Help

Re: SendGrid app doesn't send emails if they contain more than 8,000 or so characters

1334 0
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
Jess_Databases
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Hi!

Yesterday evening my SendGrid Airtable app stopped working. I would get an error sign after clicking send and no explanation.

After a day of lots of testing, I was able to figure out that what’s triggering the error is that the email template contains more than 8,000 characters, including characters created by merged fields.

That’s so little for an HTML email…!

I don’t want to go back to plain text, and have so many templates that I use…

Has anyone else ran into this issue? Any workarounds?

Thanks so much!

9 Replies 9

Welcome to the community, @Jess_Databases! :slightly_smiling_face:

Wow, I didn’t know about this limitation of the SendGrid app. That is an extremely unfortunate limitation of the SendGrid app, and it’s a real shame that you had to discover it on your own through trial-and-error instead of Airtable taking the time to properly document the limitations of their own app! I would highly recommend that you email support@airtable.com to make them aware of this limitation, and at the very least, Airtable should update their documentation for this app.

But anyways, welcome to the Wild West of using Airtable, where the users get to discover Airtable’s limitations on our own! :cowboy_hat_face: :crazy_face:

It seems like your only workaround for using SendGrid with more than 8,000 characters would be to send your emails directly using SendGrid’s API. This is unfortunate because you’ll have to rebuild your workflow, but the blessing in disguise here is that it will give you a ton more flexibility, because you can design fully professional HTML templates in SendGrid, and then send your Airtable data via your official SendGrid templates. Another blessing in disguise here is that you’ll be able to automate the sending of your emails as well (if you’d like), because Airtable apps can’t currently be automated.

Sending your emails directly using SendGrid’s API can be accomplished by writing your own custom JavaScript script within Airtable, but if you don’t want to dive into writing your own custom JavaScript code to access SendGrid’s API, the quickest & easiest & most powerful “no-code” way to do this would be to use Integromat, which has full SendGrid support. Full SendGrid documentation here, and full list of supported SendGrid features here. As I mentioned above, your outgoing emails can be automated with Integromat as well.

If you do go down the Integromat path, you’ll have to spend a little bit of time learning the Integromat platform, along with re-envisioning how your email sending automation will get triggered by Airtable. But once you get through this small learning curve, you’ll really appreciate the power & flexibility & ease of use of Integromat!

p.s. If you have a budget for this project and you need to hire an expert Airtable & Integromat developer to help you set this up, please feel free to send me a private message or contact me through my website at scottworld.com.

Mubert_Content
4 - Data Explorer
4 - Data Explorer

We have the same problem, app stopped working at Friday so we had to use text emails instead of HTML. I am going to ask support because I am sure that this is the bug, not new limitation.

@Mubert_Content Please report back here with what they tell you!

Jess_Databases
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

Hi ScottWorld and Mubert,

Scott, thanks for your reply and insights! Yes, the templates worked fine up until Friday with way more than 8k characters (our current templates have around 40k characters.

I got a response from Zach from Airtable Support who said he’s going to check with the team to see if there was any change on the SendGrid app on the Airtable side.

I’m hoping this is not going to become a blame-shifting game between Airtable and SendGrid that takes weeks to solve…

Wow, what a bummer! Yes, please report back when you hear any news on this matter!

Jess_Databases
6 - Interface Innovator
6 - Interface Innovator

And like a miracle, it’s working again!

I haven’t heard back from the Airtable team yet, so it might have been on the SendGrid side, I’ll update if I hear from either!

I’ve also asked airtable support for help and looks like our voices have been heard.

Here the message from Peter (Airtable Support), I received it few minutes ago:
“I’m emailing to let you know that the issues should now be resolved, and you should again be able to use the SendGrid App without trouble.”

This is great news! Thanks for keeping everyone in the loop on this, @Jess_Databases and @Mubert_Content! :slightly_smiling_face:

MichaelS
5 - Automation Enthusiast
5 - Automation Enthusiast

I can confirm that the block/app is again working as intended! This was very touch and go for us since Friday. Thank goodness it was resolved quickly.