SendGrid Alternative: Cllavio
Built for teams that want inbox-first deliverability, clear analytics, and simple pricing across campaigns and email API — not another sprawling dashboard that leaves you guessing.
Best fit for Cllavio
SaaS products, lean ecommerce teams, and technical founders who want campaigns and transactional email on the same, transparent infrastructure—without wrestling with billing complexity.
Best fit for SendGrid
Larger orgs already standardized on the Twilio ecosystem, or teams that need a very broad feature surface and are comfortable investing in learning the platform.
TL;DR – When to pick Cllavio vs SendGrid
Choose Cllavio if…
- You want a single product for campaigns and transactional email with a clean UI.
- You hate surprise overages and want simple, volume-based pricing you can explain in one sentence.
- You care a lot about bounce protections, warmup, and inbox placement—not just “emails sent”.
- You’re a founder, dev, or lean team that needs to ship fast, not manage a telecom-grade platform.
Stick with SendGrid if…
- You’re already deeply integrated with Twilio products and tooling.
- You have a dedicated team to own SendGrid configuration, subusers, and complex account setups.
- You prioritize ecosystem and vendor size over simplicity and founder-led support.
Core comparison
| Area | Cllavio | SendGrid |
|---|---|---|
| Product focus | Email marketing + email API / SMTP. Inbox-first, built for campaigns and product emails together. | Email infrastructure with strong roots in transactional email, plus marketing add-ons and features. |
| Pricing model | Clear monthly volume per plan (emails, contacts, domains). Free to start, then simple jumps as you grow. | Tiered pricing, add-ons (IP addresses, features), and multiple knobs to track. Powerful but more complex. |
| Deliverability posture | Guardrails built in: DNS checks, bounce monitoring, and auto-pauses when rates spike. Designed to protect your domain. | Robust infrastructure with tools for serious senders, but more configuration and policy tuning needed on your side. |
| Developer experience | Modern JSON Email API, SMTP relay, and simple auth aimed at SaaS and ecommerce products. | Mature APIs with wide adoption, but more legacy paths and configuration overhead, especially at scale. |
| Analytics & clarity | Focused dashboards: deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, and health indicators that non-specialists can understand. | Deep analytics and event streams, but more complex to navigate and wire into your own tooling. |
| Campaigns | Campaigns and lists built in, with scheduling, templates, and segmentation designed for lean teams. | Marketing Campaigns functionality available, but secondary to the core infrastructure story. |
| Setup & operations | Straightforward domain setup, warmup, and sending. Minimal knobs, fast path to “first real send”. | More options for big infrastructures—subusers, pools, multiple IPs—but more to configure and maintain. |
| Support & ownership | Founder-led product with accountable, human support tuned for SaaS and ecommerce senders. | Large vendor support flows and docs, optimized for a very broad user base. |
Why teams move from SendGrid to Cllavio
1. One product for campaigns and transactional email
With Cllavio, your campaigns and your app's emails run on the same infrastructure, with a single view of deliverability and performance.
No more mentally splitting “marketing vs transactional” between different dashboards and vendors.
2. Pricing you don't have to decode
Plans are tied to emails and contacts, not a patchwork of add-ons. You always know what's included and what happens when you grow.
Great when you're still proving out a product, or running a profitable but lean operation.
3. Inbox-first guardrails instead of guesswork
Cllavio is opinionated about not torching your domains: bounce protections, warmup guidance, and clear feedback when something looks risky.
You still control your lists and content—but you're not left alone to interpret raw event streams.
4. Built for actual builders
Cllavio is tuned for SaaS and ecommerce builders, not telecom teams. REST API, SMTP, templates, and analytics are designed to be understandable in one sitting.
You get enough power to scale without needing a dedicated email engineer to babysit the platform.
When SendGrid might still be better for you
- You're sending at massive scale and already invested in dedicated IP pools, subuser architectures, and custom event pipelines.
- Your organization standardized on Twilio SendGrid years ago and re-platforming would be a project on its own.
- You want every possible knob for email infrastructure, and have the in-house team to manage it.
Cllavio is intentionally opinionated and focused. If you need a giant, fully customizable email backbone, SendGrid may still be the right call.
How to move from SendGrid to Cllavio without breaking emails
- Inventory your traffic. List out what you send today: transactional templates (signups, password resets, invoices), product notifications, and newsletters.
- Connect and verify your domain. In Cllavio, add your sending domain and publish the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records we provide.
- Recreate key templates. Rebuild your critical templates in Cllavio using variables and layouts that match or improve your existing ones.
- Switch non-critical transactional traffic first. Point a subset of your SendGrid traffic (e.g. lower-risk notifications) to Cllavio's Email API / SMTP.
- Move marketing campaigns and lists. Export contacts and segments from SendGrid, import via CSV into Cllavio campaigns, then send side-by-side tests.
- Gradually flip the remaining traffic. Once metrics look healthy, move the rest of your transactional and high-value campaigns.
If you're running multiple brands or have complex routing, we can help you design a staged migration that keeps your SLAs intact.
Ready to try Cllavio as your SendGrid alternative?
Create a free account, connect your domain, and route a small slice of your SendGrid traffic to Cllavio. Compare inbox placement, speed, and the sanity of the dashboard.