Unlike most, SendGrid, the TechStars-incubated email management and delivery system, loves dealing with overloaded inboxes. In fact, it loves email so much that it has delivered over 9 billion emails for more than 23K companies. This is probably why, since graduating from TechStars, the email enthusiast has raised over $5 million in funding, and brought on former Oracle executive Jim Franklin as CEO in March.
While many of us would likely consider ourselves heavy email users, SendGrid targets the addicts. Or, I should say, targets the high performers and enterprises — businesses that have an output of millions of emails per month. (I passed out just thinking about that.) Examples include businesses like Foursquare, Swipely, and Hootsuite. The startup offers businesses a way to manage emails generated by their web applications and can handle services like subscription, bounce management and complaint feedback. For businesses, it’s a very useful tool.
Of course, there’s some competition. Amazon Web Services and AuthSmtp, for example, compete directly with SendGrid’s service. Though EC2 loudly and publicly took a nap at the end of April, suffering from network latency and connectivity issues, AWS continues to grow in popularity and continues to add services. So, while the new SendGrid CEO told TechCrunch’s Leena Rao in March that Amazon entering the email management space validates the importance of using an email delivery and management service, the company may be feeling a bit of pressure to update its services.
SendGrid today announces a new pricing model, which includes an entry-level, pay-as-you-go plan and additional email credits across all existing paid plans. “Our new offering is a result of feedback from our customers”, the CEO said, reflecting the need for more variety in the startup’s pricing plans.
The pricing ranges from free to $400 per month. Beginning at the bottom, users will continue to be able to take advantage of SendGrid’s free trial, which includes 200 email credits per day, advanced deliverability, reporting and analytics features, access to APIs, support, as well as the startup’s newsletter application.
Then there’s SendGrid’s “Lite Plan”, which is a 10 cents-per-thousand emails, pay-as-you-go plan, with no volume limits. This option includes basic deliverability features, access to the SMTP API, Web API, SMTP Relay, basic reporting and analytics, and premium support.
SendGrid’s most popular option is the “Silver Plan”, which costs $80 a month, with an additional 100K email credits per month. This includes all of the features from the “Bronze Plan”, plus advanced deliverability features, additional APIss (Parse API, Event API, OEM API), sub-user capabilities, and the newsletter application.
The new pay-as-you-go option, as well as a lift in the number of additional email credits a business gets should it exceed its email limit, will surely be welcomed by SendGrid’s 20K+ clients, and may attract new customers that want to test the service without paying the higher fees of those more robust services.
For more on SendGrid’s new pricing plan, see the image below:
