Send email from Azure SendGrid using PowerShell

Abstract

Sendgrid is popular. No doubt about it! Especially for Dev and Test scenarios where you get 25000 free emails a month. This post describes how can you use Sendgrid to send email using PowerShell.

Don’t expect me to write blog post on C# code for sending email using Sendgrid. Because, Sendgrid will keep updating their API (like V2, V3 and so on); ultimately C# code will also change. So you can refer C# or other languages code sample from SendGrid documentation itself.

Provision SendGrid account on Microsoft Azure

Let’s create a SendGrid account quickly on Azure. Login to Azure portal on the link – http://portal.azure.com . Sendgrid today available only in selected region. Example, not available in India region. I am based out of India so nearest data center for me is SouthEast Asia referred as SEA in the blog). I will select the SEA datacenter for the creation of SendGrid account on Azure. Therefore first let’s add Resource group in SEA region and then create SendGrid in the same Resource group.

Select “Resource Groups” in left had pane. It lists all resource groups present in your subscription. Click on “Add” button present at the top. Provide the resource group name as SendEmailRG, subscription of your choice and location as SEA as shown below. Click on Create to finish the resource group creation process.

Click on New. You will see a search box at the top. Type Sendgrid on the search box; intelligence will automatically display “Sendgrid Email Deliverys”. Select the same and press enter. Another horizontal blade will open. Select the Sendgrid Email Delivery option and click on Create.

Provide the name of account as “EmailSample”. Provide the password of your choice and remember it. We will need it later. Select the Azure subscription and select existing option for resource group. Select SendEmailRG resource group. This step will ensure that SendGrid account in created in SEA region.

On pricing tier; select the option as Free as shown below –

If you have money feel free to select the other paid pricing tiers.

Provide the contact information. I have provided below. Remember you will receive confirmation email from SendGrid. So don’t put values like below; rather give genuine values.

Select “I give…” checkmark for legal terms and click on Purchase. Then proceed ahead and finish the SendGrid account creation process.

Retrieve essential detail from SendGrid account

To send email we need username, password and SMTP server name. This information is available on Azure portal under your sendgrid account. So go to the SendGrid account we created in above step from Azure portal. Click on Configurations and you will see the required information listed as shown below –

PowerShell to Send Email

Let’s first define the essential parameters based on the information we captured from configurations tab of sendgrid tab –

$Username ="YourUserNameFromPortal"

$Password = ConvertTo-SecureString "YourPassowrdWhichYouHadEnteredDuringSendGridCreation" -AsPlainText -Force

$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential $Username, $Password

$SMTPServer = "smtp.sendgrid.net"

Any email object requires necessary information like email from, email to, subject line. Let’s add this information as parameters –

$EmailFrom = "No-reply@azureadmin.com"

[string[]]$EmailTo = "YourEmail@gmail.com"

$Subject = "Sending sample email using SendGrid Azure and PowerShell"

$Body = "This is sample email sent using Sendgrid account create on Microsoft Azure. The script written is easy to use."

If you observe, I am using array for $Emailto variable. This is because if I want to add multiple email address into “To” list, I should be able to do it using array. So I want to send email to multiple addresses I will add them as below –

[string[]]$EmailTo = "YourEmail1@gmail.com", “YourEmail2@yahoo.com”

Then use below command to send the email –

Send-MailMessage -smtpServer $SMTPServer -Credential $credential -Usessl -Port 587 -from $EmailFrom -to $EmailTo -subject $Subject -Body $Body -BodyAsHtml

Manage option on SendGrid account

Look at the below screenshot for highlighted option.

This option will help you in generating api key, monitoring of your sendgrid account, failed emails , reports and so on. No this is not another blog post on another day because Sendgrid documentation is detailed to explain all the options. Why you want me to write blog post on the information which is already explained so well?

Note -

Sendgrid provides API Keys which can be used for providing limited access. The above PowerShell code do not use API Key for sending emails. In case you want to use SendGRid API Keys based access control and then send the email using PowerShell; I will suggest to write c# code exe with required parameters and then invoke it using Powershell.  😊

That’s all folks. To download the entire script refer to the link - https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Send-email-from-Azure-eabb6d26https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Send-email-from-Azure-eabb6d26

Happy Emailing!!