Email Service Provider

SendGrid by Twilio

Twilio's cloud-based email delivery platform for transactional and marketing email at scale.

⚡ Monitored by EmailExacto Intelligence

Overview

What is SendGrid by Twilio?

SendGrid by Twilio is an email service provider (ESP) that handles sending infrastructure, IP reputation management, and delivery feedback for email campaigns, transactional messages, or both. Their sending reputation and your domain's authentication configuration are the two primary drivers of inbox placement when using SendGrid.

SendGrid supports shared and dedicated IPs. DKIM is configured by adding CNAME records to your DNS. SPF requires adding include:sendgrid.net to your SPF record. Both are required for DMARC alignment.

Technical Details

How It Works

When you send through SendGrid, messages leave via their SMTP servers or API. The receiving server sees SendGrid's sending IPs in the Received headers. For your domain to pass DMARC, you must configure SendGrid's DKIM keys and SPF include: in your DNS. Without this, email sent through SendGrid fails authentication for your domain.

SendGrid's Event Webhook delivers real-time bounce, complaint, open, and click data. Configuring this webhook is essential for list hygiene. SendGrid provides both marketing (Campaigns) and transactional (API/SMTP relay) sending; reputation is managed separately per subuser.

Deliverability Impact

Why It Matters

Your ESP affects deliverability through their shared IP pool quality, feedback loops and bounce handling, and ease of authentication configuration. SendGrid's shared IP pools are large and well-maintained, but dedicated IPs give you full control — recommended for high-volume or reputation-sensitive senders.

Regardless of ESP, the fundamentals are yours to control: domain authentication, list hygiene, engagement rates, and complaint rates have more long-term deliverability impact than the ESP choice itself.

EmailExacto

How EmailExacto Helps

Monitor Your SendGrid Domain with EmailExacto

EmailExacto Intelligence monitors your sending domain independently of your ESP — giving you visibility into authentication, blacklist status, and inbox placement regardless of which platform you send through.

SPF, DKIM, and DMARC monitoring — verify SendGrid's authentication is correctly configured for your domain
Blacklist monitoring — detect if your domain or IP has been listed
Inbox placement testing — see where your email lands at Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo
Daily deliverability score — track domain health independently of your SendGrid dashboard

See EmailExacto Intelligence →

Best Practices

What to Get Right

✓Add include:sendgrid.net to your SPF record and verify the lookup count stays under 10.

✓Configure DKIM by adding SendGrid's CNAME records to your DNS before sending.

✓Set DMARC to at least p=none before sending through SendGrid.

✓Use dedicated IPs for high-volume sending (50k+/month) to isolate your reputation.

✓Enable and process SendGrid's Event Webhook to keep your suppression list current.

✓Use subusers to separate transactional and marketing mail reputation.

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