We wish to change to a 3rd party mail service for better delivery and metrics. Using a free (for now) account at sendgrid.com, we configured our DNS on the domain side and SMTP on the aMember side (smtp.sendgrid.net, SSL, port 465, username=apikey, password=API-from-Sendgrid) and our regular email delivery works fine. We would also like to get delivery metrics, bounces (bounce types), click-through stats, etc. and were figuring that one of the plugins Sendgrid or Sendgrid3 would do the job. Is there anyone with experience able to chime in for next steps? We are completely new to Sendgrid. Also, since we send just about 200 emails just a couple times a month, is the free account sufficient?
I am also noticing that by just configuring SMTP to sendgrid.net, that in the Sendgrid backend I can see delivery status, opens, and clicks. Just what does the plugin(s) do? Do they bring those statistics back to the aMember CP so that we don't need to login to sendgrid.com for data?
After evaluating SendGrid, SendinBlue (Sendy) and MailerSend (no plugin, SMTP only), I settled on MailerSend. For the size of our org (~200) and number of newsletters per month (3 max), the free plan allowed for 12,000 emails/mo, no daily limit and $1 extra per 1,000 emails if you are ever to send that much. The DNS settings allowed our domain to be fully setup for bulk emailings with "pass" on SPF, DKIM, DMARC. I also like that the sender in the details appears as a subdomain of our domain and no SMTP relays are used, which can sometimes block delivery. I still have no idea what these plugins do. If all they do is bring the delivery, opens, click-thru stats back into aMember it really is unnecessary as we can just log into MailerSend for that info - EZ since our email volume is so low.