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In early 2020, Mailgun discontinued its forever free plan, which may have you on the hunt for some cheaper and/or more functional Mailgun alternatives.
Mailgun is one of the most popular transactional email tools available. However, this doesn’t mean it’s the only choice you have. There is a range of alternatives offering similar features, but with a much lower price tag.
Narrowing down the best alternatives can be a challenge. The right email marketing software can make your life easier, but the wrong one can create a new range of problems. Fortunately, we’ve got the answer!
In this article, we’ll discuss whether Mailgun is worth the cost by looking at the features offered and the price tag. We’ll then detail four of the best cheaper alternatives you can consider using.
Three of the alternatives offer forever free plans, as well.
Need a Mailgun alternative? Here are 4 cheaper #email sending services 📧
Quick summary: Best Mailgun alternatives
If you’re in a hurry, here are the four tools that we’ll look at. Keep reading for more detail…
| Service | Forever Free Plan? | Free Sending Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Sendinblue | ✅ | 300 emails/day |
| Mailjet | ✅ | 200 emails/day |
| SendGrid | ✅ | 100 emails/day |
| Amazon SES | ❌ | N/A |
Is using Mailgun worth the expense?
In short, transactional emails are different from other marketing emails. These are automated one-to-one emails triggered by set events. The recipient will also be expecting them to arrive in their inbox. There are different types of transactional emails including receipts, password resets, invoices, and trial expiration notifications.
Email sending services – such as Mailgun – are generally used to send these types of emails. Even so, Mailgun offers a lot of features other than transactional emails including:
- Scheduled delivery
- Bounced email handling.
- Intelligent routing and forwarding
- Complaint handling
- Detailed event and email tracking
While these features are ideal for most users, the price tag is not. Mailgun no longer offers a free plan, and the cheapest option is on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) basis, with 5,000 free emails per month for the first three months and then PAYG after that.
The other features are not included, and to get them all, the cheapest plan is $35 per month with 50,000 emails.
The lack of a forever free plan is one of the reasons why many Mailgun users are looking for cheaper alternatives. If you’re in this situation, there are many other software providers you could consider. Some of these providers have forever free plans while others have entry-level plans with a cheaper comparative price tag.
Cheaper Mailgun alternatives for transactional emails
Looking for cheaper Mailgun alternatives can be overwhelming. To make your choice easier, we’ve narrowed down four top options. These alternatives offer arguably similar features with better pricing.
1. Sendinblue
Has a forever free plan ✅ Send 300 emails per day for free
Sendinblue does much more than send transactional emails. It is an all-round product that handles your entire email marketing chain. The suite of services creates a one-stop-shop for all your marketing needs. What’s more, with headquarters located in France, you can ensure your emails all meet GDPR requirements.
Some of the stand out features include:
- Email and SMS marketing: You are able to send email and SMS marketing messages with this software.
- Marketing automation: Save time with automatic list segmentation and email marketing.
- Detailed analytics: This includes email heat maps and click-through reports to improve your emails.
Sendinblue has the potential of being a full customer relationship manager (CRM). This does give it an edge over Mailgun. The free plan is another reason to consider switching. However, this free plan does not have full access to all the features.
Sendinblue offers five payment plans. The free plan is the best starting point and offers 300 emails per day. There are no contact limits and you will have access to SMS marketing, chat, and the entire email template library.
Our full Sendinblue review 👈
2. Mailjet
Has a forever free plan ✅ Send 200 emails per day for free
If you are looking for a user-friendly alternative, Mailjet might be the best solution. The software makes life easier for marketers and developers. The component design lets marketers create engaging emails without disturbing any integration APIs.
The most important features offered include:
- Drag-and-drop email builder: You can create your own email templates with this easy-to-use builder.
- Email and SMS marketing: An SMS marketing API is part of the transactional email suite.
- Email analytics: Real-time monitoring and email data help you track your effectiveness.
Mailjet has a lot to offer and is very user-friendly. While this makes it an attractive alternative to Mailgun, the free plan might sweeten the deal. The paid plans also have multiple tiers to make scaling your marketing easier.
There are four plans on offer from Mailjet. The free plan offers 200 emails per day and has no contact limits. You also get access to the APIs, advanced analytics, and email editor.
3. SendGrid
Has a forever free plan ✅ Send 100 emails per day for free
SendGrid stands out from the other alternatives when it comes to integration. The system was built from the ground up to focus on working with other software. The integration has led to large companies such as Uber, Glassdoor, and Spotify using it.
Other than unsurpassed integration, the stand out features include:
- Easy automation: The automation process is user-friendly and works on simple triggers.
