Why do azure developers use Sendgrid to send emails but not another service?

Question

Hello, I don't know if this question is possible here, if not I am sorry for posting it. but I want to send emails from my azure website, and i noticed that most azure users use Sendgrid service to do that, so i was wondering why Sendgrid? what is special about it? anything wrong with Mailgun or Mailjet or such services?

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Alan-SY

Answer 1

Hi Alan,

For short, you are free to use any SMTP relay provider you want within Azure. It's just that SendGrid has a well adapted offer with Azure (see http://sendgrid.com/azure.html), a scalability model that fits well with Azure's cloud, as well as API support in C#.

Hope it helps,

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Marius

Answer 2

Hi Marius, thank you for the reply .. I just don't know how to try sendgrid!!! they don't give you a chance to try their service except your account is provisioned, and your account is provisioned if you have a trusted website. so it is funny somehow, you have to make the website, make it famous and trusted, then go back to sendgrid to learn it, then back to your website to modify it to use sendgrid. thats horrible, and if you try to say that to their customer support they don't even reply or try to explain.

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Alan-SY

Answer 3

We have used Mailgun (http://www.mailgun.com/) as well and it works great. It gives you option to send mails either via smtp or via http.

They provide you with the documentation and SDK (http://restsharp.org/) as well.

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Answer 4

Hello freaky, that was really nice i think i will start coding for Mailgun. thanks for all.

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Alan-SY

Answer 5

With AzureWatch we use Amazon's SES service.  Sometimes sending tens of thousands of emails daily.  Paying a penny for 10k of emails + very reasonable data transfer fees.

Hope this helps.

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Auto-scaling & monitoring service for Windows Azure applications at http://www.paraleap.com

Answer 6

Hello Alan-SY,

1. We have a partnership with Windows Azure, where we work closely with their team to ensure a great experience for Windows Azure developers.

2. Here are some resources that can help you get going fast:

• Announcing Native Windows Azure Libraries and Special Free Pricing Using SendGrid for Windows Azure Customers: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/01/25/announcing-native-windows-azure-libraries-and-special-free-pricing-using-sendgrid-for-windows-azure-customers.aspx (be sure to check out the GitHub libraries referenced in this post)
• How to Send Email Using SendGrid from Java in a Windows Azure Deployment: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/hh801258.aspx
• Getting Started with SendGrid on Windows Azure: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure/archive/2012/09/10/guest-post-getting-started-with-sendgrid-on-windows-azure.aspx
• How to Use the SendGrid Email Service from PHP: http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/php/how-to-guides/sendgrid-email-service/

3. Our support team is available 24/7: http://support.sendgrid.com/home

4. In addition to our Web and SMTP APIs, we have a Parse (Incoming) API http://docs.sendgrid.com/documentation/api/parse-api-2/ to easily process incoming mail and an Event API http://docs.sendgrid.com/documentation/api/event-api/ for instant notifications of events such as bounces, clicks, opens, etc. 

5. Before you start coding, you can test our API from your browser here: http://docs.sendgrid.com/apiworkshop/

6. What makes us most special; however, is our customers http://sendgrid.com/customers.html and partners http://sendgrid.com/partners/email-partner-network.html

With regards to your specific provisioning issue, reach out to our team on twitter (http://www.twitter.com/sendgrid) or via email community at sendgrid. 

With Best Regards,

Elmer Thomas
Developer Evangelist
www.SendGrid.com
Start hacking on SendGrid today free: https://sendgrid.com/user/signup

twitter: @sendgrid ^et @thinkingserious

Answer 7

Elmer, I'm affraid the Sendgrid webpage is broken, It's impossible to sing up for Azure or any other plan (Silver, Platinum...). I though It was a temporary issue but It's a 24 hours old issue by now.

Kind Regards.

José Angel Bolaño Rucabado

.NET and SharePoint Developer at ODM Computers

Answer 8

SendGrid support will be happy to provision your account if you just have a quick chat with them and let them know what you are going to be using it for. In the near future, accounts will be automatically provisioned for the majority of use cases.