SendGrid is the default answer to "which email API" and has been for a decade. This page is about the one structural thing that is different, and the several places where the default is still the right answer.
Aslio charges only for messages sent — about USD 0.21 per 1,000 emails (INR 0.02 each) with no monthly platform fee, no seat charge and no minimum commitment. SendGrid is a mature, tiered platform with a large feature surface, deep deliverability tooling and global support. Aslio suits senders who want per-message pricing and one wallet across email, SMS and WhatsApp. SendGrid suits teams at scale who need certifications, a large ecosystem and an established vendor.
We publish our own numbers exactly. We deliberately do not print SendGrid's, because their plans change and a stale price on a competitor page is a lie with a date on it — check theirs directly.
| SendGrid | Aslio | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Tiered monthly plans by send volume, plus paid add-ons | Prepaid wallet. Pay per message, nothing else. |
| Cost per 1,000 emails | See sendgrid.com/pricing | INR 20 — about USD 0.21 |
| Monthly platform fee | Yes, from the first paid tier | None |
| Per-seat charge | Additional teammates are plan-limited | None |
| Minimum commitment | Monthly plan | None — top up and stop whenever |
| Channels on one account | Email; SMS and WhatsApp via Twilio, separately | Email, SMS and WhatsApp on one API and one wallet |
| Own sending domain and DKIM | Yes | Yes, on every account including free |
| Delivery / bounce / complaint events | Yes, with tier-dependent retention | Yes, on every account from the first message |
| Automatic suppression list | Yes | Yes |
| Scale and track record | Billions of messages, over a decade | Live in production since 2026, paying customers daily |
| Certifications | SOC 2, ISO 27001 and more | None — stated plainly here |
| Support | Global, 24/7 on higher tiers | 09:30–18:30 IST, direct to the engineers |
| Data residency | Multiple regions | Application in Frankfurt (EU); delivery via AWS SES Mumbai |
On fairness. SendGrid is a Twilio product with a decade of deliverability engineering, formal certifications and 24/7 global support. Aslio is eighteen months old. We think the pricing model is genuinely better and we will not pretend the rest of the comparison is close.
For most senders, substantially — Aslio has no monthly platform fee at all and charges INR 0.02 (about USD 0.00021) per email, roughly USD 0.21 per 1,000. Because SendGrid prices in monthly tiers, the gap is widest for senders whose volume is modest or uneven. Check SendGrid's current published pricing to compare against your own volume.
Functionally, for the core job — yes. Aslio provides a REST API, your own verified sending domain with DKIM, delivery and bounce webhooks, automatic suppression and idempotent retries. It does not offer an SMTP relay — if your application can only speak SMTP, Aslio is not a drop-in replacement today. What it does not provide is a SOC 2 report, 24/7 global support or a decade of deliverability tooling.
Yes, and that is the structural difference. One API key and one prepaid wallet cover email, SMS and WhatsApp. With SendGrid, SMS and WhatsApp mean a separate Twilio relationship. Email is generally available on Aslio; SMS and WhatsApp are enabled per account.
The application runs on AWS in Frankfurt, Germany (eu-central-1), inside the EU. Outbound delivery goes through AWS Simple Email Service in Mumbai. Full detail on the security page.
Verify your sending domain on Aslio, top up the wallet, then switch your API calls over. Note there is no SMTP relay, so an application sending via SMTP needs a code change rather than a credential swap. Run both in parallel on a slice of traffic first — that is what we would do. Write to info@asli.one and we will help with the cutover.