# 12 Mailgun alternatives, ranked

> Twelve real alternatives to Mailgun, ranked, with published prices and the catch on each. Amazon SES, Postmark, Resend, SMTP2GO, and where Wraps actually fits.

Mailgun's cheap on-ramp is gone. Flex closed to new signups in December 2025 and the legacy rate doubled, which is why most people arrive at this page. The rest arrive after a suspension. Both problems have good answers, and they are not the same answer.

## Disclosure

Wraps publishes this page and Wraps is on the list. It is placed where it honestly belongs rather than first, its limitations are stated on its own entry, and Mailgun itself is kept as the final entry because staying put is a real option. Prices are each vendor's published list prices as of August 2026.

## Why people leave Mailgun

- Flex, the pay-as-you-go tier, closed to new signups in December 2025, and the legacy rate doubled from $1 to $2 per 1,000.
- What remains of the free tier is a hard 100 emails per day.
- Account suspensions are a recurring theme in reviews, with the same slow reinstatement path that drives people off SendGrid.
- Scale at $400 for 500K a month is about eight times what that volume costs sending through SES directly.

## Pick in thirty seconds

- **You want the pay-as-you-go model Flex used to be** — Amazon SES at $0.10 per 1,000, or AhaSend at $0.50 if you do not want AWS.
- **Deliverability is why you are leaving** — Postmark, and expect to pay more per email for it.
- **You used inbound routing and parsing** — Amazon SES with a Lambda, or SMTP2GO on Professional. Check this before you migrate — it is the feature people forget they depend on.
- **Suspension risk is what you are solving** — Amazon SES or Wraps. Sending from your own AWS account changes who holds the switch.
- **You want a better developer experience for the same money** — Resend or MailerSend.
- **You need EU data residency** — SES in an EU region, which keeps the pay-as-you-go economics.

## The ranked list

### 1. Amazon SES

*Raw sending infrastructure from AWS*

The closest thing to what Flex actually was: real pay-as-you-go, no plan brackets, no monthly minimum, at $0.10 per 1,000 against the doubled legacy rate of $2. At 500K a month that is about $50 against Scale's $400. It is also the biggest step down in tooling on this page, because everything Mailgun gave you above the SMTP layer becomes yours to build, including the inbound routing that Mailgun users lean on more than most. Production access is an application AWS can deny.

- **Pricing:** $0.10 per 1,000 emails on à la carte. New accounts are defaulted to the Essentials plan at $0.16 per 1,000; Pro is $105/mo + $0.22 per 1,000 and Enterprise $500/mo + $0.23 per 1,000. Plans are per-account, per-Region.
- **Best for:** Teams already on AWS with an engineer willing to own the plumbing.
- **Watch out for:** Production access is an application AWS can refuse, and new accounts start sandboxed to verified addresses. No dashboard, no templates, and nothing stores your events until you build it.
- **Source:** https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/

### 2. Postmark

*Transactional email API, deliverability-first*

The move if what actually drove you off was mail not arriving rather than the price change. Roughly $133 at 100K against Mailgun's $75 to $90, so you are paying more on purpose in exchange for a vendor whose whole thesis is inbox placement and whose support answers. A bad move if the price rise is what brought you here, since it goes the wrong way.

- **Pricing:** Basic $15, Pro $16.50, Platform $18 per month — each including 10,000 emails. Overage runs $1.80, $1.30, and $1.20 per 1,000 respectively. Dedicated IP $50/mo on Pro and above, 300K/mo minimum.
- **Best for:** Transactional email where inbox placement matters more than unit price.
- **Watch out for:** The economics invert at volume — roughly $630 at 500K/mo against $50 of raw SES. Marketing tooling is deliberately thin, and the early-2026 repricing means long-standing accounts are not on these numbers.
- **Source:** https://postmarkapp.com/pricing

### 3. Resend

*Developer-first email API built on SES*

The developer-experience upgrade, and cheaper than Mailgun Scale at the same volume: $35 at 100K against $90. React Email support and a clean SDK are the draw. Check the 30-day log retention and the 2 request/second rate limit against how you actually send, particularly if you were using Mailgun's log search to debug delivery months after the fact.

- **Pricing:** Free 3,000/mo (100/day). Pro $20 at 50K and $35 at 100K. Scale $350 at 500K. Overage $0.65–0.90 per 1,000. Marketing contacts billed separately at $40/mo per 5,000.
- **Best for:** The fastest path from an empty project to a sent email, especially with React Email.
- **Watch out for:** Logs are purged at 30 days on every non-Enterprise plan, the API is capped at 2 requests per second on all tiers, and suspension during traffic spikes is the complaint that recurs in its public reviews.
- **Source:** https://resend.com/pricing

### 4. Wraps (this is our product)

*Email platform that sends through your own AWS account*

For teams whose objection is that a provider can suspend them without warning, which is the second most common reason people arrive here. Sending runs through SES in your own AWS account, delivery events land in your own DynamoDB, and the platform fee is flat and separate from what you send, so a traffic spike changes your AWS bill rather than triggering a review. Workflows are TypeScript pushed from the CLI. At 100K that is about $10 of SES plus $19 to $79 of platform, against Mailgun's $75 to $90. You need an AWS account and SES production access, which is an AWS decision on AWS's timeline.

