Mailchimp excels as an all-in-one marketing platform with better automation and segmentation for small-to-medium businesses, while SendGrid is a specialized transactional email service built for developers and high-volume technical sending requiring superior deliverability and API flexibility.
Mailchimp vs SendGrid — Side-by-side comparison on A Versus B
Choose Mailchimp if you need an accessible, feature-rich marketing platform with automation, landing pages, and segmentation for growing e-commerce or SaaS businesses. Choose SendGrid if you're a developer-focused company sending high volumes of transactional emails, need enterprise-grade deliverability, or require programmatic control via API with minimal overhead.
All-in-one marketing platform offering email campaigns, automation, landing pages, and CRM features.
Enterprise email platform with extensive integrations, highest uptime guarantee, and 1M+ users.
Structured comparison data for Mailchimp vs SendGrid with 225 attributes.
Contact List Size Limit (Standard Pricing)
Price Scaling Factor at 5,000 Subscribers
Starter Tier Monthly Cost (50k contacts)
Automation Workflow Steps (Free/Starter Tier)
Mailchimp vs SendGrid — Attribute Category Vocabulary
Taxonomy of attribute categories used to classify comparison data for Mailchimp vs SendGrid.
Which is better for e-commerce businesses?
Mailchimp is better for most e-commerce businesses. Its free tier supports 12,000 emails/month (vs SendGrid's 3,000), includes built-in landing pages, offers advanced segmentation and automation, and integrates seamlessly with Shopify, WooCommerce, and other platforms. SendGrid is only preferable if you're sending 100k+ transactional emails monthly and need dedicated IP deliverability infrastructure.
SendGrid significantly outperforms Mailchimp for API workloads: 500 requests/second vs Mailchimp's 50 req/sec. SendGrid is engineered for developers building systems around email sending, while Mailchimp's API is designed to complement its UI-driven marketing tools rather than serve as the primary interface.
Can I use either for transactional emails?
Both support transactional emails, but differ in approach. Mailchimp requires templates and workflows through its UI. SendGrid excels at transactional sending with full API control, webhooks for real-time notifications, and enterprise compliance features. For mission-critical transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets), SendGrid is the stronger choice.
At small volumes (under 25k/month), Mailchimp's generous free tier ($0) beats SendGrid ($19.95/month). At high volumes (500k+/month), SendGrid's $0.09-0.15 per email pricing becomes more cost-effective than Mailchimp's contact-based tier system. For mid-market (50k-250k/month), costs are comparable but Mailchimp includes more marketing features.
Which is easier for non-technical users?
Mailchimp is significantly easier. It offers a visual campaign builder, automation workflows, landing page designer, and point-and-click segmentation—all designed for marketers without coding. SendGrid requires technical expertise for setup and is API-first; non-developers would struggle to get started without developer support.