5+ Best Mailgun Alternatives & Competitors [Free & Paid]

What are the chances that you are looking for some of the best Mailgun alternatives?

Since you have landed on this blog post, I am assuming that it is quite high.

If you are an email marketer, software developer, or a company that offers SaaS tools, you’d know how important are transactional emails.

Not only you’d have to automatically send them instantly, but you’d also have to make sure that your email template includes all the required information dynamically.

That’s where SMTP services like Mailgun excel in sending transactional emails. 

That being said, it doesn’t mean that you can’t look for its decent alternatives. Not to mention, there are some significant flaws (will be discussed later) that urge to you find a suitable replacement.

Hence, in this blog, I will be listing the 6 best Mailgun alternatives and competitors that offer great transactional SMTP services.

Just to give you an idea about what’s in store, here an…

Overview Of Best Alternatives To Mailgun

Before exploring each of these transactional SMTP services in detail, allow me to briefly talk about Mailgun.

What Is Mailgun?

Mailgun is a cloud-based SMTP service provider that specializes in sending and delivering transactional emails.

The company was founded in 2010 and since then it has grown to become a renowned SMTP service.

In addition to this, almost after a decade in 2019, Mailgun acquired Mailjet, yet another famous email marketing service. Although, unlike Mailgun, Mailjet is a complete email marketing suite that allows you to create & send promotional email campaigns and also grants access to the marketing automation feature.

It’s safe to say that with this acquisition, Mailgun could have solved your promotional and transactional email requirements.

Now you’d be wondering as to…

Who Uses Mailgun?

Mailgun clearly mentions it on their homepage that it offers SMTP service and email APIs for developers and businesses.

If you have a website that drives actions or transactions from your audience or an app that also initiates different actions from its users, Mailgun is a good fit for it.

You’d be amazed to know that as of now, Mailgun has a user base of over 225,000 clients.

Some of the most notable Mailgun customers include Dell, NHL, Lyft, Microsoft, etc.

That being said, you must be thinking if Mailgun is so good, why would anyone look for its alternatives?

Here’s a brief rundown of…

Why You Should Look For Mailgun Alternatives? (Cons Of Mailgun)

I am quite sure that if you are already using Mailgun, you must be having some personal reasons as well that are enforcing you to switch.

Apart from this, here are a few drawbacks of using Mailgun –

• Mailgun is suitable only for sending transactional email campaigns. You cannot send promotional email campaigns with it. Although to send promotional campaigns, you’d have to rely on Mailjet.
• Since it is recommended for developers only, we can conclude that It is very difficult to set up and begin with.
• You don’t have the provision to create email templates. For this, you’d either have to rely on third-party email builders or create HTML templates within your software/site.
• There are some alternatives to Mailgun that offer better email deliverability. In addition to this, there aren’t any conclusive deliverability reports of Mailgun over the Internet.
• Unlike its alternatives, Mailgun does not have a forever free plan. There’s only a “pay as you grow” plan that offers free 5,000 emails/month for the first three months. After that, you’d have to pay to continue email sending.
• Mailgun is relatively expensive than most of its alternatives. Over the years, Mailgun introduced new features like email validation and due to this, the overall cost of using the service also increased.

I hope by now, you must be fully convinced that finding the best Mailgun alternative is the only logical option left.

Stand Out Features You Must Look In Mailgun Alternatives

Before you explore all the Mailgun competitors, here’s a checklist of features you must look for in the service provider.

• Simple To Set Up – First and foremost, the ideal replacement must be easy to configure and requires just a few basic steps to set up.
• Better & Faster Email Delivery – The alternative service must be able to send transactional emails instantly and automatically. In addition to this, it is of utmost importance that the emails land in the inbox.
• Suppression Management – In order to be compliant with the CAN-SPAM law, the chosen software must be able to manage suppression email lists. In simple terms, the software must handle bounce (hard & soft), unsubscribes, and spam requests efficiently.
• Prompt Customer Support – An ideal replacement must be backed by a prompt 24*7 customer support to help you with your queries or technical issues.
• Free Plan – It is important that the alternative software must offer a generous free plan to thoroughly test out the application. The free plan also proves to be a boon to new businesses and startups.
• Cheaper Pricing Structure – It is of great importance that the software that you pick as an alternative is affordable. After all, who wants to burn a hole in their pocket.

Keeping the above-mentioned points in mind, I have explored some of the top Mailgun alternatives.

Let’s talk about them in detail one at a time…

1. Brevo

One of the most prolific names in the email marketing category is Brevo. The software rose to fame through its email marketing suite and also because of its SMTP servers. You’d be also surprised to know that it now offers multiple marketing suites like live chat, CRM, SMS marketing, automation, etc. in just one software.

