SparkPost is built for the cloud to work the way developers work today, while providing the throughput and inbox delivery the world’s largest email senders require.

But doesn’t everyone make similar claims? It’s time to look beyond the marketing spin and compare SparkPost vs SendGrid. When you do, you’ll see why developers and enterprise senders have made SparkPost the world’s fastest-growing email delivery service.

TL;DR:

When you compare SparkPost vs SendGrid you’ll see that SparkPost gives developers more:

• More real-time data: More data points, accessible through more APIs and more webhooks.
• More scalability and reliability: Leverage the only cloud-native email service backed by enterprise SLAs.
• More value: Get 100K messages free per month, forever. No limited introductory offers here.
• More security: Deployed on a secure AWS environment, built and backed by a security-focused team.
• More mail to the Inbox: Proprietary technology backed by an expert deliverability team gives us the highest inbox delivery rates in the industry.

Read below to see in detail why when you add it all up, there’s just no comparison.

Built for developers, by developers

Email is what SparkPost is all about, and we’re completely focused on making a great experience for the developers who use our service. Everything we do is focused on making it quick and easy for developers to use one of the fastest and most feature-rich email APIs on the market.

SendGrid is turning away from developers and focusing on marketers. At SparkPost we’re not wavering from our mission of helping developers succeed with email:

• RESTful API for control of every SparkPost feature: manipulating templates, generating messages, managing environments, and reporting performance data
• High-performance SMTP injection, including the ability to invoke many API features with SMTP X-Headers
• Client libraries for Node, PHP, Python, Java and many more, as well as pre-built integration with key cloud platforms like Heroku, Microsoft Azure, and others
• Webhooks for rich data streaming and inbound message processing
• Great developer support, including a comprehensive SendGrid migration guide
• Our UI is built on our own APIs, including extensive metrics and message events APIs that make reporting and analytics easy

Data: you need it and we got it

SparkPost gives all users real-time actionable information about the state of your emails. We have 37 different email metrics covering everything from injections to opens, from bounces to clicks, all delivered in a rich user interface. Only SparkPost makes all this data available for querying through real-time APIs, saving you from having to parse and store data feeds just to be able add basic reporting to your applications. Our Metrics API gives you queryable access to the same data you see in our Web UI, while our Message Events API allows you to drill-down to find out what happened to a given message or recipient, all without having to maintain your own database!

Webhooks like you want them

Email sending doesn’t exist in a vacuum and there are potentially many internal and third-party services you’ll want to tie into. A great way to do this is with webhooks, and that’s why with SparkPost you can have multiple webhooks with different endpoints.

Get your email data into your own data warehouse by pointing our servers to your applications and our webhook processes will send data to you every thirty seconds or every 100 events, whichever comes first. SparkPost has 18 different events that can be sent to your endpoints, unlike Sendgrid where up to 11 of their events go to a single webhook endpoint. With SparkPost you choose what information goes where — any combination of our 18 data points to any number of unique webhook endpoints — allowing for use cases such as development environments with live data feeds, unique data feeds to separate processing systems, and more!

In today’s security world, you benefit from more secure webhook data through SparkPost’s support for not only Basic Auth (with separate non-URI credentials storage), but additional support for Oauth2.

Reliability and scalability of a true cloud platform

To build a better email delivery service, we needed a platform that was as focused on performance and reliability as we are on email. That’s why we built SparkPost as a 100% cloud-native service on Amazon Web Services (AWS). SendGrid continues to use a legacy model of self-managed data centers.

• Guaranteed uptime. SparkPost is architected for reliable cloud email delivery. When you compare SparkPost vs SendGrid under the hood, you see the burdens of legacy technology that cause them to scramble every time a data center goes down. SparkPost’s modern cloud platform means our engineers can focus on one thing: fast and reliable email delivery. We’re so confident in our service uptime we back it up with an enterprise availability SLA.
• Instant scalability and elasticity. By leveraging AWS, SparkPost can offer customers immediate capacity, on-demand. Our elastic cloud means we’re not passing extra costs on to you for extra capacity that sits unused. Similarly, there’s no hitting the ceiling due to unexpected bursts while you wait for your provider to bring up another server. SparkPost even backs it with a burst-rate SLA.
• Better performance with less latency. SparkPost averages just seconds for message transit across our network and infrastructure. When under strain, SparkPost’s true cloud infrastructure and unparalleled expertise in building high-performance mail delivery systems delivers real-world performance when it counts.

Service level guarantees with teeth

SparkPost has had a service-level guarantee from the start. Maybe that’s why SendGrid has started to advertise an SLA, too. Take a closer look and you’ll find SparkPost SLAs guarantee the uptime of more services, and only SparkPost offers a burst-rate SLA.

