Twilio SendGrid has officially announced the retirement of its free Email API and Marketing Campaigns plans, effective May 27, 2025.
Timeline
- Start Date: May 27, 2025
- Grace Period: 60 days of continued service
- Final Cutoff: After 60 days, email sending stops unless you upgrade
What Happens After 60 Days
- Email sending will be completely paused for all free accounts
- Contacts over the 100-contact limit will be deleted permanently
- You must upgrade to a paid plan (starting at $19.95/month) or lose service
How to React
You have three main options:
1. Upgrade to SendGrid’s Paid Plans
- Cost: Starting at $19.95/month for 50,000 emails
- Benefit: 50% discount through August 31, 2025
- Best for: If you’re happy with SendGrid and can afford the cost
2. Rely on Your Web Host’s SMTP
- Cost: Usually free with hosting
- Downside: Poor deliverability, often ends up in Spam, and can be very slow which is not great at critical times like a user requesting a password reset or receiving order updates.
- Best for: Very low-volume emails where reliability or delivery speed isn’t critical
3. Find an Alternative SMTP Provider
This is often the best option. Here are the top alternatives:
SMTP2GO
- Free: 1,000 emails/month
- Paid: $15/month for 40,000 emails
- Why it’s good: Excellent deliverability, more generous free plan than SendGrid
MailerSend
- Free: 3,000 emails/month
- Paid: $1 per 1,000 emails
- Why it’s good: Most generous free tier, pay only for what you use
Brevo
- Free: 300 emails/day (9,000/month)
- Paid: $9/month
- Why it’s good: Includes email marketing features, EU-based (GDPR compliant)
Elastic Email
- Free: 100 emails/day (3,000/month)
- Paid: $9/month
- Why it’s good: Very budget-friendly, good for high volumes
Amazon SES
- Free: 3,000 emails/month (if using AWS)
- Paid: $0.10 per 1,000 emails
- Why it’s good: Extremely cheap at scale, but requires technical setup. No monthly minimums.
Once you find one remember you’ll need to work with a developer to update your SMTP settings across your websites and applications. This will take time to test and debug, and if not done properly can cause some disruption to email notifications to your users. So take care! With the right service though it can be a simple swap – causing minimal downtime if any to email notifications.
What to Do Right Now
- Calculate how many emails you send monthly to choose the right alternative
- Sign up for a free trial with an alternative platform to test them
- Start migrating your least critical systems first as a test
- Complete your entire migration within 60 days to avoid service interruption
Bottom Line
While losing SendGrid’s free plan is inconvenient, many alternatives offer better value and features. SMTP2GO and MailerSend are excellent starting points with more generous free tiers than what SendGrid offered.
Don’t wait. You have 60 days to make the switch before your email service stops working.
