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Twilio SendGrid is one of the longest-established email platforms, built for high volume with detailed analytics and a mature deliverability toolset. It suits stores already sending a lot of mail, or teams that want SendGrid’s reporting alongside its API. Spree talks to SendGrid over plain SMTP, so there is nothing to install — see Emails for how the configuration works.

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Configuration

The username is the literal string apikey, exactly as written above — not your SendGrid username, and not the key itself. SendGrid’s own wording: “This setting is the exact string apikey and not the API key itself.” Your API key goes in the password field, used as-is: the Base64 encoding SendGrid mentions elsewhere applies to testing by hand with openssl, not to an application connecting over SMTP.
SendGrid recommends port 587, which avoids the rate limiting and connection blocking some ISPs and hosting providers apply to port 25.

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Getting an API key

  1. In the SendGrid dashboard go to Settings → API Keys and choose Create API Key.
  2. Give it Mail Send permission — that is all Spree needs, and a restricted key limits the damage if it leaks.
  3. Copy the key immediately; it is shown only once.

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Authenticating your domain

Go to Settings → Sender Authentication and complete Domain Authentication. SendGrid generates CNAME records to add at your DNS host, covering DKIM signing and the return path. Once verified, set SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS to an address on that domain.
SendGrid rejects mail from senders it cannot verify. Authenticating the whole domain is the right choice for a store, because every address on it can then send. Single Sender Verification exists for one-off addresses, but it does not scale to a store’s From, reply-to and notification addresses.

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Account plans

SendGrid retired its free plans in 2025. New accounts now start on a 60-day trial that allows up to 100 emails per day, and when the trial ends any integration using the account’s API keys stops sending until you move to a paid plan. Plan for a paid plan before launch rather than discovering the cutoff when order confirmations stop.