Hey everyone, I've been lurking here for a while and finally decided to post. This community has been super helpful as I try to navigate all these marketing tech options for a side project I'm working on.
I just got an email from SendGrid about their new "Deliverability Report" feature. I'm still pretty new to email infrastructure, so I was hoping some of you with more experience could help me understand its practical value. For context, I'm building a small SaaS tool in Python that might eventually send transactional emails (like password resets and notifications) to maybe a few thousand users. I'm trying to decide between building something in-house with a library, using a service like SendGrid, or maybe even going with an open-source alternative.
The report looks shiny in the promo, but I'm a bit cautious. I'd love to know:
* Has anyone here actually used this new report? Does it give you insights you couldn't easily get from your own database logs or basic open/click tracking?
* For a beginner who's more comfortable with SQL and data modeling than email specs, is this kind of tool overkill at low volume, or is it a good way to learn best practices early?
* I noticed they mention "actionable insights." What does that actually mean in practice? Does it help you tweak your content, sending times, or list hygiene in a concrete way?
I'm especially interested because my background is in data engineering, so I'm tempted to just try and log everything myself. But I also don't want to reinvent the wheel or miss a critical deliverability issue because I'm not an expert. Any guidance on whether this is a must-have for a growing app or a nice-to-have for later would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance for your patience with a newcomer's questions 😅