Mailgun is one of the more popular email service providers. Businesses use it to send emails in bulk – whether they want to send promotional newsletters or automated transactional emails to their app users.
Since it’s a set of APIs rather than a stand-alone platform, companies can quickly integrate the Mailgun service into their website or app and start sending messages immediately.
Figuring out which plan would be the best value for their money might be a bit confusing though, as Mailgun has 7 pricing plans – 4 for their email service and 3 for delivery tools.
So in this article, we’ll go over all of Mailgun’s pricing plans and show what you can find in each plan
Mailgun main products
Currently, Mailgun offers two products. The first one is their main email delivery service in the form of email API that developers can integrate with their website or app. Their second product, InboxReady, is a standalone package with additional tools through which users can enhance mail deliverability.
Let’s look closer at what features we can find in each product.
Mailgun features
Email API
Mailgun’s Email API allows developers to integrate email functionality into their applications quickly and easily and then scale it as needed. What makes it easier for developers to integrate the API is that they can use the programming language or framework they are most comfortable it – Python, PHP, Java, Ruby, or Microsoft. NET.
There is detailed documentation on how to use the API. After all, billions of emails have gone through Mailgun and the documentation is built to help users get the most out of this email marketing software.
SMTP
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) service enables users to send emails either through their own SMTP server or by using Mailgun’s. That’s especially useful for smaller companies that can’t afford to buy and maintain in-house hardware and software for their own servers, as they can rely on Mailgun’s fast and secure server for their email marketing needs.
Inbound Routing
Businesses can also use the Mailgun app to set up rules and routes for handling incoming emails. For example, they can forward emails to specific addresses or group all auto-replies. Mailgun also comes with an automatic parsing feature to make important extracting data from long or complicated email threads easier.
Email Tracking and Analytics
Mailgun API also gives users access to several analytic and tracking tools for their accounts. With those, users can track delivery status, opens, clicks, bounces, unsubscribes, and other essential engagement metrics. They can then leverage the data to measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns and pinpoint any issues affecting their deliverability.
Send time optimization
Send Time Optimization (STO) feature gathers and analyzes data about when recipients are opening their inboxes and then delivers the emails when they are most likely to be active. The emails are then placed at the top of the inbox, increasing the chance that the recipient will open and read them.
You’ll know the exact time when your email program should go out for the best results. This is crucial for bulk emails and cold emails.
Inboxready
Email preview
This feature can show users how their new email will look on different devices (both desktop and mobile ones) to help them optimize their messages for device responsiveness. These deliverability services can make a difference, and if your transactional email software has a preview feature, check it in Mailgun too.
Inbox Placement
By testing their new emails with Inbox Placement, users can see where exactly their emails will land after sending – down to the estimated email position in the inboxes. Perhaps poor email addresses are not the issue and something else is causing you to send spammy emails – Mailgun can help you send better inbound emails.
Reputation monitoring
Reputation monitoring can help users avoid hitting spam traps and consequently becoming blacklisted by gathering data about blocklists and known spam traps and then sending an alert when they notice the user’s IP or domain becomes blacklisted.
Their spam trap monitoring is fairly reliable and it can be combined with most email marketing platforms to help you stay out of the spam folder.
Mailgun Pricing Plans
To help individual users and businesses pick the best option for their requirements (and budget), Mailgun has four different pricing plans available. The pricing depends on the monthly sending volume – you can pick from 10,000 emails sent a month to 2,500,000 and anything above. For clarity, we’ll keep the scale at a flat rate of 10,000.
Important to note: After you use your monthly sending limit, the following emails will be priced via their “pay-as-you-go” flex plan – you can find how exactly you will pay for additional emails on their pricing website.
If you don’t know which price plan to choose to improve your deliverability services, get familiar with the advanced features and do your research, to find the best plan for your business requirements.
Trial Plan
The Trial Plan is a free tier plan that allows users to test out the basic features of Mailgun. The plan includes 5,000 free emails per month as a trial volume, together with features such as SMTP Relay, Webhooks, and basic email tracking and analytics.
While the plan is slightly limited (users can only keep logs for 5 days), it’s a good way to test the service before committing to a paid plan and trying to drive business growth with emails.
Foundation Plan
The Foundation Plan is Mailgun’s entry-level paid plan, costing $35 monthly. The plan includes 50,000 emails per month and also additional features that are not available in the free plan, such as inbound email routing.
It is worth noting that the plan can be scaled to 100,00 emails per month – then it will cost $75. On this plan, users can also ask for a dedicated IP number, which can be useful for your business domain.
