SendGrid is garbage, stay far far away

[Circo]

So recently IPS integrated SendGrid support for email.  I figured a baked in feature was cleaner than using a third party so I opened a $10 a month account and switrched over to sendgrid.  Worst decision ever.  Seems that unless you spring for a dedicated IP their base premium IP pool is highly compromised.  Multiple blocks of their IP addresses with both gmail and yahoo.  I contacted their support and the only real resolution is paying $100 a month for a dedicated IP address.  So please save yourself the headache and stay far away from sendgrid.  Hopefully IPS will take note and switch to a provider that actually works.  Before this I have used mailchimp and sparkpost with never an issue.

On top of that they won't refund you in a case like this, though I will say their service department is nice.  So at least there is that.

[opentype]

It’s not garbage just because it doesn’t fit our budget. You just need to understand what you get in advance. 

But yes: Without a dedicated IP you won’t get better deliverability. It will actually get worse.

And one more bummer I only found after signing up: if you have multiple websites, you can’t properly use them with one basic account, even if the number of emails would fit the limits. So even more costs in this area. 

[David..]

In my experience, SendGrid is the same as SparkPost, if not worse.

They suspended me twice without notice, as did SparkPost but at least with SparkPost I had the 100,000 free emails account. And yeah, when the suspensions happen they kept on suggesting a dedicated IP.

[Joel R]

4 hours ago, opentype said:

It’s not garbage just because it doesn’t fit our budget. You just need to understand what you get in advance. 

But yes: Without a dedicated IP you won’t get better deliverability. It will actually get worse.

And one more bummer I only found after signing up: if you have multiple websites, you can’t properly use them with one basic account, even if the number of emails would fit the limits. So even more costs in this area. 

Did you switch over to SendGrid?  

I'm still staying on SparkPost.  Everything is fine for me right now.  (fingers crossed)

[opentype]

6 hours ago, Joel R said:

Did you switch over to SendGrid?  

No. I just gave it a try. 

[Circo]

I went back to sparkpost and things are working fine again

[DSystem]

I still can not understand the need to use these email services.

This month I sent out 300,000 emails using IPS Bulk email and the SendMail Advanced app.

Note: I use Smtp from my hosting server.

[opentype]

2 minutes ago, DSyste said:

I still can not understand the need to use these email services.

There can be all sorts of reasons, usually in connection with the hosting provider. The mail servers might get blacklisted because other users send spam and the sending IP address is the same or the hosting provider might not allow you to send mass mails at all. 

But sure, external services are not automatically better. They might actually perform worse, as I mentioned before. 

[CheersnGears]

I stayed with Sparkpost and got @HeadStand's Sparkpost integration app.  Working great for me and Headstand is a developer who gives great support (though none was needed for this app)

 

[Aiwa]

My hosting provider doesn’t permit bulk mail, because their upstream provider prohibits it. They require any client that requires bulk mail support have their mail server / node in a specific data center. 

These services aren’t a necessary evil, but they do provide benefit to those that have a need to fill.