There are, according to SendGrid, two main types of email; there are Transactional Emails, i.e. those which are triggered by a process such as making a purchase or paying a bill, and there are “Marketing Emails” which are emails that are sent to a list of recipients as part of a marketing campaign.

There is no reason, of course, why a transactional email cannot also be a marketing email. For example, you send a client an email at the end of the month giving details of his or her outstanding account balance and at the same time advising him/her of a new offer you are launching.

Sendgrid is equipped to be able to interface with many applications that might generate transactional emails and they also offer a full-blown marketing database style approach for those who just want to send promotional emails to people on an opted-in mailing list.

Sendgrid is ideally suited to those who have an in-house developer who can make use of the extensive API functionality that the package offers. On the other hand, its list management facilities are fine for those who just want to send out promotional emails.

What Sendgrid is not, is a full-blown email marketing platform, but then not everyone needs that. There are no Infusionsoft like campaign design facilities but I’m certain that the Sendgrid platform is exactly what some users are looking for, especially due to its excellent transactional email integration facilities.

Price wise, it’s based on various criteria including number of emails sent and number of contacts stored. There’s a useful pricing slider-type tool on the site so give that a try. If you want a free account, they do that too – for up to 12K emails a month.

If you would like to see the full SendGrid review when it is published, click here.