Although, the stuff that makes Brevo the best Mailgun alternative is its transactional SMTP servers and email API. Rest assured, many bloggers, eCommerce sites, business owners, software developers, etc. use Brevo’s SMTP relays to send transactional emails for their websites, apps, or software.

Features That Make Brevo An Ideal Mailgun Alternative

• Brevo offers plenty of simple ways to get started and send transactional emails. It includes SMTP relays, email API, WordPress plugin, eCommerce plugin, and marketing automation.
• The software is also known for its incredible email delivery as it authenticates the sender domain via SPF and DKIM records. In addition to this, Brevo is capable enough to send transactional emails in bulk without compromising the deliverability.
• Unlike Mailgun, Brevo offers a drag & drop email builder using which, you can create brand-oriented email templates. Moreover, the tool also allows you to add personalization tags so that all the required information is added dynamically upon sending.
• Brevo will also automatically handle your suppression list. So all the unsubscribed, spam and bounced emails will be automatically removed from your emailing lists.

Pricing Of Brevo

The best part about Brevo is that you don’t have to pay separately for using its SMTP servers. All the pricing plans grant you access to the SMTP servers along with all the other features and tools.

Unlike Mailgun, Brevo offers a forever-free plan that allows you to send 9,000 emails in a month. However, there’s a 300 emails/day sending limit. Despite this, Brevo can be considered as a Mailgun free alternative.

Apart from this, you can remove the daily email sending restrictions and get a larger email sending quota by subscribing to its premium plans.

• Free – 9,000 emails in a month with 300 emails/day sending limit.
• Lite – The Lite plan offers multiple sub-tiers that start at $25/month and allows you to send 20,000 emails/month. The last tier in the Lite plan costs $65/month and permits you to send 100,000 emails/month.
• Premium – Just like other plans, the Premium plan also offers multiple pricing tiers and grants access to advanced tools. The Premium plan starts at $65/month for 20,000 emails/month and goes up to $599/month for 1,000,000 emails/month.
• Enterprise – If you have higher emailing needs, more than 1 million emails to be exact, you’d have to contact the sales team for custom pricing.

Please bear in mind that each plan unlocks multiple advanced features as you move up the order. To understand the pricing in detail, I’d recommend you to check the Brevo pricing page.

2. MailerSend

MailerSend is probably the newest email marketing software that specializes in sending transactional emails. Despite being a new addition to the list of email marketing software, you can trust and rely on its efficiency as it has been created by the team of MailerLite. And hence, it naturally qualifies to be one of the top alternatives to Mailgun.

As I have said, the software has been developed dedicatedly to cater to and furnish transactional email needs. To help you quickly get started, MailerSend offers plenty of simple ways to integrate it with your software or website. These include SMTP relay, API, and webhooks.

Features That Make MailerSend An Ideal Mailgun Replacement

• Dissimilar to Mailgun, MailerSend provides you with a drag & drop email builder and HTML email editor. With the help of this, you can create dynamic email templates in a matter of minutes.
• The team behind MailerSend is very focused on email delivery and maintaining a strong sending reputation. Therefore, the software makes it mandatory to authenticate your domain by adding SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records.
• MailerSend leaves no stones unturned when it comes to managing your suppression list. Whenever your contacts unsubscribe, report as spam, or get hard bounced, the software automatically removes them from your mailing lists.
• The software offers a comprehensive reporting module. With the help of this, you can monitor the real-time activity of your email campaigns. Besides this, MailerSend also offers user management and file management features.

Pricing Of MailerSend

If you are looking for a free alternative to Mailgun, your search may end at MailerSend. The software offers a forever free plan that allows you to send 12,000 emails in a month (extra emails are charged at $1 per 1,000 emails).

The free plan offers almost all the essential features like SMTP relay, API, webhooks, suppression management, email builder, analytics, etc. However, to be able to send a larger volume of emails, you should sign up for its subscription plan.

Here’s an overview of the plan –

• Free – 12,000 emails per month. If you exhaust this limit, you can get extra 1,000 emails at just $1.
• Premium – The Premium plan offers multiple sub-tiers of pricing –
  • 50,000 emails/month – $25/month
  • 100,000 emails/month – $55/month
  • 250,000 emails/month – $85/month
  • 500,000 emails/month – $225/month
  • 750,000 emails/month – $475/month
  • 1,000,000 emails/month – $550/month
  • 1,500,000 emails/month – $725/month
  • 2,000,000 emails/month – $975/month
  • 2,500,000 emails/month – $1250/month
  • 3,000,000 emails/month or more – Custom pricing

You should also know that if you cross your monthly email sending limit, extra charges will be applied depending on the subscribed plan. I encourage you to check out its pricing in detail for a better understanding.

3. SendPulse

Another awesome software that captured the attention of a lot of email marketers and businesses in the past couple of years is SendPulse. Simply because the software improved its emailing performance and also evolved itself into a multi-channel marketing suite.