- Email testing: To get the most out of your emails, you can preview them, spam test, and run link validation.
- Email template builder: The drag-and-drop editor is easy to use, but you can also code your emails in HTML.
SendGrid is a solid alternative to Mailgun if you want to integrate your emails with your website or other software solutions. The company also provides a range of guides, video tutorials, and webinars to get you started. There is also a free plan you can take advantage of.
SendGrid has four plans to choose from. The free plan offers 40,000 emails for 30 days, then continues at 100 emails per day. You also get access to all the APIs and analytics.
4. Amazon SES
No forever free plan (except for EC2 customers) ❌ But it’s much more affordable at $0.10/1,000 emails vs $0.80/1,000 emails for Mailgun.
Additionally, if you host your application in Amazon EC2, you can send 62,000 emails per month for free forever.
You cannot beat Amazon SES when it comes to deliverability and low price per email. The only issue is the learning curve of the system. The success of the system is clear by the large companies that use it such as Siemens, HBO, and Vodafone.
Other than deliverability, the other stand out features include:
- Sender reputation management: This dedicated dashboard tracks issues affecting email delivery.
- Mailbox simulator: You can test how your emails handle different situations such as bounces.
- AWS integration: If you use AWS, you’ll get seamless integration across the product line.
Amazon SES offers unparalleled deliverability that might improve your email marketing success. This is one of the reasons why it is an excellent alternative to Mailgun. The free base plan is another.
Amazon SES plans are pay-as-you-go. You’ll pay just $0.10 per 1,000 emails that you send.
Additionally, if your application is hosted in Amazon EC2, then Amazon will also let you send 62,000 emails per month for free forever. This free tier is not available if you host your application elsewhere, however.
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Conclusion
While Mailgun is one of the most popular transactional email providers, you don’t have to use them. There are other cheaper alternatives you can turn to instead. They offer similar features and could be the email sending service you have been looking for.
Need a Mailgun alternative? Here are 4 cheaper #email sending services 📧
If you are thinking about changing your email sending service, our four recommendations are:
- Sendinblue: The best all-round alternative.
- Mailjet: A user-friendly option worth a test-drive.
- SendGrid: A top choice for integration with other tools.
- Amazon SES: When it comes to deliverability, Amazon are the experts.
If you want to go beyond transactional emails, we also have some posts on more full-featured email marketing platforms:
- Best free email marketing services
- Best cheap email marketing services
Do you have any questions about the best Mailgun alternative for your needs? Ask us in the comments!
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FAQs
Can I use mailgun for free? ›
Mailgun is an SMTP service provider for transactional email and email marketing campaigns, offering robust features, support, and analytics—for free!
How many free emails can I send with Mailgun? ›Free plan (no credit card required):
5,000 messages/month are included. There is a limit of 300 messages per day on the included sandbox domain. Data retention for Logs and the Events API is 1 day.
Given Mailjet is built for marketers, and Mailgun for developers, they offer different features. Mailjet is known for having one of the most advanced email builders on the market, with a drag-and-drop editor, template gallery and advanced marketing features.
How do I send a transactional email in Mailchimp? ›- Transactional API Quick Start. Create an account. Generate your API key. ...
- Send Your First Transactional Email.
- Change Sending Behavior with the Rules Engine.
- Manage Different Users with Subaccounts.
- Set Up Inbound Email Processing.
- Track and Respond to Email Activity with Webhooks.
- SMTP.
- Sendinblue.
- Omnisend.
- Elastic Email.
- Mailgun.
- Campaigner.
- Amazon SES.
- SendPulse.
Mailgun belongs to "Transactional Email" category of the tech stack, while Twilio can be primarily classified under "Voice and SMS". Some of the features offered by Mailgun are: Optimized Queue. Scheduled Delivery.
How can I send 5000 emails for free? ›- Step 1: Make sure you've installed Right Inbox. ...
- Step 2: Once you've signed up for Right Inbox open Up your Gmail account. ...
- Step 5: Add your email copy for this mail merge. ...
- Step 6: Preview the emails in the mail merge. ...
- Step 7: Enable/ disable email tracking and the send rate for this campaign.
Mailgun is a set of powerful APIs that allow you to send, receive, track and store email effortlessly. MailChimp belongs to "Email Marketing" category of the tech stack, while Mailgun can be primarily classified under "Transactional Email". Some of the features offered by MailChimp are: Facebook Integration.
How can I send 500 emails a day? ›How can I send more than 500 emails a day on Gmail? Two of the easiest ways to bypass the 500 daily emails limit on Gmail include: Creating a different account to send emails to additional recipients. Creating Google Groups to send messages to a large group of individuals.
