Understanding the SendGrid email integration
Last updated: September 25, 2026
Onboarded sends your automation email on its own, with no integration involved. The SendGrid integration is an optional escape hatch: connect your own SendGrid account when you've outgrown what Onboarded's templates can express, or when you need your own delivery data.
What it is
SendGrid is an email-delivery service. The integration connects your Onboarded account to a SendGrid account you own — you provide a SendGrid API Key and a Sender Email, and automations configured to use it send through your SendGrid rather than through Onboarded's.
Most accounts never connect it and never need to. Email works the moment you add a Send Email action. See 📄 Understanding automation email for how the default path works.
When you'd want it
Reach for your own SendGrid when one of these is true:
The standard templates aren't enough. Onboarded provides four, varying only by whether the message opens with a branded band and ends with a button. If you need a layout they can't express — multi-column, custom typography, a footer with legal copy — designing your own template in SendGrid is the way to get it.
You need delivery data of your own. Opens, clicks, bounces, suppression lists, and the ability to investigate a specific message all live in the SendGrid account that sent it.
Your organization already standardizes on SendGrid and wants onboarding mail on the same infrastructure and reputation as everything else it sends.
If none of those apply, staying on Onboarded's email service is the lower-maintenance choice — and you can still send from your own address by authenticating a domain. See 📄 How do I send onboarding emails from my own domain?.
How the connection works
Connect it from Settings → Account → Integrations → SendGrid → Configure. The panel asks for an API Key from your SendGrid account and a Sender Email. Onboarded checks the key with SendGrid before storing it, so an invalid key — or one without sending permission — is rejected on the spot. Once connected, the key is stored encrypted and only ever shown masked.
Connecting the integration doesn't move any email onto it. Each Send Email action chooses its own service in the Email service dropdown, where SendGrid account becomes selectable once the integration exists. Actions left on Onboarded Email Service keep sending the way they did.
What changes, and what doesn't
On an action set to SendGrid account:
Email templatelists the dynamic templates in your SendGrid account instead of Onboarded's four.The from address comes from the integration's
Sender Email, not fromSettings → Account → Email.Recipients, variables, and
Dynamic Template Databehave exactly as they do on the default path.
Your own templates can still take advantage of the on-action subject and body editor and of theme branding, but only if they reference the variables that carry them. When a template references neither, the Email subject and Email body fields don't appear on the action at all, and the template's own subject and body are sent as-is. 📄 Automation email template variables lists the names and the exact reference syntax for each.
Domain authentication moves to your side. The Domain Authentication section in Settings → Account → Email covers Onboarded's email service only. For your own SendGrid, authenticate the domain inside SendGrid — a Sender Email on an unauthenticated domain saves without complaint, then SendGrid drops the messages. The email looks sent in Onboarded and never arrives.
Example
Take an account whose marketing team already owns a SendGrid account and a designed email template with a legal footer their counsel signed off on. They want onboarding mail to match, and they want bounce reporting alongside their other campaigns.
They authenticate their domain in SendGrid, generate an API key, and connect the integration in Onboarded with a Sender Email of onboarding@theircompany.com. Then they open their welcome automation, switch that action's Email service to SendGrid account, and pick their own template. Their reminder automations stay on Onboarded Email Service — nobody needed a custom design for those.