Why use the Azure SendGrid over SendGrid directly

Question

I'm not sure what the advantage is to using an Azure SendGrid account over integrating with SendGrid directly.

Is there some API or functionality that the Azure account provides that I'm missing?

Answer 1

One thing to be aware of when deciding to use SendGrid thru Azure is that you'll be on a shared IP. This can result in blocked emails. SendGrid is in no hurry to fix things when your shared IP gets blocked.

For example, we were using SendGrid thru Azure with a shared IP. Some other user on our shared SendGrid IP started sending out SPAM (bad stuff like phishing and malware). Spamhaus (what Microsoft Office 365 uses to block SPAM) blocked the shared SendGrid IP. NOTE: we did nothing wrong. We were NOT sending out SPAM. But, our emails started getting blocked. Spamhaus (Microsoft) started blocking ALL EMAILS coming from the shared SendGrid IP.

We complained and complained to SendGrid opening ticket after ticket for MONTHS! Contacting Spamhaus will just result in Spamhaus telling you to take up the issue with SendGrid as it's ultimately a SendGrid problem. It's up to SendGrid to work with Spamhaus to get de-listed. Again, SendGrid is in NO hurry to fix this problem. Actually a few times SendGrid told us that if we wanted to fix the problem we should UPGRADE to a much more expensive plan with a dedicated IP address.

So, beware. SendGrid is an okay solution but there are much better solutions out there that don't use this kind of tactic to try to force you to upgrade. Even if you're using SendGrid directly, the cheaper plans use shared IP addresses. And when the emails you send thru SendGrid start to get blocked, they'll suggest that you upgrade to their much more expensive dedicated IP plans. They won't be in any hurry to stop emails from getting blocked. We had this problem for months and nothing was done by SendGrid to fix the issue.

We ended up switching to a much better solution and stopped using SendGrid completely. No more blocked emails because someone else on the shared IP was a spammer. To answer the OP's question, the only advantage to using SendGrid thru Azure is price. But again, be careful using SendGrid directly because their cheaper plans also use a shared IP.

Answer 2

The Free Plan at sendgrid.com normally gives 12K emails, while through azure you get 25K emails,Azure sendgrid doesn't offer the plan of 19.95$ while there are special plans of 129.95$, 249$ which is featured at azure but not at sendgrid website. Also The azure sendgrid offers granular plans above 400$ 450,900,15000 while the sendgrid normally provides you facility to ask for a quote if you plan to spend over 400$ per month.

So the plans being more granular you can stay in pay as you go mode for a long long time, by just switching between plans. Ain't that much of a difference from technical perspective anyways.