Is Mailgun owned by Rackspace? ›Mailgun Technologies, Inc. was acquired by Rackspace in 2012 so their customers could easily integrate cloud-based email services into their applications and websites.
Is Mailgun part of Rackspace? ›
Click here for more information on the Mailgun API. We're excited to welcome the “Mailgunners” as members of the Rackspace family!
Can Mailgun send SMS? ›TextMagic, also a Mailgun customer, allows you to send notifications, alerts, reminders, confirmations and SMS marketing campaign messages to your customers, staff members and suppliers. On average, TextMagic customers are sending over 2.5M text messages around the world each month.
What are the types of transactional emails? ›- Email Address Confirmation/Registration Emails. ...
- Password Resets. ...
- Order Confirmation Emails and Purchase Receipts. ...
- Feedback Emails. ...
- Reactivation Emails. ...
- Website/App Extension Emails.
Transactional emails (also known as relationship messages) are usually triggered by customer actions and, in order to be qualified as transactional, the primary purpose of the communication must be "[...] to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into ...
Is Mailchimp for free? ›Free. Our Free Marketing plan is ideal for beginners who want to grow their audience and create campaigns while testing out some of Mailchimp's tools and features. It includes all the basics you need to start marketing. The Free plan includes up to 500 contacts and 2,500 sends per month, with a daily send limit of 500.
How can I send 10,000 emails a day for free? ›- Step 1: Connect your Gmail account. ...
- Step 2: Create your email list. ...
- Step 3: Create a sequence. ...
- Step 4: Compose your email. ...
- Step 5: Upload the list in CSV format. ...
- Step 6: Send or schedule the email.
Top free providers include Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL, Zoho, Mail.Com, and ProtonMail. Email providers that are more secure than the others are ProtonMail, CounterMail, Hushmail, and Tutanota. Some webmail clients that provide paid services include Zoho, Gmail, Hushmail, and ProtonMail.
How to send 100 emails at once to one person? ›Open a new email and write the message you intend to send to your contact list. Click BCC in the top-right of your Compose window. Add all the email addresses to which you intend to send the message. It might help to copy and paste your list into this field.
Can twilio send email? ›The CLI features a built-in integration with Twilio SendGrid, allowing you to send emails directly from your terminal.
Is Mailgun an SMTP server? ›Mailgun offers a flexible and powerful SMTP service.
Is Mailgun Hipaa compliant? ›
Mailgun is technically HIPAA compliant because it will sign a BAA, but it leaves all of the heavy lifting on the customer, from determining how to limit the information sent via its service, to ensuring email encryption, to providing recipients adequate disclaimers.
What is the easiest free email to use? ›- Gmail: Best for Offline Accessibility.
- AOL: Best for Interface Organization.
- Outlook: Best for Multiple App Integrations.
- Yahoo! Mail: Best for Lots of Storage.
- iCloud Mail: Best for IMAP.
- Mozilla Thunderbird: Best for Managing Multiple Accounts.
- Pepipost. Our top pick in the list of the best bulk email sender is Pepipost. ...
- Mailgun. ...
- Sendgrid. ...
- HubSpot Email Marketing. ...
- Elastic Email. ...
- SMTP2GO. ...
- AmazonSES. ...
- Sparkpost.
Standard Gmail accounts are limited to 500 outgoing emails per day. If you're using a work, school, or Workspace Individual account, you're limited to 2,000 outgoing emails per day. With multi-send, you can add up to 1,500 recipients in the “To” field per email and send to a maximum of 1,500 recipients per day.
What is Mailchimp best used for? ›Mailchimp is best suited for ecommerce companies selling a product online, or people who mostly just want to send out email and social media content.
Does Mailgun work with Outlook? ›Mailgun + Microsoft Outlook Integrations
Zapier lets you send info between Mailgun and Microsoft Outlook automatically—no code required. Track Bounce Events via Callback URL. automatically do this!
Click on Domain Settings on the left-hand side of your Mailgun dashboard. Towards the bottom of the resulting page, there will be a button that allows you to delete the domain from the account.
Can you make infinite emails? ›Did you know that you can have an infinite number of variations for the same email address? Gmail ignores any word you add after a plus sign in your address (before @gmail.com or your company domain) so you can basically have an unlimited number of email addresses, all using the same Gmail inbox.
How to send unlimited emails? ›You can now send virtually unlimited emails in Gmail. It works by connecting a third party SMTP service like SendGrid, Mailgun, or Mailjet to your GMass account. The advantages of this setup are: The ability to send virtually unlimited emails in Gmail and avoid Gmail's sending limits.
