Why Are So Many People Looking For Mailgun Alternatives And What Are Some Suitable Options?

Why Mailgun Alternatives?

Mailgun users have been looking for alternative or cheaper email marketing services despite their efficacy and reliability because Mailgun has discontinued its forever-free plan since early 2020.

As per the new plan, users are entitled to 5,000 free emails every month for the initial three months and, after that, need to comply with the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) payment option. The free plan remains suspended. As such, the cheapest plan with all features comes for $35/month with a limit of 50,000 emails. Many customers do not find the new policy satisfactory and are therefore looking for Mailgun alternatives that provide similar features at lower prices.

Best Mailgun Alternatives

There are a plethora of email marketing services with outbound SMTP with similar offers as Mailgun. Here is a list of the top four of such Mailgun alternatives:

SMTP.com

SMTP.com is a platform that caters to all your transaction, email relay, and email delivery needs at a very affordable price. With decades of experience, SMTP.com is regarded as the most trusted sender in the industry by ISPs. SMTP.com had been trusted by over 100,000 customers over the years.

SMTP.com is extremely intuitive and easy to set up. It can be integrated seamlessly into your current business system. If you need to migrate from another provider, SMTP.com makes it effortless.

DuoCircle

One of the prominent email security provider is DuoCircle. It is one of the key players in the email security domain. They offer email security solutions to protect your enterprise from phishing scams, malware and ransomware attacks, and also against spoofing and impersonation detection, etc. Their key specialization includes email backup, advanced threat defense for email links, Outbound SMTP for ensuring inbox delivery with DKIM Signed mail, etc.

SMTP2GO

SMTP2GO is one of the oldest email delivery services and excellent Mailgun alternatives. Its free plan allows users to send 1000 emails each month. While the starter plans provide 40,000 emails for $15 each month, the professional programs range at different prices based on the email sending limit. SMTP2GO also offers additional plans for giant clients who need to send out over 3 million emails every month. SMTP2GO is preferred for its intelligent and quick path routing across continents, and email performance monitors that show which emails were received and marked as spam or blocked. SMTP2GO also handles reverse DNS, ISP throttling, DKIM, blacklist monitoring, blocked ports, etc., which makes it a suitable Mailgun alternative.

Netcore Email API

Formerly known as Pepipost, Netcore Email API is a cloud-based transactional email service that can be a suitable Mailgun alternative. Users get five monthly plans (Starter pack at $25/month for 150,000 emails) to choose the best plan for their organization’s needs and budget. With a user base exceeding 50,000 customers, Netcore Email API helps businesses send critical emails on time. Its pricing policy, deliverability, and good analytics make it a big success among clients like Swiggy, Ola, Oyo, MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip, and others. It is an excellent transactional email software for small businesses, making it all the more adaptable.

Amazon SES

Another efficient and affordable alternative to Mailgun is Amazon SES. Users can send 62,000 emails each month for free, and beyond that limit, it charges a nominal sum of $0.10 for every 1000 emails. Amazon SES is one of the most cost-efficient email sending services available. It comes with several valuable features such as dedicated IP addresses, reputation dashboards, content filtering technologies, email campaign performance monitors, etc. Another attractive aspect of Amazon SES is that it can be integrated with other AWS services like Amazon WorkMail, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS IAM, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon S3, etc. Some of the popular Amazon SES users are Netflix, Reddit, and Duolingo.

SocketLabs

With over fifteen years of industry experience, SocketLabs is an ideal Mailgun alternative providing 40,000 free emails in the first month. Its basic plan comes for $39.95/month and allows to send up to 40,000 emails. The three things guaranteed with SocketLabs are safe, timely, and reliable email delivery (with its robust email server technology), personalized customer support, and advanced analytics and reporting. Some of its customers include eMoney, APSIS, Customer Thermometer, and FanFinders.

Sendinblue

SendinBlue is another suitable alternative for Mailgun. SendinBlue offers comprehensive email marketing solutions for small to medium-sized enterprises that want to send automated email marketing campaigns even with a limited budget. Sendinblue offers email and SMS marketing features, chat support for customers, CRM, marketing automation, audience segmentation, transaction emails, email heat map, reports, real-time statistics, among other features. Sendinblue makes an excellent alternative for MailGun and even provides the option to customize email campaigns, a lifetime free plan (for up to 300 emails per day or 9,000 emails per month), and the functionality of sending emails using a third-party application. Besides, you also get the option of designing marketing emails using the templates provided by them.

Postmark

If you need a reliable email server for transactional email, Postmark is a great option as well. Postmark attaches great importance to deliverability, has a dedicated email delivery page and a time-to-inbox dashboard that shows delivery times for the five major ISPs (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL, and iCloud). Postmark offers live delivery data, excellent customer support, and troubleshooting facilities, pre-built email templates, dedicated infrastructure for bulk emails, community libraries, template engines, dedicated IPs, and a lot more. If you run an online store or a similar online business that requires sending bulk emails, Postmark can serve you well.

SendGrid

SendGrid is a competitor that provides cloud-based email delivery services and transactional email management. Working with some of the most pioneering brands such as Pinterest, Pandora, Snapchat, and Foursquare, it aims to relieve companies of the cost and complexity of maintaining a custom email system. SendGrid has a variety of features such as SMTP API, SMTP Relay and Service, 24/7 support, ISP Monitoring, IP White labeling, DKIM Customization, Email Template Engine, Open and Unsubscribe tracking, custom API integration, and Parse webhook. SendGrid is an excellent option over Mailgun as it offers customization, better email marketing functionality, and excellent scalability.

Mailchimp Transactional Email (formerly Mandrill)

Mailchimp offers custom tagging, dedicated IPs, comparative reports, shared inboxes, and real-time analytics. Mailchimp Transactional Email provides users with reliability, great reporting, and debugging tools but is a bit expensive compared to Mailgun. This price is significantly reduced if you already have a Mailchimp account. Mailchimp has a better interface than Mailgun, can handle many addresses, offers sizable deliverability, integrates with Mailchimp templates, has sub-account control, and you can also use their API to integrate with your app to create robust marketing campaigns.

MailJet

MailJet is used for sending, tracking, and delivering marketing and transactional emails. MailJet offers splendid template creation and pre-set templates, email segmentation, event tracking API, and sender reputation management, making it an excellent choice for even small businesses. MailJet also includes an easy-to-use online drag and drop interface and an SMTP Relay API that allows developers to integrate MailJet features into their online apps and services. MailJet has a large team to help you get your emails in your inbox, including its delivery experts, who can advise you on your practice and experience with ISPs, Gmail, and Outlook. Overall, MailJet is an affordable and great alternative to Mailgun.

Final Words

For organizations that have been using the forever-free plan of Mailgun until it discontinued the offer, one of the Mailgun alternatives discussed above would suffice. The free plans for most email sending services included in the above discussion work fine for organizations with moderate customer engagement. Apart from the number of free emails per month, there are many additional features to avail of these alternatives.