SendGrid provides a cloud-based customer communication platform for engagement and business growth. Led by CEO Sameer Dholakia, the company powers transactional and marketing email delivery for a broad set of customers. It currently delivers over 30 billion emails each month for more than 120,000 active customers, including 42,000 paying customers, across over 100 countries. Notable customers cited include Airbnb, Pandora, HubSpot, Spotify, Uber, FourSquare, Intuit and Costco. The company said it will use the new funding to accelerate its product roadmap—specifically its Marketing Campaigns email marketing product and Expert Services offerings—and to support global expansion. SendGrid is based in Denver, CO. SendGrid provides an email delivery platform used by 180,000 web application companies and developers, including Uber, FourSquare, Pinterest, Airbnb, Twilio, Spotify and Pandora. Founded in 2009 as part of TechStars and led by recently appointed CEO Sameer Dholakia, the company is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. The platform offers tools to improve email deliverability, surface actionable insights, and scale to meet high volumes of email. SendGrid intends to use new funding to expand platform functionality and increase channels to market. The company is backed by a mix of institutional and individual investors, which supports its continued product and go-to-market growth. SendGrid is a cloud-based SMTP email delivery and management service that helps businesses manage transactional emails. Its platform handles subscription management, bounce management, complaint feedback and provides analytics including request tracking, bounces, spam reports, invalid email requests, click tracking and unsubscribes. The service targets customers sending from ~100K emails per month up to millions, with clients such as Foursquare, Spotify, Twilio, Airbnb, Pinterest, Path and Hootsuite; plans range from free to $400 per month and include pay-as-you-go. Operational metrics reported in the article show SendGrid sends 2.6 billion emails per month, has sent 26 billion total, tracks over 400 million events per day, and grew to about 40,000 customers in 2011. The company was incubated in TechStars and has partnerships with Windows Azure (including a 25,000 free-emails-per-month package on sign-up) and RackSpace. SendGrid faces competition from Amazon Web Services and AuthSmtp and is focusing on product development, hiring, expanded operations, improved customer experience, and international expansion. SendGrid provides businesses a platform to manage transactional emails—handling subscription, bounce management, complaint feedback, deliverability and analytics for high-volume senders. The service is used by startups and larger customers, including Swipely, Hootsuite and Mychurch. At the time of the article SendGrid had processed roughly 1.2 billion transactional emails, had 400 direct-paying customers (up from 100 in December) and about 3,000 total users. Pay plans range from free to $800/month, with the average paying customer on the $79.95 “Silver” package. The company reported it was profitable, having “broken the profit barrier” in January. Product roadmaps focus on small add-ons (a newsletter creator), more customizable bounce management and improved usability as volume scales. SendGrid offers outbound email servers and analytics designed to improve delivery rates and solve scalability problems for transactional emails such as sign-up confirmations, shipping alerts, and notifications. The service includes CAN-SPAM compliance, link tracking, open-rate reporting, and metrics for clicks, opens, unsubscribes, spam reports, and bounces without requiring code. Incubated by TechStars, SendGrid targets developers and businesses that need reliable programmatic email delivery. At the time of the article the company had 100 paying customers and had delivered over 100 million emails on their behalf. The product emphasizes both deliverability and analytics to reduce operational overhead for customer teams. SendGrid said it will use the funding to expand development, marketing, and sales efforts.

Total raised

$80M

Funding rounds

5

Latest round

Series D

Latest activity

Nov 2016