5 Best Mailgun Alternatives to Switch to in 2024

Mailgun was launched in 2010 as a developer-friendly and API-integrated email delivery service. To date, the platform helps businesses send, receive, and track transactional and marketing messages. 

But Mailgun may not be the right ESP for everyone, especially with its limited account capabilities — if you have a larger email list, it’s challenging to email all your subscribers at once. 

If you’re on the lookout for a Mailgun alternative, here are 5 of them based on their core features, functionality, and pricing.

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Why Switch to a Mailgun Alternative?

Mailgun launched ahead of many ESPs in the market and was considered a beginner-friendly email delivery platform with APIs. 

Email API (short for Application Programmable Interface) helps developers connect an application or service to an email service provider and use the provider’s features, including sending emails, extracting email stats, etc., without having to create the functionalities from scratch.

Mailgun is quite easy to set up and allows up to 10,000 emails per month for free. As you scale, you can pay $35 for 50,000 emails and $90 for 100,000 emails. 

Although it was widely used for its reliability and affordability, Mailgun started to witness stiff competition with many ESPs delivering more powerful features and functionalities for lower pricing.

Currently, many users are opting for Mailgun alternatives for several reasons, such as — sudden account closures and an increase in account usage charges without warning.

Additionally, Mailgun’s basic UX design, deliverability limitations, and UI issues lead many users to migrate to other platforms that provide more value for the price. 

Now that we know the basics about Mailgun, let’s compare it to other ESPs based on the common requirements.

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What to Consider When Moving to a Mailgun Alternative

As you prepare to take your email marketing journey with a new ESP, evaluating your requirements and looking for a platform that matches your budget is important.

We have put together a few critical factors you must consider before making the leap:

Factor	Description
Deliverability	Assess the ESP’s deliverability record to understand your email reach
Integration capabilities	Compare the features such as automation, A/B testing, analytics, and segmentation with your business requirements.
Pricing structure	Ensure the new ESP fits your budget and there are no extra charges as you scale
Features and functionality	Evaluate the quality of customer support, including knowledge and dedicated support staff for each account.
Customer support	Choose a platform that’s easy to use and has beginner-friendly functionalities.
Data security and complaince	Ensure the ESP follows data security acts such as CAN-SPAM and GDPR
User interface and ease of use	Consider the nature of analytics, including the level of detail provided regarding your email campaign metrics.
Reporting and analytics	Analyze the ESP’s uptime and reliability to avoid service disruptions
Customization options	Check for the ability to tailor email campaign templates and other design features
Reliability	Analyze the ESPs uptime and reliability to avoid service disruptions
Community and reviews	Read through the user reviews thoroughly before making a decision

While this checklist can help you evaluate your options, you must know the Mailgun alternatives in detail to make an informed decision. Let’s review each platform’s functionalities and pricing structure.

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Mailgun Alternatives: Quick Overview

Migrating your entire email list to another ESP isn’t an easy task. That’s why we’ve compiled the best Mailgun alternatives list to help you make quicker decisions.

ESP	Campaign Refinery	SendGrid	Amazon SES	Mailpoet	Mandrill
Ease of Use	10	6	4	8	8
Advanced Automation	10	8	7	7	8
Advanced Sender Reputation Practices	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Unlimited Contacts	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Engagement Gamification	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Automatic Email list cleaning	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Deliverability	Excellent	Good	Good	Average	Good

Now that we’ve narrowed the ESP options for you, it’s time to look at them in detail.

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Campaign Refinery: The Finest Mailgun Alternative 

Campaign Refinery is the best Mailgun alternative if you’re looking for the highest email deliverability in the market. With decades of experience in email marketing, our founder, Travis Ketchum, built Campaign Refinery for all types of email enthusiasts on the grounds of ethical email marketing. 

That means we follow email marketing best practices to the T and have stringent rules in place to maintain our client’s brand reputation. We don’t encourage cold emailing or buying email lists and immediately terminate user accounts for increased safety and security.

While our email automation platform has many sophisticated features, our core focus is — email deliverabilty. Campaign Refinery realized the importance of inbox placement before anything else, and that’s what makes it the finest ESP for all kinds of businesses.

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All-in-One Email Marketing Platform

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Unmatched Deliverability, For Developers and Marketers Alike

If you’re a developer and are looking for seamless integration and API systems, Campaign Refinery is your choice. With advanced API custom integration tools, dynamic content, and personalization elements, you have complete control over your email marketing system.

If you’re a marketer, use our powerful automation system to send the right email campaigns to your audience for higher conversions. You can also validate email addresses, run any type of email campaign, and track analytics from a single dashboard.

Campaign Refinery dramatically increases your deliverability and engagement with powerful tools and features. 

Look at the pros and cons to make a proper decision.

