Mailgun alternatives

I make Reachkit, a cold email tool, and I’ve kept it off this list: it doesn’t send the app and transactional email Mailgun is used for. Each price on this page was checked in October 2026 on the vendor’s own site.

The right pick depends on which part of Mailgun you want to replace:

• Mailgun Send, with longer logs and more seats on a small plan: Postmark, where even the $15 plan keeps 45 days of message activity.
• Mailgun Send for 50,000 to 100,000 emails, for less and without AWS: SendGrid’s Essentials plans, if shared IPs are fine for you.
• Mailgun Send at millions of emails a month: Amazon SES, which costs less per email than any other sender here, for teams that already work in AWS.
• Mailgun Send, with a person you can phone: SMTP2GO, which includes phone and chat support from its $15 plan.
• Mailgun Optimize: ZeroBounce ONE, which bundles checks, placement tests and blacklist monitors for the same $99 a month.
• Mailgun Validate: Kickbox for checking addresses as people sign up, Emailable for cleaning whole lists.

If an account review is what pushed you out, know that every sender here reviews new accounts or can suspend ones that break its rules. Opt-in lists and low bounce rates protect you more than a new provider does.

Entries 1 to 4 replace Mailgun Send, the API and SMTP relay your code sends through. Like Mailgun, all four only allow mail to people who opted in.

Postmark is a transactional email service that ActiveCampaign bought in 2022. Apps send password resets, receipts and alerts through its API or SMTP. Newsletters to opted-in lists go out on a separate Broadcast stream, and Postmark says that bulk mail never touches the IP ranges your transactional mail uses.

Price (October 2026): a free Developer plan covers 100 emails a month for testing an integration. At 10,000 emails, the three paid plans cost $15 (Basic), $16.50 (Pro) and $18 (Platform). At 125,000 they cost $115, $126.50 and $138. Billing is monthly only, and emails you don’t use don’t carry over.

Strengths:

• Message activity is kept for 45 days on every Postmark plan. Mailgun’s logs last one day on Basic, five on Foundation and 30 on Scale.
• More room at 10,000 emails: Basic allows four users and five domains, Pro adds inbound processing for $16.50, and Platform removes the user and domain caps for $18. Mailgun’s multi-user access starts at $35.

Drawbacks:

• New accounts wait for a manual approval, and before it you can send only to your own verified domains. Postmark puts the wait at under a day on weekdays, while some reviewers describe longer ones.
• Volume costs more: 50,000 emails are $55 on Basic, against $35 on Mailgun Foundation.
• Its Trustpilot score is 2.0 from 47 reviews, where the complaints center on support, approvals and shut accounts. On G2 it holds 4.6 and on Capterra 4.7.

Versus Mailgun: at 10,000 emails the price is about the same, and Postmark adds longer history and more users for it, though inbound needs Pro. From 50,000 up Mailgun is cheaper, and it includes a dedicated IP at 100,000 emails, where Postmark sells one for $50 a month from 300,000 and says its shared pools suit most senders better. Postmark profile

SendGrid is Twilio’s email platform. The Email API sends through REST or SMTP relay, and Marketing Campaigns, a newsletter editor, is a separate product with its own price. Since February 2026 sendgrid.com redirects to twilio.com, which Twilio described as a website change with the API and prices left as they were.

Price (October 2026): Essentials costs $19.95 a month for 50,000 emails or $34.95 for 100,000. Pro runs from $89.95 for 100,000 up to $1,099 for 2.5 million. New accounts start with a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day, no card needed. Twilio’s changelog retired SendGrid’s free plans in 2025, although one Marketing Campaigns FAQ still describes a free plan.

Strengths:

• At 100,000 emails on shared IPs, Essentials costs less than half of Mailgun Foundation’s $75.
• Pro includes a dedicated IP, 2,500 address validations and up to 1,000 teammates.

Drawbacks:

• Essentials allows one teammate and keeps three days of searchable activity, a squeeze much like Mailgun Basic’s.
• It won’t take account reviews off your mind. Of 53 Capterra reviews that touch on account restrictions, Capterra’s summary rates 79% negative, and Trustpilot shows 1.1 from 614 reviews.

Versus Mailgun: SendGrid costs less at 50,000 emails, $19.95 to Mailgun’s $35, and at 100,000 without a dedicated IP. With one, Mailgun costs less ($75 against $89.95), though extra IPs cost $59 a month at Mailgun and $30 at SendGrid. Mailgun still has a free plan; SendGrid has a trial. More in the SendGrid profile and SendGrid alternatives.