- **Pricing:** Platform fee only: Free at 5,000 tracked events/mo, Starter $19, Growth $79, Scale $199. Sending is billed by AWS directly — $0.10 per 1,000 on SES à la carte, or $0.16 on the Essentials plan new AWS accounts are defaulted to. Contacts are unlimited on every tier.
- **Best for:** Teams already on AWS who want the platform layer without sending or logs leaving their account.
- **Watch out for:** You need an AWS account and SES production access, an AWS approval taking 1–72 hours that is not ours to grant. SDKs are TypeScript and Python only. Contacts, templates, and workflow state live in our database, not yours — only sending data and delivery events land in your AWS. We are not SOC 2 certified.
- **Source:** https://wraps.dev

### 5. SMTP2GO

*SMTP relay with strong reporting*

The straightforward relay swap, and one of the few options here that also does inbound parsing, on its Professional tier. At $75 for 100K it is priced level with Mailgun Foundation while including dedicated IPs, and the reporting is better than the price suggests. Worth a look precisely because inbound is the Mailgun feature people forget they depend on until it is gone.

- **Pricing:** Free 1,000/mo (200/day). Starter $10/mo at 10K. Professional from $75/mo at 100K, which is where dedicated IPs and inbound parsing unlock. Overage $1 per 1,000 on Starter, $0.85 on Professional.
- **Best for:** Apps and appliances that need a relay to just work, with reporting good enough to debug from.
- **Watch out for:** Relay-first by design: no modern SDK, no lifecycle automation, and no React template rendering.
- **Source:** https://www.smtp2go.com/pricing/

### 6. MailerSend

*Email API with a drag-and-drop template builder*

Starter at $35 for 50K undercuts Foundation at the same volume and adds a template builder Mailgun does not really have. A reasonable landing spot for teams who used Mailgun as a plain sending API and never touched routing or validation. The 500-email free tier makes evaluation awkward.

- **Pricing:** Free 500/mo (100/day). Starter $35/mo at 50K ($31.50 annual). Professional $110/mo at 50K ($99 annual). Overage from $1.30 per 1,000, falling as plan size grows.
- **Best for:** Mid-market teams who need a template builder a non-engineer can open.
- **Watch out for:** The free tier is only 500 emails a month, and Professional costs $75/mo more than Starter for identical volume — you are buying seats and retention, not sending.
- **Source:** https://www.mailersend.com/pricing

### 7. AhaSend

*Pay-as-you-go transactional email API*

$0.50 per 1,000 with no brackets is the closest thing on this list to Flex's original spirit, and a quarter of the doubled legacy rate. About $50 at 100K against Mailgun's $75 to $90, and about $250 at 500K against $400. Small vendor, short track record, priced accordingly, and no inbound routing to speak of.

- **Pricing:** First 1,000 emails a month free, then $0.50 per 1,000 — $5/mo covers 10,000. No recipient limits and no plan brackets.
- **Best for:** Indie and cost-sensitive projects wanting near-SES pricing without an AWS account.
- **Watch out for:** Small and young: fewer integrations, a short deliverability record, and thinner support than any incumbent on this list.
- **Source:** https://ahasend.com/pricing

### 8. SendGrid

*Twilio's email platform — API, SMTP, and marketing*

Similar scale, similar feature surface, similar suspension complaints, and a free tier that died in May 2025. It is on this list because procurement sometimes picks it and because it genuinely does handle enormous volume. It is worth being blunt that it does not solve the problem most people are leaving Mailgun over.

- **Pricing:** Essentials $19.95 at 50K and $34.95 at 100K. Pro $89.95 at 100K, $249 at 300K, $499 at 700K. Dedicated IP is Pro and above; extra IPs $30/mo. Marketing Campaigns is priced as its own plan, not an add-on.
- **Best for:** Enterprises wanting one procurement relationship, SMTP everywhere, and marketing in the same console.
- **Watch out for:** The free tier died on 27 May 2025, replaced by a 60-day trial at 100/day. Support latency and abrupt account suspensions dominate its public reviews.
- **Source:** https://sendgrid.com/en-us/pricing

### 9. ZeptoMail

*Zoho's transactional-only email service*

Cheap and transactional-only, at roughly a fifth of Mailgun's per-email cost. The hard constraint is the policy: marketing sends will get you shut off, so if any part of your Mailgun traffic was campaigns, this splits you across two vendors. Credits expiring at six months makes it a poor fit for bursty sending.

