Unitpost vs SendGrid
SendGrid is The Twilio-owned incumbent, processing billions of emails a month across transactional and marketing with deep enterprise tooling. Unitpost covers transactional and marketing email in one product with unlimited contacts on paid plans and a free tier of 3,000 emails a month. Across 13 compared capabilities, Unitpost leads on 8 and SendGrid leads on 4.
Which should you choose?
Choose SendGrid if
- You send hundreds of thousands of emails a month, where their volume pricing is genuinely cheaper
- You need sub-accounts to isolate sending for your own customers
- You need an enterprise contract, procurement paperwork, or a named support contact
- You depend on one of their many first-party integrations
Choose Unitpost if
- You want a permanent free tier — theirs is gone, ours is 3,000 emails/month
- You want a modern API and DX rather than a surface shaped by a decade of backwards compatibility
- You want marketing included rather than priced by contact count on top
- You are a small team who would spend more time fighting the console than sending email
What SendGrid does well
Stated plainly, because a comparison that pretends otherwise is not worth reading.
- Proven at a scale we have not operated at, with enterprise support to match
- The broadest integration catalogue in the category
- Sub-account management for multi-tenant platforms, which we do not offer
- Advanced IP management and dedicated IP pools for high-volume senders
Pricing and free tier
- Unitpost
- 3,000 emails/month free, 100/day, no credit card
- On paid plans your monthly price is a sending allowance you spend at your tier's rate, and it refreshes every month. Marketing and unlimited contacts are included rather than billed as add-ons.
- SendGrid
- None — a 60-day trial at 100 emails/day, then a paid plan (their free tier was retired in 2025)
- Monthly plans by volume, competitive at high throughput, with marketing contacts and add-ons like email validation billed separately.
SendGrid pricing and free-tier details last verified 2026-07. Providers change these often — check their pricing page before making a decision.
Feature comparison
| Capability | Unitpost | SendGrid |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 3,000 emails/month, 100/day, no credit card | None — 60-day trial at 100/day, then paid. The free plan was retired in 2025 |
| Price at high volume | Volume-based, but we do not try to undercut incumbents at the top of the range | Volume discounts make them cheaper at high throughput |
| Sub-accounts / multi-tenant sending | Not offered — one workspace per team | Sub-user management on Pro and above |
| Scale track record | New platform, no comparable public scale record | Billions of messages per month |
| API design | One modern versioned surface — Bearer keys, cursor pagination, consistent error envelope | Mature but complex, with v2/v3 legacy surface area to navigate |
| from display name | Embedded in the from string: Acme <hi@acme.com> | A separate from.name field |
| Idempotency keys | Idempotency-Key on sends, 24-hour dedupe window | Not offered |
| Complaint suppression handling | Complaint suppressions cannot be self-serve removed (Postmark model) — a 409 protects your reputation from yourself | Removable with a warning |
| Integrations | A small, growing set | Extensive first-party catalogue |
| Idempotency keys on send | Idempotency-Key on sends, 24-hour dedupe window | — |
| Webhook secret rotation without dropped deliveries | svix-compatible HMAC-SHA256 with a 24-hour dual-signing rotation grace | Rotation replaces the secret immediately |
| Hybrid template editing | Visual drag-and-drop and React/TSX code mode over one shared document — the same @unitpost/email library renders both | Varies |
| One-key import from SendGrid | Migration Assistant moves contacts, segments, topics, templates, domains, suppressions, and webhooks in about 4 minutes with a read-only key | n/a |
How do I migrate from SendGrid?
Paste a read-only SendGrid API key into the Migration Assistant and it previews everything that would carry over — contacts, segments, topics, templates, domains, suppressions, and webhooks. Nothing is written until you accept, and SendGrid keeps sending the whole time, so there is no downtime. It takes about four minutes.
Two things do not carry over: sending domains must re-verify with freshly generated DKIM keys, and webhook signing secrets are regenerated. Dynamic segments import as a static snapshot of their members.
Frequently asked questions
Does SendGrid still have a free tier?
No. SendGrid retired its free plan in 2025. New accounts get a 60-day trial limited to 100 emails a day, after which sending requires a paid plan. That single change is why much of the indie and startup community moved to providers with permanent free tiers. Unitpost's free tier is 3,000 emails a month with no credit card.
Is Unitpost cheaper than SendGrid?
At low and mid volume, usually — and our free tier is permanent where theirs no longer exists. At high volume, no: SendGrid's volume discounts make them genuinely cheaper, and we don't claim otherwise. Our pricing argument is about total bill rather than per-email rate, because marketing, automations, and unlimited contacts are included rather than billed as add-ons.
Can I migrate from SendGrid without downtime?
Yes. The Migration Assistant takes a read-only SendGrid API key, previews everything that would carry over — contacts, segments, templates, domains, suppressions, webhooks — and writes nothing until you accept. SendGrid keeps sending the entire time, so you cut over when your Unitpost domain is verified. Expect to re-verify domains with new DKIM keys and to regenerate webhook signing secrets.
What does SendGrid do that Unitpost does not?
Sub-account management for multi-tenant platforms, dedicated IP pools with advanced IP management, email validation as an add-on, an enterprise support and procurement track, and a much larger integration catalogue. If any of those is a requirement, SendGrid is the better answer today.
Switching from SendGrid?
Try it on the free tier first
3,000 emails a month, no credit card. Verify a domain, send a test, and preview the migration before you move anything.