Migrating transactional email is riskier than migrating marketing email, because the messages are load-bearing. A dropped campaign is an inconvenience; a dropped password reset is a support ticket and a lost customer. The sequence below is built around that difference.
Is migrating the right call?
Good reasons to leave: overage is costing you roughly three times the in-plan rate in busy months; you want a permanent free tier rather than a 60-day trial; you want marketing and transactional on one bill.
Weaker reasons: you run at genuine scale and rely on the dedicated IP included with Pro, or you already use Twilio for SMS and voice and value the single vendor.
The detail is in SendGrid pricing explained.
What moves, and what does not
Moves cleanly: contacts and custom fields, tags and segment data, unsubscribes and bounces, and campaign history as an export.
Has to be rebuilt: automations and templates. No platform imports another’s workflow logic, and editor markup does not port. For most accounts that is a few hours of work and a useful cull of flows nobody has opened in a year.
The order that protects your deliverability
- Export contacts with consent data — signup source, timestamp and opt-in method, not just addresses. Several jurisdictions require you to hold these.
- Export unsubscribes, bounces and complaints separately. This is the step people skip, and it causes the real damage.
- Set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC on the new sender and verify before sending anything. See SPF, DKIM and DMARC explained.
- Import contacts, then suppressions immediately — before any campaign goes out.
- Rebuild your core automations. Welcome series first. Copy is in our template library.
- Warm up if you send meaningful volume. Start with your most engaged segment and ramp. See how to warm up an email domain.
- Run both accounts in parallel for two to four weeks.
- Cancel only after a full billing cycle of clean sending.
The mistake that does real damage
Emailing people who had already unsubscribed on SendGrid.
Suppression lists sit separately from the main contact export on almost every platform, so a straight contact import loses them. Everyone who opted out then receives a campaign they explicitly refused — and those people hit the spam button rather than unsubscribing again. A complaint spike on a brand-new sending domain with no reputation history is close to the worst possible start.
It also breaches consent rules in most jurisdictions. See email marketing rules by country and email list cleaning.
How long it takes
A small list with two or three automations: an afternoon of setup, then two to four weeks of parallel running. A larger account with complex flows: a week of setup, then four to six weeks of warm-up and parallel running.
Setup is rarely the bottleneck. Rushing the warm-up is how migrations fail.
Migrating to Bluey Email specifically
If you send more than 100,000 emails a month, our team does the migration for you — contacts, suppressions, templates and automations rebuilt on your behalf. You approve the flows before anything sends.
Below 100,000 a month we guide you through it, with a real person answering questions rather than a documentation link. That threshold is worth stating plainly rather than implying everyone gets a done-for-you service.
On cost, Bluey’s Email API is $9.95 for 50,000 emails against SendGrid’s $19.95, and $49.95 for 100,000 on Pro against $89.95 — roughly 44–50% cheaper at published entry tiers. Note SendGrid Pro includes a dedicated IP, which is an add-on on Bluey. Full ladder in email API pricing compared.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose my subscribers?
No. Contacts export cleanly as CSV with custom fields intact. What you must also export is the suppression list, which sits separately.
Can I move my automations?
Not automatically. No platform imports another’s workflow logic, so flows are rebuilt.
Will my deliverability drop?
Temporarily, if you move significant volume without warming up. Ramp gradually from your engaged contacts and the dip is brief.
Should I cancel SendGrid immediately?
No. Run both for two to four weeks. One extra month’s subscription removes nearly all the risk.
Weighing it up? Bluey Email vs SendGrid covers the differences, SendGrid alternatives covers the field, and SMTP vs email API covers the integration choice.
Start free — 500 emails a month, no card required, so you can build and test before moving anything.