Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Heroku VS SendGrid

Compare Heroku VS SendGrid and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Heroku logo Heroku

Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.

SendGrid logo SendGrid

Learn why more developers choose SendGrid for their email deliverability service to send transactional emails triggered by web apps. Get started for free
  • Heroku Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • SendGrid Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-28

Heroku features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Heroku offers an extremely user-friendly interface and a high level of abstraction, making it easy for developers to deploy, manage, and scale applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure.
  • Quick Deployment
    One of Heroku’s strongest points is the ability to deploy applications quickly using Git. Developers can push their code to Heroku with a simple command, streamlining the entire process.
  • Scalability
    Heroku provides effortless scaling options by allowing developers to add more dynos (containers) with a single command to handle increased traffic and workload.
  • Add-Ons Ecosystem
    Heroku offers a rich ecosystem of add-ons, such as databases, caching, monitoring, and more, which can be easily integrated into applications to extend their functionality.
  • Automatic Updates
    Heroku automatically handles operating system and server updates, allowing developers to focus solely on their application code rather than maintenance tasks.
  • Free Tier
    Heroku offers a free tier with sufficient resources to host small projects and learn the platform without incurring costs, making it accessible for beginners and small-scale applications.

Possible disadvantages of Heroku

  • Cost
    While Heroku offers a free tier, the costs can quickly add up for larger applications and professional use. Paid plans and additional dynos or add-ons can become expensive.
  • Performance
    Heroku’s performance can sometimes be suboptimal compared to other cloud providers, particularly when running high-performance or resource-intensive applications.
  • Limited Control
    Heroku abstracts away a lot of infrastructure management, which can be a downside for developers who need fine-grained control over their environments and configurations.
  • Dyno Sleeping
    Applications running on Heroku’s free tier experience 'dyno sleeping,' where the application goes to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity, causing a delay when it wakes up after receiving a new request.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Relying heavily on Heroku’s ecosystem and platform-specific features can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to another platform if needed.
  • Add-On Costs
    The costs for add-ons can also become significant, as many useful features and integrations require paid add-ons, increasing the overall expense.

SendGrid features and specs

  • Scalability
    SendGrid is built to handle large volumes of email, making it suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.
  • API Integration
    SendGrid offers robust APIs that can be integrated into other applications with ease, providing both flexibility and functionality.
  • Deliverability
    High delivery rates due to SendGrid’s strong relationships with ISPs and extensive infrastructure that reduce the chances of emails being marked as spam.
  • Analytics
    Comprehensive analytics and reporting tools that provide insights into email performance, helping businesses optimize their email strategy.
  • Support
    24/7 customer support and extensive documentation and resources that assist in resolving issues and improving utilization.
  • Templates
    Pre-built email templates and intuitive drag-and-drop editor allow for easy creation and customization of emails.

Possible disadvantages of SendGrid

  • Cost
    Pricing can become expensive as your email volume increases, which may not be ideal for startups or small companies with tight budgets.
  • Complexity
    Some users might find the initial setup and configuration to be complex, especially if they are not technically inclined.
  • Rate Limits
    SendGrid imposes email sending rate limits, which can be restrictive for businesses needing to send a high volume of emails in a short period.
  • UI/UX
    The user interface can be less intuitive compared to other email service providers, which may affect the user experience.
  • Advanced Features Cost Extra
    Some advanced features and functionalities require additional payment, which can increase the overall costs.

Heroku videos

What is Heroku | Ask a Dev Episode 14

More videos:

SendGrid videos

SendGrid Review | Send 100k+ Emails Per Month | Pearl Lemon Reviews

More videos:

  • Review - Why use SendGrid instead of Mailchimp for your e-marketing? | Web Summit 2017
  • Review - Why Emails are sent to Spam! Even with Premium Services Like Amazon SES, Sendgrid, Gsuite, Mailgun

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Heroku and SendGrid)
Cloud Computing
100 100%
0% 0
Email Marketing
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Hosting
100 100%
0% 0
Email Marketing Platforms

User comments

Share your experience with using Heroku and SendGrid. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Heroku and SendGrid

Heroku Reviews

  1. mark-mercer
    Useful Cloud Platform

    Great service to build, run and manage applications entirely in the cloud!

    🏁 Competitors: Amazon AWS, Dokku on Digital Ocean, Firebase
    👍 Pros:    Easy user interface|Good customer service|Multi-language cloud application platform
    👎 Cons:    Limitation with some addons|Low network performance
  2. jamestelford
    · Full Stack Developer at OutDev ·
    🏁 Competitors: Docker, Amazon AWS
    👍 Pros:    Powerful development environments|Great value for the money|Great customer support|Paas

10 Top Firebase Alternatives to Ignite Your Development in 2024
Heroku’s focus on simplicity and developer experience makes it a perfect fit for those who want to focus on building their apps, not babysitting servers. Startups and small businesses, in particular, can benefit from Heroku’s ability to accelerate development and deployment, allowing them to get their ideas to market faster.
Source: genezio.com
2023 Firebase Alternatives: Top 10 Open-Source & Free
Heroku Postgres – Majority of businesses like Heroku because of its SQL database support. Yes, PostgreSQL as a service is an appealing product of this PaaS vendor with quick deployment approaches.
5 Free Heroku Alternatives with Free Plan for Developers
Koyeb is a decent alternative to Heroku that you can consider for hosting or deploying your web apps and APIs. It has all the features of Heroku that you will need for your projects. So far, I have not encountered an importer tool for migrating Heroku deployments but I am sure doing that manually will not be that hard. Just like Heroku it offers you an intuitive web UI as...
Choosing the best Next.js hosting platform
However, there are a few disadvantages to Heroku. First of all, despite its build pack, Heroku will run your project as a Node.js application. As a result, you will lose some of Next.js’ most interesting features, such as Incremental Static Regeneration. Analytics are replaced by metrics and measured throughput, response time, and memory usage (only on paid plans).
Top 10 Netlify Alternatives
Heroku is another alternative to Netlify that doesn’t only host static websites but has the ability to host dynamic websites. This PaaS platform was launched in 2007 and conferred highly scalable features to deploy, host and launch applications.