• Comprehensive SLAs. SparkPost’s SLAs go deep. When comparing SLAs, look at not only the uptime guaranteed, but also what components of the infrastructure are covered. Serious senders need to know that their data is guaranteed to be available, along with their sending capability.
• Guaranteed burst rates. When your time-sensitive email absolutely, positively has to be sent out in a specific window, your business needs SparkPost’s burst-rate guarantee, the industry’s only guaranteed burst-rate SLA.

The best value in email delivery

SparkPost makes it easy to get started with our generous free offering. Why do we give away 100,000 emails/month for free, forever? Because we can. Our efficient, auto-scaling, and high-performing cloud platform is unmatched by anyone else. We’re so confident in the performance of our platform — and the value that it provides to our customers — that we give it away for free, in volumes sufficient to allow small start-ups to get off the ground or large senders to test individual mail streams. Go ahead, give it a free test run and experience what real email performance can do for your business.

SparkPost’s transparent pricing and overage charges are cost effective at all volumes, with plans ranging from 100,000/month to 5 million or more. All sending volume tiers – including free – receive the full scope of SparkPost features, like subaccounts and dedicated IP capabilities. If you’d like to purchase add-on services, we don’t exclude small senders there, either.

SendGrid will offer you a 30-day free trial, but after your free month expires, you will be permitted to send just 100 emails per day, and the plan is limited in its features. Send in higher volumes and the savings with SparkPost become even more significant. Go ahead, check their prices and see for yourself.

The most secure cloud email delivery service

SparkPost maintains a robust and mature security program and security culture. SparkPost completed Service Organization Controls Type 1 (SOC 2, Type 1) attestation December 2016 and expects to be audited for SOC 2 Type 2 in the second half of 2017.

In addition to attestations, SparkPost leverages AWS’s advanced security environment to host customer instances. With Amazon maintaining the infrastructure, SparkPost is dedicated to securing internal applications and virtual environments. Posturing with Amazon allows SparkPost Security to maintain velocity and a strong defensive perimeter.

Unmatched email deliverability

Email deliverability matters. Getting email to the inbox is fundamental to how we built the SparkPost service, and it’s no accident that SparkPost has earned the industry’s proven best inbox placement, as measured by independent third-party inbox tracking data provided by eDataSource. Why? Our sophisticated technology for global email delivery is unmatched, and no one can beat the experience of the postmasters, anti-abuse experts, and email pros that make up SparkPost’s deliverability team.

• Industry-leading inbox delivery for many customers, proven by third-party data.
• Industry’s most experienced deliverability team
• Dedicated IP address options available at all sending volumes
• Full support for email authentication and security standards
• Adaptive Email Network (AEN) optimized global delivery, made possible by the industry’s most sophisticated delivery automation system

The hardest-working team in the email business

Our first priority is ensuring you rarely need technical support — but we’re here when you do. Along with our comprehensive and straightforward documentation and libraries, we provide extraordinary, responsive developer community support  that leverages the channels — like Slack — that developers already know and use.

The extra support and hands-on expertise that comes with our Priority, Premium and Enterprise add-ons are available at any sending volume.

SparkPost delivers full-service support to our Premium and Enterprise customers on a first-name basis with an expert who will learn and understand your business. Our Technical Account Managers (TAMs) are assigned, dedicated resources, and they’re backed by a team completely focused on ensuring your success.

Our Premium and Enterprise customers enjoy the benefit of working with a named TAM from the very start who knows that customer and their email implementation in great detail. They are industry experts who understand the business of email at scale, and they stay with you from onboarding to implementation to ongoing support. Their mission is to proactively monitor and manage email operations so you can focus on running your business. If there’s an email event, they’ll proactively contact you for an update – not the other way around.

Alongside our TAMs, our deliverability team is comprised of some of the most experienced deliverability specialists in the business. From managing ISP relationships, troubleshooting, implementing best practices, and overseeing the Adaptive Email Network, our deliverability team helps our customers get the most out of our platform.

SparkPost vs SendGrid? There’s No Comparison.

There’s really no comparison when you look at SparkPost vs SendGrid — and that’s what we’d like you to do. Get the details behind the spin: if you’re a SendGrid customer, take us for a spin. You’ll see that SparkPost gives you better email deliverability, better reliability, better enterprise-grade service, better developer support, and a better value. Add it up, and it’s clear that SparkPost makes it easy to start fast, spend less and deliver more.

No wonder developers and enterprise senders agree: SparkPost is the better choice.