel with tutorials. The platform also runs online workshops for newbies in marketing.
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
ConvertKit
- Email builder
- Email marketing automation
- Landing pages
- Sign-up forms
- Tools for selling digital products and paid subscriptions
- List segmentation
- Lead scoring
- A/B testing
- Reporting and analytics
- Internal referral systems for creators to earn off putting links in your newsletter or paying to get promoted by other creators
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.
ConvertKit
25 email templates made for content creators by content creators, includes templates for:
- Newsletters
- Content promotion
- Product sales pitch
- Waitlist
The templates are sourced from other users and you can create and share your own.
ConvertKit also offers 50+ landing page templates not specified by purpose.
Video/screenshots
SendGrid
ConvertKit
Integrations
SendGrid
100+ integrations with other ESPs like Klaviyo and Litmus, CRM systems like AgileCRM, content management systems like WordPress and Verst., and more.
ConvertKit
120 integrations with third-party apps for:
- Memberships and courses
- Analytics
- Lead capture
- E-commerce
- Giveaways
- Quizzes
- Workflows
- Webinar
- Affiliate management
- CRM
- Scheduling
- Email verification
ConvertKit also supports Zapier for even more integrations and provides users with the API docs for custom integrations.
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
ConvertKit
- Web app only
Languages
SendGrid
English
ConvertKit
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.
ConvertKit
10+ visual automation templates for starting a paid newsletter, releasing a new podcast, crowdfunding for a music album, and other tasks that professional content creators might face.
Pros
SendGrid
- A solid transactional API
- Good choice of integrations
- Great testing tool
- Good for scaling businesses
ConvertKit
- Good platform for content creators
- Great deliverability
- Supports paid newsletters and has a “tip jar” functionality for free donations from subscribers
- A flexible tagging and segmentation system for targeted campaigns
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
ConvertKit
- Very basic reporting
- Expensive compared to other email marketing tools
- Not great for midsize and large businesses
- No drag-and-drop builder which makes it harder to design emails from scratch
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.
ConvertKit
If you’re a blogger, vlogger, frogger, YouTuber, digital course creator, or anyone who makes their own digital content for sale under a single business entity, ConvertKit is 100% the tool for you, and it’s not even close.
It has everything you need to grow your business, including direct integrations with tools specifically designed to make your life easier like course, webinar, blog, and lead magnet plugins.
If you’ve got a stable business and over 1,000 subscribers, you’ll reap all of the benefits of the world’s most streamlined email autoresponder tool at a price that won’t break the bank and is silly easy to use.
We bought this software after reading the Capterra reviews here, however we find it very limited in customization so it's mainly take it or leave type of features. We could not block freemailers from subscribing, or use custom CSS for the same purpose. In general, it is not a tool to use if you care about following a brand identity of your own.
The set-up process is tedious with Wordpress websites. We were not happy so we canceled, so instead of letting the current paid period last the software deactivated the account immediately and blocked us out of the software. We could not export our subscribers nor our content.
*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.