SendGrid Reviews

Comparing 16 Campaign Monitor Alternatives: In-depth Analysis
Additionally, on SendGrid, users get 360-degree insights into email delivery performance for improved optimization. SendGrid is a good option for users who don’t send large volumes of emails and want t to be charged per email sent and not the number of contacts, thanks to their usage-based pricing model.
Amazon SES vs SendGrid – Who has High Email Delivery?
SendGrid: Though SendGrid claims their pricing policy to be flexible (which is true to a certain extent), it is much more costlier compared to Amazon SES. Under the free plan, the user can send 12,000 emails per month and store 2000 contacts for free which does even requires the usage of any credit card. Under the paid plan, SendGrid’s pricing plan is divided into three...
Source: easysendy.com
Cheap Email Marketing Services: 6 Great Budget Tools Compared
If you just want to give SendGrid a try, there’s a free plan that includes most of the primary features. However, this plan is a bit limited when it comes to the sending allowance of only 100 emails per day. The next tier pro plan is $19.95 per month, and that lets you send up to monthly 50,000 emails. On the far end of the spectrum there are also enterprise plans available...
Source: themeisle.com
11 Sendgrid Alternatives For Your Business Email
SendGrid, which started as an independent entity, and is now acquired by Twilio, offers a lot of functionalities when it comes to sending bulk emails, be it transactional or marketing ones. However, it is not without its flaws, mediocre customer service being one of them. Several viable SendGrid alternatives have emerged in recent years that can serve all your email needs,...
15 Mailchimp Alternatives for SaaS Companies
SendGrid offers a complete email service to companies, including email API to integrate email into your website or app and marketing campaigns. You can use it to send promotional emails, newsletters, password reset emails, and other customer communications.
Source: userlist.com

Social recommendations and mentions

SendGrid might be a bit more popular than Heroku. We know about 109 links to it since March 2021 and only 73 links to Heroku. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Heroku mentions (73)

  • How to deploy your web application? 3 different approaches to consider (+1 bonus)
    Providers include Digital Ocean, Heroku or Render for example. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Heroku Reviews Apps prevent delivering bugs on production
    Review Apps run the code in any GitHub PR in a complete, disposable Heroku application. Review Apps each have a unique URL you can share. It’s then super easy for anyone to try the new code. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
  • How to keep an HTTP connection alive for 9 hours
    The app is deployed to Heroku and when it came time to switch the mode to email-on-account-creation mode, it was a very simple environment change:. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • How to Process Scheduled Queue Jobs in Node.js with BullMQ and Redis on Heroku
    Heroku is a cloud platform that makes it easy to deploy and scale web applications. It provides a number of features that make it ideal for deploying background job applications, including:. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • I made a Bot.. How do I use it?
    Once you've created it you can host it locally (this means leaving the program running on your computer) or host it through a service online. I haven't personally tried this yet, but I believe you can use a site like heroku.com or other similar services. Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

SendGrid mentions (109)

  • 10 Must-Use APIs for Your Next SaaS Project
    SendGrid is used For transactional and marketing emails, SendGrid offers a robust email API. It ensures emails from your SaaS platform are delivered reliably to users. You can find it here. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Adding ESP to supercharge your Django Email 🚀
    There are many email service providers such as Sendgrid, Brevo, MailGun, Amazon SES etc. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Namaste Your Way to Wellness: AI-Powered Yoga Recommendations
    Email Follow-Ups To keep you motivated, YogaConnect sends detailed follow-up emails containing your personalized yoga routines and additional wellness tips. Leveraging Twilio's SendGrid, these emails are delivered consistently and reliably to keep you engaged and informed. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Sending e-mails with Sendgrid
    To send e-mails in a production environment, use services like Sendgrid. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • How to send emails from your website using Twilio SendGrid
    Now we need to install React Hook Form because that is the package we are going to use for building our form. We also need to install the package for SendGrid. Cd into the sendgrid-contact-form folder and then run this command to install the packages:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Heroku and SendGrid, you can also consider the following products

DigitalOcean - Simplifying cloud hosting. Deploy an SSD cloud server in 55 seconds.

MailChimp - MailChimp is the best way to design, send, and share email newsletters.

Linode - We make it simple to develop, deploy, and scale cloud infrastructure at the best price-to-performance ratio in the market.

Brevo - Innovative online Email Marketing solution to manage your contacts, create & send your newsletters and track your results. More than 80 000 clients. Best prices and attractive features.

Amazon AWS - Amazon Web Services offers reliable, scalable, and inexpensive cloud computing services. Free to join, pay only for what you use.

Mailgun - A set of powerful APIs that enable you to send, receive and track email from your app effortlessly whether you use Python, Ruby, PHP, C#, Node.js or Java.