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  1. Stackups
  2. Utilities
  3. Email Services
  4. Transactional Email
  5. Layer vs SendGrid

Layer vs SendGrid

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Twilio SendGrid
Twilio SendGrid
Stacks11.1K
Followers5.7K
Votes720
Layer
Layer
Stacks15
Followers39
Votes7

Layer vs SendGrid: What are the differences?

Developers describe Layer as "Build messaging, voice and video right into your app in minutes". Layer's asynchronous messaging fabric is capable of transporting payloads of any type. Get your users talking with chat, voice or video messaging. Pull them back in with push. Connect friends, colleagues or perfect strangers seamlessly. On the other hand, SendGrid is detailed as "Email Delivery. Simplified". SendGrid's cloud-based email infrastructure relieves businesses of the cost and complexity of maintaining custom email systems. SendGrid provides reliable delivery, scalability and real-time analytics along with flexible API's that make custom integration a breeze.

Layer can be classified as a tool in the "Communications SDK" category, while SendGrid is grouped under "Transactional Email".

Some of the features offered by Layer are:

  • Send any message payload (photos, videos, location, json data, etc) up to 2GB
  • Build your UI quickly with sample UI components to get started
  • User-expected communication features work right out of the box (full message state tracking, typing indicators, read receipts)

On the other hand, SendGrid provides the following key features:

  • Open Tracking
  • Click Tracking
  • Unsubscribe Tracking

"Open source ui atlas makes messaging easy" is the top reason why over 5 developers like Layer, while over 185 developers mention "Easy setup" as the leading cause for choosing SendGrid.

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Advice on Twilio SendGrid, Layer

Klaus
Klaus

Jan 22, 2020

Needs advice

For transactional emails, notifications, reminders, etc, I want to make it so writers/designers can set up the emails and maintain them, and then dynamically insert fields, that I then replace when actually sending the mail from code.

I think the ability to use a basic layout template across individual email templates would make things a lot easier (think header, footer, standard typography, etc).

What is best for this? Why would you prefer Mailgun, SendGrid, Mandrill or something else?

101k views101k
Comments
RichardsFood
RichardsFood

Sep 19, 2019

Needs advice

The problem I have is we are using mailchimp and not happy. We want to switch to mailster and are curious the easiest and best way to send emails with mailster.

The most important factors for me are ease of use, tracking.

I have only had experience with mailchimp, constant concact and streamsend. So ease of use is important.

30k views30k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Twilio SendGrid
Twilio SendGrid
Layer
Layer

Twilio SendGrid's cloud-based email infrastructure relieves businesses of the cost and complexity of maintaining custom email systems. Twilio SendGrid provides reliable delivery, scalability & real-time analytics along with flexible API's.

Layer's asynchronous messaging fabric is capable of transporting payloads of any type. Get your users talking with chat, voice or video messaging. Pull them back in with push. Connect friends, colleagues or perfect strangers seamlessly.

Open Tracking;Click Tracking;Unsubscribe Tracking;SMTP Relay;SMTP API;Web API;DKIM;SPF;Reputation Monitoring;ISP Monitoring;Domain Level Load Balancing;ISP Deliverability Outreach;Return Path Certified Partner;Support via Phone, Chat, Email, Online Support Portal
Send any message payload (photos, videos, location, json data, etc) up to 2GB;Build your UI quickly with sample UI components to get started;User-expected communication features work right out of the box (full message state tracking, typing indicators, read receipts);Pre-loading of content with background-synchronized state and metadata across devices;Push notifications across platforms and devices with full control over display and delivery;Handles offline mode and poor network conditions with network state management and performance handling
Statistics
Stacks
11.1K
Stacks
15
Followers
5.7K
Followers
39
Votes
720
Votes
7
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 190
    Easy setup
  • 137
    Cheap and simple
  • 107
    Easy email integration!
  • 86
    Reliable
  • 58
    Well-documented
Cons
  • 3
    Google analytics integration is not campaign-specific
  • 1
    Shared IP blacklist removal takes months
  • 0
    Shares IP blacklist removal
Pros
  • 6
    Open source ui atlas makes messaging easy
  • 1
    Easy setup
Integrations
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure
Twilio
Twilio
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Heroku
Heroku
Parse
Parse
Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine
Google App Engine
Google App Engine
CloudBees
CloudBees
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Keen
Keen
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Twilio SendGrid, Layer?

Mandrill

Mandrill

Mandrill is a new way for apps to send transactional email. It runs on the delivery infrastructure that powers MailChimp.

Mailgun

Mailgun

Mailgun is a set of powerful APIs that allow you to send, receive, track and store email effortlessly.

Amazon SES

Amazon SES

Amazon SES eliminates the complexity and expense of building an in-house email solution or licensing, installing, and operating a third-party email service. The service integrates with other AWS services, making it easy to send emails from applications being hosted on services such as Amazon EC2.

Chat by Stream

Chat by Stream

Chat API and SDK. With a beautiful UI Kit, easy to use React Components and powerful API. Add Chat to any application in a matter of hours. The tech uses Go, RocksDB and Raft. By the creators of Stream, the API that powers activity feeds for more than 300 million users.

SendBird

SendBird

SendBird is a Messaging SDK, Chat API, and fully managed chat infrastructure for your mobile apps and websites. Embeddable chat for iOS, Android, JavaScript, Unity, .NET.

sendwithus

sendwithus

Send email from your app with a simple API call, Sendwithus manages the rest. Templates, testing, data management, segments, and analytics are all accessible through a friendly dashboard.

Postmark

Postmark

Postmark removes the headaches of delivering and parsing email for webapps with minimal setup time and zero maintenance.

Sinch

Sinch

Sinch makes it easy for developers to add voice, messaging and SMS to their apps with just a few lines of code. Enrich your apps with communications that your users will love.

Mailjet

Mailjet

Mailjet is a real-time Cloud Emailing platform: scalable, agile and flexible. Our unique algorithm boosts your deliverability and our platform provides in-depth insight so you can optimize more than ever.

ChannelizeIO

ChannelizeIO

Add In-App User-to-User Communication into Mobile Apps & Websites, with rich & engaging Text Chat, Video, and Audio Calling experiences, to Increase User Engagement and Enable new Revenue Streams.

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