Hi all
We wanted to give everyone a heads up that SendGrid recently announced (read it here) that their free plan will be discontinued in the near future.
What It Means For You
Bubble’s built-it email functionally will continue to work as usual
For users that want to use their own key, SendGrid will still have a 60 day free trial (without credit card) of their service but should plan on alternatives if they are looking for a fully free service
Next Steps
There are plenty of other free email service providers that still have free tiers like Postmark, Resend, SMTP2Go, AWS SES. We recommend that users do their own research to find a provider that fits their needs.
To reiterate
Bubble’s out the box functionality won’t change. This affects users that depend on a free-tier plan with SendGrid. Those users should review and plan according to these news.
Postmark has been really good and I don’t have any issues with any bounces or down time. Pretty cheap for all of my apps for one price. I think I only pay like $15/month for ALL of my apps currently.
I think Bubble has an opportunity to build a premium email tool into their platform. Looking at the SendGrid pricing, they want $19.99/month for basic email functionality. That’s almost 70% of the price of Bubble’s Starter plan. In my use case I need to send a few emails from my web app, but we are talking less than 500 per month. I’d much rather pay Bubble an additional $5 or $10 a month for limited email functionality than having to step up to SendGrid’s plan which is overkill for my needs.
The main value of Bubble is that it brings many tools under one umbrella so I don’t have to worry about separate back-end and front-end software systems working together. Email is a very common need for web/mobile apps so having to seek out a separate vendor is friction Bubble could eliminate with a native integration.
Was a big Postmark fan for the longest time, and longstanding client but recently cancelled my account because they ratcheted up their pricing substantially, post-acquisition by ActiveCampaign. Now they have effectively 6Xed pricing if you need or want support for inbound emails/inbound routing. Switched to Mailgun Send as they don’t have unscrupulous investors trying to squeeze every possible dollar out of their userbase (at least, not currently ), and support inbound routing even on their free plan.
Can we use “Send email” functionality with other providers? Bubble seem to be having native support for Sendgrid only. So if we want to use some other email service provider, we need to integrate their APIs, create our own new API workflow for “Send mail”, and replace all the existing “Send Email” actions to new ones?