SendGrid adds Parse, Stackmob, Azure integrations

Barb Darrow — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:00:36 +0000

SendGrid keeps moving toward ubiquity. The company, which brings e-mail delivery to popular applications like foursquare, Pinterest, and Airbnb, now integrates with Parse, Stackmob and Windows Azure mobile-backend-as-a-service (MbaaS) options. That should make it easier for more mobile developers to build email delivery and alerts into their applications without having to sweat the details of their infrastructure. Last week SendGrid announced tie ins to the popular Twilio APIs that enable SMS text and voice integration into mobile apps.

SendGrid CEO Jim Franklin

This is a big deal because most mobile app users expect to communicate via their apps. What’s the good of foursquare if you can’t alert the world that you ousted Joe Schmoe as mayor of your Dunkin Donuts? The new MbaaS integrations are all available now, according to Boulder, Colo.-based SendGrid.

One of the key advantages of SendGrid, developers say, is it lessens their overall reliance on Amazon Web Services for capabilities above and beyond basic compute and storage functionality.

That’s increasingly important for developers who don’t want to be overly reliant on a particular vendor’s cloud. SendGrid’s biggest rival is Amazon Simple Email Service (SeS) and by using SendGrid developers can distinguish between their infrastructure provider and their mail service provider. “That’s key because it can take you six months to migrate an app off of Amazon if you need to,” said Mark Geene, CEO of Cloud Elements, a Denver area systems integrator specializing in cloud development projects.

SendGrid CEO Jim Franklin says he hears that sort of thing a lot. ”One of the strengths of SendGrid is it’s easy-on, easy-off. We make it very easy contractually and technically to sign up and to leave,” he said.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

GigaOM » Jim Franklin

SendGrid adds Parse, Stackmob, Azure integrations