- **Pricing:** Credit-based pay-as-you-go — one credit covers 10,000 emails and is valid for six months. No monthly fee. The first credit is free.
- **Best for:** The cheapest credible transactional API if you will never touch a marketing feature.
- **Watch out for:** Credits expire at six months whether used or not. Transactional-only is enforced policy, not guidance, and the tooling is Zoho's.
- **Source:** https://www.zoho.com/zeptomail/pricing.html

### 10. Brevo

*EU marketing platform with a transactional API attached*

Covers marketing as well as transactional on volume-based pricing, from a European company, at roughly $69 for 100K. A developer-experience downgrade from Mailgun's API, which is a real cost if your integration is deep. Most relevant if you were already planning to add a marketing tool alongside Mailgun.

- **Pricing:** Priced on send volume rather than contacts. Starter runs from roughly $9/mo at 5,000 emails to roughly $69/mo at 100,000; the Business tier is roughly double at each volume and is where automation and A/B testing live.
- **Best for:** Small EU teams wanting email, SMS, and a light CRM on one invoice.
- **Watch out for:** The headline tier is not the one you need — automation and removing the Brevo logo are both a step up. Shared-pool deliverability draws mixed reports.
- **Source:** https://www.brevo.com/pricing/

### 11. Self-hosted (Postal, Listmonk, or your own MTA)

*Open-source mail server you run yourself*

Mailgun refugees consider this more often than users of any other vendor here, usually within a week of a suspension, and the appeal is obvious: nobody can turn you off. Understand what you are signing up for. IP warming, blocklist remediation, feedback loop enrolment, and DMARC alignment become a standing on-call responsibility, and the first time a major mailbox provider throttles you it is your problem at 2am.

- **Pricing:** The software is free. You pay for servers, IP addresses, and your own time.
- **Best for:** Teams with a real reason to run an MTA and the operational capacity to staff it.
- **Watch out for:** IP warming, blocklist remediation, feedback loops, and DMARC alignment become an on-call rotation rather than a one-time setup task.
- **Source:** https://docs.postalserver.io/

### 12. Mailgun (the incumbent — staying put)

*High-volume email API with routing and validation*

If you are on legacy Flex pricing, still sending, and not suspended, staying may be the cheapest thing you can do. That grandfathered rate is not available to anyone else even after doubling, and the inbound routing and validation are genuinely good. The case for leaving is strongest for new accounts, who get none of that and face a $15 minimum for 10K where Flex used to charge for what you sent.

- **Pricing:** Basic $15 at 10K. Foundation $35 at 50K and $75 at 100K. Scale $90 at 100K rising to $400 at 500K. Dedicated IP included from the $75/mo plans; extra IPs $59/mo each.
- **Best for:** High-volume sending where routing, validation, and log search need to come from one vendor.
- **Watch out for:** Flex closed to new signups in December 2025 and the legacy rate doubled to $2 per 1,000. The free tier is a hard 100/day cap, and suspensions recur in reviews.
- **Source:** https://www.mailgun.com/pricing/

## When to stay on Mailgun

- You are on legacy Flex pricing and it still works. Nobody new can buy that.
- You depend on inbound routing, validation, and log search from one vendor, and splitting them costs more than the savings.
- You are at a volume with negotiated pricing that looks nothing like the list prices.
- You have never been suspended and deliverability is fine.

## Where Wraps fits

Wraps deploys email infrastructure into the reader's own AWS account and runs the platform layer on top of it. Sending goes through their SES at AWS prices, and delivery events land in their DynamoDB rather than in a vendor's log retention window. Contacts are unlimited on every plan because the platform fee is not priced per profile. Workflows can be defined in TypeScript and pushed from the CLI, so a lifecycle change is reviewed in a pull request rather than clicked into a canvas.

It is the wrong choice for a reader with no AWS account, one who needs SDKs outside TypeScript and Python, or one who needs a SOC 2 report today. SES production access is an AWS approval that takes 1 to 72 hours and is not Wraps' to grant. Contacts, templates, and workflow state live in Wraps' database; only sending and delivery events live in the customer's AWS.

## Related

- [Resend alternatives](https://wraps.dev/alternatives/resend)
- [SendGrid alternatives](https://wraps.dev/alternatives/sendgrid)
- [Postmark alternatives](https://wraps.dev/alternatives/postmark)
- [Customer.io alternatives](https://wraps.dev/alternatives/customer-io)
- [Mailgun vs Wraps, head to head](https://wraps.dev/compare/mailgun-vs-wraps)
- [All head-to-head comparisons](https://wraps.dev/compare)
- [Pricing](https://wraps.dev/pricing.md)

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Canonical: https://wraps.dev/alternatives/mailgun
Prices verified: August 2026. Corrections: support@wraps.dev