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MessageBird vs SendGrid: What are the differences?
Introduction:
MessageBird and SendGrid are two popular communication platforms that provide messaging and email services for businesses and developers. While both platforms offer similar services, there are key differences that distinguish them from each other.
1. API Focus: MessageBird primarily focuses on providing a robust API for SMS, Voice, and Chat communications, offering a wide range of features and customization options for developers. On the other hand, SendGrid primarily focuses on email delivery and analytics, providing tools for managing email campaigns and monitoring deliverability.
2. Service Offerings: MessageBird offers a comprehensive suite of communication tools, including SMS, Voice, and Chat services, catering to a wide range of communication needs. In contrast, SendGrid specializes in email services, offering features like email delivery, marketing campaigns, and email analytics.
3. Pricing Structure: MessageBird offers a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing users to pay only for the services they use without any ongoing commitments. SendGrid, on the other hand, offers a tiered pricing structure based on the number of emails sent, with different plans suited for different volumes of email traffic.
4. Customer Support: MessageBird provides 24/7 customer support through multiple channels, including phone, email, and live chat, ensuring prompt assistance and resolution of issues. SendGrid also offers customer support but primarily through email and online resources, with limited phone support available to higher-tier customers.
5. Enterprise Solutions: MessageBird offers enterprise-grade solutions for large businesses, providing features like dedicated account managers, customizable service levels, and advanced security options. SendGrid also caters to enterprise clients but with a focus on email deliverability, providing features like dedicated IP addresses and custom monitoring tools.
6. Integrations: MessageBird offers integrations with a wide range of third-party platforms and services, allowing users to connect their communication tools with CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, and other tools. While SendGrid also offers integrations, its focus is primarily on email-related services, with fewer integrations available for other communication channels.
In Summary, MessageBird stands out for its API focus and comprehensive communication tools, while SendGrid specializes in email delivery and analytics with a tiered pricing structure and focus on email deliverability.
Hey! We need an omnichannel inbox that's housed within Salesforce Sales Cloud that makes it super easy for our reps to respond to inbound communication (needs: clean inbox, provides historical context, etc.). We're a high-volume call center, and we get a ton of incoming SMS and email every day. We'd love a solution that lets us view all of that in one place — ideally Salesforce, as that's where our reps work, and we want to avoid needing them to switch between windows. Thanks!
if the inbound SMS are sales rep specific you could potentially have twilio fwd that msg to a google voice phone number which will in turn put an email in their inbox (so they're looking at 1 inbox instead of multiple places) Just an idea. Probably way off in left field compared to what you're thinking and I also invision. I'm not all familiar with MessageBird nor am I at all familiar w/ your data flow / business process. Would be happy to help brainstorm anytime! 10+ years experience on the sfdc platform
Check out Centro. We built this to solve this exact problem! We used tools like Twilio but wrapped it up in a application that runs on Slack.
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?
The only transactional email service that I've been able to stomach is Postmark! It is by far the easiest (and quickest to get feedback from) service that I have come across. While drowning in attempts to debug Mandril, Mailgun and others I get quick feedback from Postmark in what I need to do.
Postmark for the win!
If you need your emails to be sent in a time-sensitive manner, I'd recommend SendGrid. We were using Mailgun and the lag because they aren't "transactional" in nature caused issues for us. SendGrid also has the ability to do dynamic templates and bulk send from their API. I don't know that they have the shared layout ability you mentioned, though.
We are using more extensively Mandrill.
It is a ok tool, which gives you the power for emailing with nice set of features.
The templates editing and management is a bit tricky, but this is mostly related to email templates in general, which are hard to create and maintain.
I do not think you can share the parts of the templates. You can have your predefined templates with possibility to insert dynamic content.
They provide a limited possibility to preview and test your templates.
The template editor is text only. For the better editors checkout http://topol.io or https://mosaico.io
Unfortunately, I do not have experience with the other tools and possibilities to manage templates.
At this stage, all of the tools you mentioned do email delivery pretty well. They all support email templates as well. Here are some considerations:
- Twilio owns SendGrid. If you're an existing Twilio customer, in my opinion that's a good reason to use SendGrid over the other solutions. The APIs are solid, and Twilio has excellent developer tools that allow you to create interesting automations (which is important for scaling).
- Mandrill was created by MailChimp, who have massive experience with email delivery and specifically with emailing beautiful email templates.
- Mailgun is a tool on its own. Like the other two, it supports mail templates and is built to be controlled almost exclusively via APIs.
SendGrid and Mandrill have pretty nice WYSIWIG template editors as part of their platform. Not so sure about Mailgun.
So for me the considerations would be: 1. How easy is it for you to integrate with their API? How complete is their API in terms of your own specific needs? 2. Prices: Which one works best for my budget? 3. Am I OK with editing the templates elsewhere (or even by hand), and then pasting the code into Mailgun? Or do I want the comfort of Mandrill or Sendgrid with their WYSIWYG editors?
Personally I'd go with Twilio, simply because it's such a massive ecosystem they are less likely to go bankrupt, and their APIs are rock solid.
Pros of MessageBird
- User friendly1
- Quality1
- Low Cost of entry1
- Powerful1
Pros of Twilio SendGrid
- Easy setup190
- Cheap and simple137
- Easy email integration!107
- Reliable86
- Well-documented58
- Generous free allowance to get you started28
- Trackable25
- Heroku add-on21
- Azure add-on15
- Better support for third party integrations13
- Simple installation6
- Free plan6
- Helpful evangelist staff4
- Great client libraries4
- Great support3
- Better customer support than the competition3
- Great add-ons3
- Nice dashboard2
- Scalable2
- Web editor for templates1
- Cool setup1
- Within integration1
- Easy set up1
- Free1
- Great customer support1
- Google cloud messaging1
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Cons of MessageBird
Cons of Twilio SendGrid
- Google analytics integration is not campaign-specific3
- Shared IP blacklist removal takes months1
- Shares IP blacklist removal0