Amazon SES is the email-sending service of Amazon Web Services. Your code sends through its API or SMTP endpoint, and inbound mail is handled by receipt rules or Mail Manager. There’s no campaign editor and no inbox for replies.

Price (October 2026): AWS introduced plans on July 21, 2026. New accounts start on Essentials at $0.16 per 1,000 emails. Any account can drop to the à la carte rate instead, which bills $0.10 per 1,000 with no plan. Pro, at $105 a month per region plus $0.22 per 1,000, adds managed dedicated IPs and 2,500 address validations a month. A standard dedicated IP is $24.95 a month à la carte. AWS’s July blog post on the plans closed the SES free tier to new customers, though the SES FAQ still describes it.

Strengths:

• A million emails cost $100 à la carte or $160 on Essentials, before attachment charges. Mailgun Scale 1M is $700.
• No contract and no upfront commitment, and reviewers rate it 4.3 on G2 (203 reviews) and 4.7 on Capterra (123).

Drawbacks:

• Every account starts in a sandbox in each region: 200 emails a day, to verified addresses only. Leaving it takes a manual review, and AWS promises a first answer within 96 hours.
• It expects a developer, and G2 reviewers list hard setup and poor customer support among its cons.

Versus Mailgun: Mailgun sends from US and EU data centers under one account, while SES sets quotas, sandbox status and plan fees per region. A dedicated IP costs $24.95 at SES against $59 for each extra one at Mailgun. Amazon SES profile

SMTP2GO has relayed email since 2006 from its base in Christchurch, New Zealand, through data centers in the USA, Europe and Australia. Your app can send through its API or SMTP, and so can Outlook or an office printer or scanner.

Price (October 2026): free accounts get 1,000 emails a month (200 a day at most), with no end date. Starter is $15 monthly or $150 yearly for 10,000, and each extra 1,000 costs $1.20. Professional, $75 monthly or $750 yearly, covers 100,000 with a dedicated IP included. A slider on SMTP2GO’s pricing page sets the price at other volumes. Any paid plan can be refunded in full within 30 days.

Strengths:

• Ticket, live chat and toll-free phone support come with every paid plan. Mailgun keeps phone and chat for Scale, from $90.
• Paid plans have no cap on team members or sender domains, keep 30 days of reports and include subaccounts, which Mailgun reserves for contract plans.

Drawbacks:

• SMTP2GO checks each account once it has sent 1,000 emails, holding further mail in a queue until that check is finished.
• Mailgun’s free plan sends more, about 3,000 a month at 100 a day. SMTP2GO only handles outgoing mail, by its help center’s own account, so Mailgun inbound routes need another home.

Versus Mailgun: at 100,000 emails both cost $75 with a dedicated IP included, and extra IPs are $19 against $59. On the $15 plans, overage costs $1.20 per 1,000 against Mailgun Basic’s $1.80. Trustpilot shows 4.8 from 1,911 reviews; the low-star ones keep returning to unexpected suspensions. SMTP2GO profile

Entries 5 to 7 replace Mailgun’s add-ons, Optimize and Validate. They work next to any sender above, and checking addresses before you send keeps bounces low, which Mailgun, SES and Postmark all write into their rules.

ZeroBounce is an email validation company in Santa Barbara, California. Beyond checking addresses, it sells deliverability tools, from placement tests to DMARC and blacklist monitoring and warmup, and its ONE subscription bundles them.

Price (October 2026): pay-as-you-go packs start at $39 for 2,000 checks, and 10,000 cost about $129. The ONE subscription costs $99 monthly or $79 a month on yearly billing, and each month brings 10,000 credits, 100 inbox placement tests, 10 blacklist monitors and DMARC monitoring for one domain. Accounts opened with a business email address also get 100 free checks every month.

Strengths:

• Same price as Mailgun’s Optimize Starter ($99), with twice the validations and placement tests. Starter includes 5,000 and 50, plus spam trap monitoring and Google Postmaster Tools and Microsoft SNDS data.
• Unknown results are free. ZeroBounce’s newsroom said in June 2026 that its standard check now settles many catch-all addresses hosted at Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

Drawbacks:

• The smallest pack works out to $19.50 for every 1,000 checks.
• The pages disagree on expiry. The pricing page lists “Credits never expire”, but its FAQ ties that to an active ONE subscription, and the terms say accounts opened after June 1, 2026 lose credits two years after the latest purchase without one.