Among its array of features and marketing modules, the stuff that stands out is its SMTP relay and API. Not only you get to send transactional emails but you can also conduct promotional email campaigns with SendPulse. Due to this dual nature of SendPulse SMTP, it qualifies as a top alternative to Mailgun.

Features That Make SendPulse An Ideal Mailgun Alternative

• SendPulse is very easy to configure and set up. To start sending emails with SendPulse, either you can configure the SMTP relay settings or integrate it with your website/software via API.
• The software is known for its high email delivery as it encourages your to maintain your sending reputation by enforcing domain authentication. For this, you’d have to add SPF and DKIM records in your DNS records.
• Just like all the major SMTP service providers, SendPulse also manages your suppression list automatically. So whenever anyone from your contact list unsubscribes or mark your email as spam, the system automatically removes it from the mailing list.
• To give you a clearer picture of the performance of your sent emails, SendPulse offers insightful reports. With the help of this, you can easily track important email metrics opens, clicks, unsubscribes, etc.

Pricing Of SendPulse

A unique characteristic of SendPulse is that it offers separate pricing plans for different marketing modules. Hence, there’s a dedicated pricing for transactional emails and SMTP servers.

To start things off, unlike Mailgun, SendPulse offers a forever free plan that permits you to send 12,000 emails in a month. This characteristic of SendPulse makes it a Mailgun free alternative.

Having said that, you can anytime upgrade to its premium subscription plans for more email credits. Here’s a summary of the SendPulse SMTP pricing plan with sub-pricing tiers –

• Basic – You’ll have the option of three sub-tiers.
  • Forever Free – 12,000 emails in a month.
  • 25,000 emails/month – $8.85/month
  • 50,000 emails/month – $16.85/month
• Pro – If you want a dedicated IP address and more emailing credits, you can opt for this plan.
  • 100,000 emails/month – $74.85/month
  • 200,000 emails/month – $124.85/month
  • 300,000 emails/month – $174.85/month
• Enterprise – For more than 500,000 emails/month, you can opt for this plan.
  • 500,000 emails/month – $274.86/month
  • 1 million emails/month – $524.85/month
  • 2 million emails/month – $924.85/month
  • 5 million emails/month – $1,824.85/month

Just like other software and services mentioned in this blog, SendPulse’s pricing is very flexible. You can calculate the pricing on your own too by checking out its pricing page.

4. Pepipost

Pepipost is yet another one of the best Mailgun alternatives that offer SMTP servers and email APIs for sending transactional as well as promotional email campaigns. It can be easily integrated with any software or open-source email marketing software.

That being said, Pepipost is almost similar to Mailgun as you’d need an email template designer to create email templates. Apart from this, Pepipost gives a tough competition to Mailgun in terms of email delivery and pricing plans.

Features That Make Pepipost An Ideal Mailgun Replacement

• Pepipost has deployed its servers across 6 different global locations. The wide distribution of servers across the world helps to combat network latency and send emails at a blazing fast speed.
• All the emails sent via Pepipost are highly secure as it supports SSL and TLS encryption. So if you are sending transactional emails with confidential information, you should be assured that the content is secured.
• Similar to all the major SMTP services, Pepipost is also capable to handle bounce, spam, and unsubscribe requests. This way, it ensures that you do not send emails to the contacts who have decided to opt-out of your mailing list.
• Pepipost is also efficient enough to provide you real-time insights into your emailing performance. You can easily track open, click, & unsubscribe rates and optimize your emailing strategy.

Pricing Of Pepipost

When it comes to pricing structure, Pepipost offers free 30,000 emails for the first 30 days. But once you cross the 30 days mark, you are allowed to send free 100 emails/day forever.

Apart from this, if you want more emailing credits and no limits on daily sending, you can anytime subscribe to its premium plans.

The pricing is extremely flexible and can be calculated with the sliding calculator. But just to give you an idea, here’s an overview –

• 150,000 emails per month – $25/month + $0.60/1,000 extra emails
• 400,000 emails per month – $85/month + $0.55/1,000 extra emails
• 600,000 emails per month – $145/month + $0.50/1,000 extra emails
• 1,000,000 emails per month – $245/month + $0.45/1,000 extra emails
• 2,000,000 emails per month – $445/month + $0.40/1,000 extra emails
• More than 2,000,000 emails per month – Pepipost asks you to get in touch with their sales team for custom pricing.

5. SMTP2GO

SMTP2GO is one of the most under-rated and under-appreciated SMTP service providers available in the market. Based out of New Zealand, SMTP2GO has certainly caught the attention of some of the email marketers (also me) with its performance. And hence, it is logical to mention SMTP2GO as one of the Mailgun competitors.

