SendGrid To Mailtrap:
A Migration Guide

Key Differences Between SendGrid and Mailtrap

1. Depending on the pricing plan, Mailtrap stores emails in the Email Logs for up to 60 days. Email content and historical data is stored and accessible between 3 and 15 days without any additional fees.
2. You can request annual billing/plan with Mailtrap, not only monthly-billed plans.
3. Mailtrap offers Email Testing. This is a separate product to inspect HTML/ CSS Spam Scores etc. and debug emails in staging, dev, and QA environments before sending them to recipients.
4. Mailtrap doesn’t have the scheduled for later email sending option.

Terminology comparison

General step-by-step flow for migration

Getting started

To start sending emails with Mailtrap, you only need to create an account, then register, and verify your domain. Domain setup and verification could be done either from the in-app Homepage, or from the Sending Domains tab under Sending.

Domain verification

• After you create an account and add your sending domain, it will take up to two business days to go through the security check.
• Make sure not to make any add-ons, fixes, and other alterations during the domain verification time since it could be seen as suspicious behavior.
• Until the domain is verified, the throughput of sending is limited to 100 emails per hour to prevent abusing the system with spam activities. Learn more about it in our Sending Limits article.
• The sending limits could be lifted by contacting the Mailtrap support team. In this case, you will have to provide answers to a number of questions to prove the trustworthiness and authority of your sending domain.

Sending with Mailtrap SMTP

SMTP Endpoints

live.smtp.mailtrap.io	smtp.sendgrid.net

SMTP Ports

Port	Function	Mailtrap support	Sendgrid support
587	recommended for encrypted TLS SMTP connection
25	May be problematic due to blocking by some mailbox providers to avoid abuse
2525	For unencrypted/TLS
465	For SSL SMTP connection

SMTP Configuration

After signing up and verifying your sending domain go to the API and SMTP tab under Sending Domains. Select SMTP in Integrations

Copy and paste the given SMTP credentials into your app.

Note: Turning TLS on is mandatory as mentioned in the credentials.

Sending with Mailtrap API

Mailtrap API tokens

When you create a domain, a token is automatically created and named based on the following formula: [domain name] + [token] + [token ID]. Add or remove token permissions by clicking on the corresponding boxes in the Token menu.

Learn more on how to manage API tokens in our guide.

API Mapping

API type	Mailtrap	SendGrid
Email sending	Send email	Mail
User management	User management	Teammates
Email Testing	Sandbox API

API Libraries

At the moment there are four libraries available at Mailtrap.

API Authentication

We use Bearer authentication. Pass the API token into the code under the header Authorization.

Permissions/User management

You can add users to your account and manage their permissions if you are signed up for the Business price plan or higher. To add users, and assign and edit their permissions, click on the User Management tab, and the three dots on the right.

Note that a user needs Admin permissions to get authenticated and send emails via API.

Read more about managing users permissions

ActionMailer Balancer for smooth migration

For Ruby on Rails applications, Mailtrap offers ActionMailer Balancer that makes the migration smooth. ActionMailer extension allows proportionally distributing the email sending load between two different sending services and mitigating the sending risks.

After you install the Balancer to your application, and do some minor configurations, it will extend the sending method of ActionMailer.

For more detailed info on the boilerplate and use in development, read the Mailtrap ActionMailer Balancer Github page.