Is GMass free to use? ›A: All features work with a free account. The only restriction with free accounts is that you can't send to more than 50 email addresses in a 24-hour period.
Why is Rackspace dropping? ›
Rackspace Technology (RXT) reported a security-related issue that affected the company's Hosted Exchange service. Thousands of customers who use Microsoft's (MSFT) webmail service have been impacted.
What happened Rackspace? ›Rackspace said a ransomware incident affected its Hosted Exchange environment and caused service disruptions.
Are Mailgun emails encrypted? ›By default, Mailgun attempts to take advantage of TLS when it is supported by the receiving mail server. In these exchanges, we also check the validity and legitimacy of the mail server's certificate. In situations where a server doesn't support TLS, we simply send the message unencrypted.
Is Rackspace owned by Amazon? ›Rackspace sold itself in 2016 for $4.3 billion to Apollo Global Management, which took the company private before reentering the public market in 2020.
Who uses Mailgun? ›Who uses Mailgun? 2779 companies reportedly use Mailgun in their tech stacks, including Slack, Stripe, and reddit.
What type of email is Rackspace? ›Rackspace Email is an affordable, business-class email hosting solution with anytime, anywhere access and a 100% uptime guarantee- all backed by and industry leading SLA and administrator access to our team of email hosting experts, 24x7x365.
Why is Mailgun not sending emails? ›Error: mailgun emails not delivered
This error will occur when Mailgun delivers your emails using a low-rated IP address. Low-rated IP addresses may cause the ISP to send the email to spam or reject it.
Mailgun makes it easy to prevent deliverability issues and stay off a blocklist. We've built an email verification service into our email delivery platform, so you can keep your contact data clean and simplify list management tasks.
Where is the Mailgun secret key? ›- First, log in to the Mailgun Control Panel (if you have not already done so).
- Then, at the top-right corner of the page, click the Profile drop-down menu to expand its list of options.
- Next, click the API keys option. ...
- Click the eye icon to make the full API key visible.
Some common examples of transactional emails include: A confirmation email that's automatically sent when a customer places an order, or abandoned cart emails when a customer didn't place the order but already has the products in the cart. A thank you message sent after someone signs up for a company's loyalty program.
What is Mailchimp transactional email? ›
Transactional Email is a powerful delivery service by Mailchimp that allows you to send one-to-one e-commerce emails and automated transactional emails. In this article, you'll learn how to add, change, and remove Transactional Email in your account.
What is transactional email in Sendinblue? ›A transactional email is an email that's automatically sent by your website to an individual recipient following a transaction or specific action performed by that person, such as an ecommerce purchase or a password reset request.
What is Hubspotemail? ›Built on a powerful CRM, HubSpot email hosting tools allow you to treat every customer as a unique individual, even as your customer list grows. Segment your customers by lifecycle stage using existing CRM data, and customize emails with personalization tokens.
Does Flodesk have a free version? ›Flodesk pricing is super simple! It's $38/month with unlimited everything with a 30 day free trial. There are no subscriber limits, no feature restrictions, nothing.
Is Mailchimp owned by Google? ›Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Atlanta with additional offices in Brooklyn, Oakland, and Vancouver, Mailchimp is 100% founder-owned and highly profitable.
Does Google have a Mailchimp alternative? ›Google Workspace has 11875 reviews and a rating of 4.68 / 5 stars vs Mailchimp which has 15840 reviews and a rating of 4.48 / 5 stars.
Is Mailgun open source? ›We like open-source software a lot, and we've open-sourced some of our code recently like our MIME parsing and email validation libraries. Today, we're letting you know that we've also open sourced our documentation.
Can I use Mailgun with Gmail? ›Gmail + Mailgun Integrations
Zapier lets you send info between Gmail and Mailgun automatically—no code required. Triggers when you receive a new attachment (triggers once per attachment). automatically do this!
One of the huge benefits of Mailgun is that they allow you to send up to 10,000 emails for free per month.
Is iRedMail free? ›iRedMail is a free, open source mail server software that allows you to build and host your own mail server in your environment. Right out of the box, iRedMail will install all necessary components and configure a full-fledged mail server for you.
Can you automate sending emails? ›
Email automation is a way to create emails that reach the right people with the right message at the right moment—without doing the work every time, sending automated messages leveraging a marketing automation tool.
Does Mailgun use SMTP? ›Mailgun is a third-party email service that is used to send outgoing emails through SMTP on the server.