Unlike Mailgun, SMTP2GO is well efficient to send transactional as well as promotional email campaigns. Thanks to its relatively smaller clientele, the team at SMTP2GO has managed to keep the high email delivery.

Features That Make SMTP2GO An Ideal Mailgun Alternative

• SMTP2GO also boasts about its multi-data center infrastructure spread across the world. With the help of this, it manages to send a large volume of emails in a matter of seconds.
• The team behind SMTP2GO helps you avoid the spam folder and even blacklists by authenticating your domain. All you are required to do is add SPF and DKIM records in your DNS settings.
• This service, just like other services mentioned in this blog automatically handles your suppression requests. This includes spam, bounce, and unsubscribe requests.
• SMTP2GO is the only alternative to Mailgun that allows you to test your emails against spam filters. It also allows you to visualize how your emails would look on 40 different email clients.

Pricing Of SMTP2GO

SMTP2GO is yet another Mailgun free alternative as it offers a forever free plan that permits you to send 1,000 emails in a month.

Besides this, if you want to send a bigger volume of emails, you can always subscribe to its monthly subscription plans. The best part of SMTP2GO pricing is that you get access to all the features except a dedicated IP address. It is available only in the higher plans.

Have a look at the summary of SMTP2GO pricing plans –

• Free Plan – A forever free plan that offers 1,000 free emails every month.
• Starter – The Starter plan starts at $10/month and allows you to send 10,000 emails/month. The subsequent sub-tier of this plan would cost you $15/month and enable you to send 40,000 emails/month.
• Professional – The Professional plan allows you to send up to 100,000 emails/month at the cost of $75/month. The subsequent tiers offer 250,000 and 500,000 emails/month at the price of $170 and $280/month respectively. The last sub-tier is chargeable at the rate of $520/month and would allow you to send up to 1,000,000 emails/month.
• Premier – For more than 3,000,000 emails, you’d have to request for custom pricing.

6. SendGrid

I guess there’s no introduction needed for SendGrid. It is one of the most recognized SMTP service providers and emailing suite available for business owners, email marketers, and bloggers. Hence, it’s natural to term SendGrid as one of the best Mailgun alternatives.

Speaking of comparison between the two SMTP service providers, just like Mailgun, SendGrid allows you to send transactional emails for your website, app, or software. In addition to this, SendGrid also permits you to send promotional email campaigns as well.

Features That Make SendGrid An Ideal Mailgun Replacement

• To ensure that you get maximum email delivery, SendGrid enforces domain authentication by adding SPF and DKIM records. You also get to manage your own sender reputation by getting a dedicated IP address.
• Unlike Mailgun, SendGrid supports email testing for email rendering in different types of inboxes. In addition to this, the software also allows you to analyze your email performance against various spam filters.
• SendGrid automatically manages your suppression list by removing emails that are bounced, marked as spam, or unsubscribed.
• The software offers multiple ways to integrate with your emailing app or software. You can use email APIs or SMTP relay configuration to start sending emails.

Pricing Of SendGrid

SendGrid offers separate plans for email API and other marketing tools. Since we are focused on transactional email sending capabilities, we will talk about SendGrid’s email API plans.

To start things off, SendGrid offers a forever free plan that allows you to send 100 emails every day. The free plan grants access to all the essential tools.

But to send a larger volume of emails and get access to other advanced features, you should upgrade to its subscription plan.

• Free – Send up to 100 emails every day forever.
• Essential – This plan starts at $14.95/month and allows you to send 50,000 emails in a month. You can also send up to 100,000 emails/month by paying $29.95/month.
• Pro – In this plan, you can unlock a dedicated IP address and start sending up to 200,000 emails/month at the cost of $89.95/month. Similarly, you can send up to 650,000 and 1,300,000 emails/month by paying $249/month and $449/month respectively. And, the final sub-tier allows you to send up to $1,400,000 emails/month at the cost of $749/month.
• Premier – For sending more than 1,500,000 emails in a month, you should get in touch with the sales team for custom pricing.

Which Is The Best MailGun Alternative? – The Conclusion

Now that you have explored all the Mailgun alternatives, I hope that you have found the best among them.

If not then I would suggest you sign up for their free trial. Once you test out the application, it would be easy to analyze its performance and determine if it’s the perfect alternative or not.

Although, if you are low on time and looking for my advice, I would suggest you go with Brevo. The software has a reputable presence in the email marketing field and offers more features than Mailgun.

I too am using Brevo for this website and I am pretty much satisfied with its performance.

Besides this, if you have any more queries, feel free to get in touch with me. I’d love to help you out.

Lastly, here are some relevant blog posts that you may want to read –

• Explore some of the best SMTP2GO alternatives
• Check out some top Elastic Email competitors
• Compare Omnisend vs Mailchimp in detail