Versus Mailgun: Optimize’s email health score is only for Mailgun Send customers sending over 10,000 a month, so once you’ve left Send, a separate suite fits better. Ratings are high on both Capterra (4.8, 597 reviews) and Trustpilot (4.8, 2,136). ZeroBounce profile

Kickbox, part of Ziff Davis, verifies email addresses three ways: lists you upload, lists it pulls from connected apps such as HubSpot, and single addresses sent to its API, for example the moment someone types one into a signup form.

Price (October 2026): your first 100 checks are free. After that Kickbox sells credit packs: 500 checks for $5, 10,000 for $70, 100,000 for $500, a million for $2,999.

Strengths:

• When Kickbox can’t give a definitive answer, the credit comes back.
• Test calls with sandbox keys are free, and Kickbox documents its API ceilings (8,000 requests a minute, 25 at once from one IP), which helps when you rebuild a Mailgun Validate call.

Drawbacks:

• Credits expire a year after purchase, a rule in the terms rather than on the pricing page.
• Addresses at accept-all domains come back as risky instead of valid or invalid.

Versus Mailgun: on Basic and Foundation, Mailgun charges $100 for 10,000 validations and $670 for 100,000 (my math from its per-100 tiers). Kickbox charges $70 and $500. On G2 it averages 4.5 across about 660 reviews. Kickbox profile

Emailable is an email verification service established in 2017, with its headquarters in New York according to its about page. You upload a list, check one address or call its API, and the same credits pay for inbox placement reports and blacklist checks.

Price (October 2026): one credit per check, with 5,000 the smallest purchase: $38 pay-as-you-go, or $32.30 on a subscription. For 10,000 it’s $60, or $51 subscribed. New accounts get 250 free credits once. An inbox report costs 100 credits and a blacklist check 5.

Strengths:

• Credits don’t expire, and subscription credits roll over. Its terms add that a suspended or deleted account may lose them.
• Unknown results don’t cost a credit, and neither does an address that appears twice in the same list.

Drawbacks:

• Catch-all addresses, common on business lists, can come back as Risky, as Emailable’s own docs explain. In a July 2026 test on a deliberately hard list, run by ZeroBounce, a competitor, 34.2% of Emailable’s answers were catch-all.
• Payments are non-refundable outside a few listed cases, which you must raise within 30 days. Trustpilot shows 1.9 from 262 reviews, with only one review in the last 12 months, while G2 (4.8) and Capterra (4.7) rate it highly.

Versus Mailgun: 10,000 checks cost $60 against Mailgun’s $100, and credits you don’t spend stay on the account. Emailable profile

Start with what Mailgun does for you now:

• A side project or a few alerts a day. Mailgun’s own free plan, at about 3,000 a month, is larger than the other free plans here. SMTP2GO’s 1,000 a month never runs out, and Postmark’s 100 a month is meant for testing.
• An app on Basic that needs more users or longer logs. Postmark at $15 to $18, or SMTP2GO Starter at $15 with 30 days of reports.
• 50,000 to 100,000 a month on shared IPs. SendGrid Essentials, at $19.95 or $34.95, or SES if you already run on AWS.
• A dedicated IP at 100,000 a month. Mailgun Foundation and SMTP2GO Professional both cost $75 with one included. SendGrid Pro costs $89.95.
• Millions a month. Amazon SES, if someone on the team can handle the sandbox, DNS records and AWS permissions.
• Only the add-ons. Keep Mailgun Send and replace Validate with Kickbox or Emailable, or Optimize with ZeroBounce ONE.

Before you move, verify your domain with the new provider, rebuild your inbound routes and webhooks there, and route a slice of your mail through it for a while before the rest. Mailgun’s plans and limits are in the Mailgun profile.

I’d only switch for a reason you can put a number on. If it’s one day of logs and one user on Basic, Postmark is where I’d test first. If it’s the bill at millions of emails, SES wins on price, and between 50,000 and 100,000 on shared IPs, SendGrid costs less than Mailgun without the AWS learning curve. If an account got switched off, moving won’t spare you reviews; documented opt-in and clean lists will, and at 10,000 checks Kickbox or Emailable costs less than Mailgun’s validation add-on.

None of these is for cold email. That needs real mailboxes on separate domains, which is the setup I built Reachkit around (how that setup works).

Related: Mailgun profile, SendGrid alternatives and the Postmark profile.