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Campaign Refinery Pricing

We offer credits that you can use to build and clean your email list at your schedule, based on your habits. In a nutshell, you’ll only pay for what you use, regardless of the number of emails you send out, which makes Campaign Refinery the best value-for-money option on the market.

If you’re a high-volume sender looking for a premium software, Campaign Refinery will be the right fit for you. Apply now to become a Campaign Refinery client!

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SendGrid: An Expensive Alternative to Mailgun

SendGrid was launched in 2009 as an email API and since then, has grown into a full-service email platform. SendGrid aspires to be the largest email platform to send millions of emails per day with features like autoresponders, A/B testing, customizable branding, disposable email detection, and response management. 

SendGrid aims to be an intuitive email marketing platform for businesses, but it misses out on helpful features such as activity tracking, churn management, and multi-channel communication. 

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SendGrid Pricing

SendGrid offers 3 pricing tiers with different features, customer support, and send volumes.

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Amazon SES: A Mailgun Alternative For Mass Emails

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a part of Amazon Web Services and is a cost-effective email marketing platform for any business type. It’s often used for sending bulk emails, but it works for marketing and other email types too.

While the pricing is affordable, Amazon SES does not offer premium email marketing features — many users think that the features and services aren’t compatible with other marketing tools. 

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MailPoet: A Mailgun Alternative For Attractive Newsletters

If you’re looking for a good email plugin for WordPress, MailPoet makes the cut. Their USP is — to enjoy everything in one place; it works with any CMS platform. It’s pretty simple to use and allows you to design good-looking newsletters. Despite these features, MailPoet may not be the best fit for every email marketer. 

The platform’s price point may be a concern for users looking for more affordable options. The services often get disconnected without proper reasoning, and its segmentation and integrations are limited to WordPress core features and Woocommerce only.

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MailPoet Pricing 

MailPoet is free for up to 1000 subscribers, which is useful if you’re testing your email marketing strategy.

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Mandrill: User-friendly Add-on Service For Mailchimp 

Mailchimp Transactional email (formerly Mandrill) is a Mailgun Alternative if you’re already a MailChimp user or are planning on becoming one. It’s only available as an add-on service for Mailchimp users, making it less usable for other marketers.

Users report that the platform is user-friendly and provides detailed analysis of the email campaigns. However, its support team might not be very active when it comes to solving customer queries. Many users also feel that this Mailgun alternative is a bit overpriced for its features.

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Mailchimp Transactional Pricing 

Mailchimp Transactional’s pricing usually depends on the number of emails sent and starts at $20/month for up to 25,000 emails.

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Campaign Refinery vs Mailgun: Which is Better?

Most email marketers look for a combination of nominal pricing packages and unique features for their email marketing needs. The biggest concern is to find a platform that enables you to send as many emails to as many contacts for fixed pricing. 

So, how do you choose the best out of all the options? Let’s help you narrow down your focus.

Features	Campaign Refinery	Mailgun
Dynamic email content	✅	❌
Email Segmentation	✅	✅
API	✅	✅
Engagement Rewards	✅	❌
Mobile optimization	✅	✅
Bulk email verification	✅	✅
Powerful reporting/analytics	✅	✅
Custom domain check	✅	❌
High deliverability rate	✅	❌
Sender reputation management	✅	✅
Credit system	✅	❌
Spam trap detection	✅	✅
Disposable email detection	✅	✅
Single email verification	✅	❌
Drip campaigns	✅	❌
Post-purchase email campaigns	✅	❌
Quality senders only policy	✅	❌
Evergreen Flash sales	✅	❌
Smart goal triggers	✅	❌

Now, you might wonder about the pricing part, but before you decide to go with the least priced, ask yourself if it solves your purpose. 

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How to Choose an ESP Based on Pricing

If pricing is your concern, take a look at the ESPs on this list to understand their pricing packages at a glance. In the table below, we’ve only outlined the starter packs of all platforms. However, be mindful that each ESP offers different features and functionalities depending on the pricing tier. 

Note: Campaign Refinery has a unique approach to pricing — we have a credit system and you only pay for what you use.

Platform	Contact/Subscriber Limit	Email Send Limit	Pricing per month
SendGrid	2,000	6,000 per month	$0
Amazon SES	50 contacts per email	10,000 per month	$1
MailPoet	5000	Unlimited emails per month	$55
Mandrill	–	5000 emails per month	$20
Campaign Refinery	Unlimited contacts	50,000 credits per month	Starting at $99

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Why Campaign Refinery is the Best Mailgun Alternative for Your Email Marketing Needs

When looking for a Mailgun alternative, you might have come across different challenges including email deliverability expertise, higher costs for extra emails, and no customer support. Remember that we’ve built Campaign Refinery — an elite email marketing platform to solve your biggest email marketing problems in the first place.

We started out with industry experience but soon became a powerhouse for email deliverability. This was possible because we listened to our clients and updated our systems to make sure they were happy with the performance. And they certainly were — check out our user reviews below!