Moving customer emails out of Zapier email steps: what did you switch to?

Hi ​@egarbugli! 👋

I’ve not been in this situation but instead of keeping the email templates in Email by Zapier actions I’d suggest using a dedicated email app. We have integrations with transactional email apps (including SendGrid and ActiveCampaign Postmark) listed here: https://zapier.com/apps/categories/transactional-email

Not sure all the apps on that list are able to do both email and SMS. It seems like the Mailchimp Transactional app can handle transactional email sends, and their separate Mailchimp app supports both email and SMS campaign sends. Whether your client should move from Quo, and which email app is the best fit, will depend on their individual requirements and setup.

Hopefully other members who've done something similar can share what worked for them. Keep us posted on what you decide on!

Hi ​@egarbugli 

You definitely want to use an email app and email account that you own.

In other words, do not configure emails to be sent by Email by Zapier.

• Personal Emails: e.g. Gmail, Outlook
  • https://zapier.com/apps/gmail/integrations
  • https://zapier.com/apps/microsoft-outlook/integrations
• Drip Emails: e.g. Kit, Drip
  • https://zapier.com/apps/categories/drip-emails
• Email Newsletters: e.g. Brevo, Flodesk
  • https://zapier.com/apps/categories/email-newsletters
• Marketing Emails: e.g. Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign
  • https://zapier.com/apps/categories/marketing-automation
• Transactional Emails: SendGrid, Mailgun
  • https://zapier.com/apps/categories/transactional-email

Hi Troy, For sure. Do you have any specific recommendations? Thanks.

Troy's advice is the right starting point, since sending customer emails through Zapier's own step gives you no visibility and no control over deliverability. Moving the sends to Postmark or SendGrid while keeping Zapier as the trigger layer is the usual route, and shared templates live in the email platform rather than being duplicated across dozens of Zaps. HubSpot Starter can handle some of this natively, though its email tools are limited at that tier. Tackle the bilingual templates first, since that duplication is where the maintenance pain really lives.

Key templates by alias and locale (e.g. quote-followup-fr) in Postmark or SendGrid. Then each Zap sends only the alias, the locale and a JSON payload, so you change field mapping instead of HTML in every Zap. Use separate transactional and broadcast streams so unsubscribes never block quote or booking emails. Postmark’s delivery and bounce webhooks can go to a Zapier catch hook and update the HubSpot contact.

​@Jimmy Ruan Nice. Thanks for the extra suggestions. It should be useful. Any thoughts on Postmark vs SendGrid?

​@egarbugli  Happy to help. It mostly depends on what these emails are:

Postmark is the better fit if they’re mostly transactional, one-to-one emails like quotes, booking confirmations, reminders and follow-ups. It’s built for that, deliverability is very consistent, and it keeps transactional and broadcast mail in separate “message streams,” so a bulk-email complaint can’t hurt delivery of quotes. Its activity log is also easy to read when a client asks “did they get it?” The catch is that it has no real preference center, only an unsubscribe per broadcast stream. They also review new accounts and don’t want marketing-heavy senders.

SendGrid makes more sense if you want the preference center you mentioned. Its unsubscribe groups give you a hosted page where contacts pick which kinds of email they get, and it handles both marketing and transactional sends in one place. Its Handlebars templates can do {{#equals lang "fr"}} branching, so one template can hold both languages if you’d rather not keep two. The downside is that deliverability on the lower plans goes through shared IPs and can be less predictable, and the UI and support are clunkier.

For a setup like yours, I’d lean Postmark for the Zapier-triggered operational emails, with HubSpot (or SendGrid later) for anything marketing-like. Either way, I’d keep one template per locale (e.g. quote-followup-fr) so the copy is easy for the client to edit. I’d also send the delivery, bounce and open webhooks back into HubSpot through a Zapier catch hook, because neither tool logs to the HubSpot timeline by itself.