Scale Plan
For users who need over 100,000 emails a month, Mailgun has a Scale plan. This one differs from the earlier plans as it can be adjusted to each company’s monthly volume. The lowest monthly sending volume for Scale is 100,00 emails a month, for $90. The volume can be increased to even 2,500,000 a month though – then the plan will cost $1,250 a month.
Along with increased email capacity, users will also get access to extra features such as Send Time Optimization, dedicated IP address, live phone support, or SAML SSO identification. All of this can help you solve deliverability issues without hiring a deliverability expert.
Custom Plan
Mailgun also has a Custom plan for enterprise users. Here, the monthly email volume or verification amount can be tailored to the company’s needs, plus they can also count on priority support, proactive account monitoring, and comprehensive training for their staff.
InboxReady Pricing Plans
With Mailgun selling InboxReady separately, the platform also has its own pricing.
Here are the options available for email address validation:
Pilot
The Pilot is a free trial plan for users who want to first try out how the platform works. While Mailgun doesn’t restrict how many users can access the platform, each of the deliverability tools inside the service has a strict limit:
- 2,500 email address verifications
- 25 inbox placement tests
- 500 email previews
The service is free for a month, and after the trial period, the plan costs $49 per month. It allows you to send cheap emails by verifying the addresses before the email program goes out.
Starter Plan
The next plan is the Starter Plan which costs $99 per month. By going with this plan, you can get:
- 5,000 email address verifications
- 50 inbox placement tests
- 1,000 email previews
Plus, the plan also includes Spam trap and Blocklist monitoring (for one domain), together with a dedicated Google Postmaster Integration. For automated emails, these advanced email analytics tools will help you run effective email campaigns.
Contract Plan
InboxReady also has a custom plan for users who want to tailor the solution to their needs and email at scale. All limits inside the platform can be customized to their needs, plus InboxReady will also assign a technical account manager to them.
As with the custom plan on Mailgun, the custom plan on InboxReady has to be negotiated with the sales team directly. Unlike the basic plans, the monthly plan cost can get pretty high. But if you want to send extra emails and get all the bleeding edge features, get in touch with sales.
Mailgun email verification – is it worth using?
Mailgun has one more feature worth mentioning – the email verification feature. You can put your email list into the InboxReady platform, and then the Email verification feature will mark all suspicious or incorrect addresses to remove from the list.
The problem is though, how many addresses you can verify is strictly limited. If you use only InboxReady, then on the pilot plan, you can verify 2500 addresses a month and 5000 on Starter – that’s it.
On Mailgun meanwhile, you only get free verifications on the Scale plan – 5000.
What after you hit the limit? All subsequent verifications will be paid extra – so if you have a large list to clean, the end price for the verification service might be quite heavy for your budget.
Bouncer email verification for affordable list cleaning
If you have an email list to clean that is definitely longer than 5000 addresses (say, 20,000), then a better option would be to get Bouncer for the cleaning task.
Bouncer can handle cleaning lists of any length – from anything below 10,000 to lists with over 2 million addresses and more. As the app can validate 200,000 emails every hour per hour, then verifying a list with 20,000 emails will only take a couple of minutes.
But what’s even better is that the app can also immediately tell you whether there are any toxic addresses on your list – like spam traps or breached emails.
Want to see Bouncer in action? Try out the free trial – give it just a few minutes, and you’ll be amazed by how much better your campaigns will perform once you have a squeaky-clean list. You can also reach out to their great chat support with any questions or requirements you might have – the Bouncer team will be happy to help.
Is Mailgun really the best tool for the job?
If you are looking for an easy-to-implement email API for your applications, Mailgun might be a good fit. Plus, since both Mailgun and InboxReady have several plans with varying monthly email volumes and features included, you can choose the one that fits your current needs – and then easily scale it up.
Their included email verification and deliverability features are very limited though – and quite expensive as well. So if you have a much bigger list to clean than Mailgun allows to, you should look in the way of Mailgun alternatives – like Bouncer. No matter how long your email list might be, Bouncer will clean it in a flash – and then you can start sending your emails straight away.
Frequently asked questions
What pricing model does Mailgun use?
All Mailgun and InboxReady plans are subscription-based. For sent emails or verifications that are over your plan’s limit meanwhile, they use a pay-as-you-go option.
Can I have multiple accounts with Mailgun under one pricing plan?
Yes, Mailgun doesn’t restrict how many users can access the account. So, for example, you can create a single account through which you will manage multiple domains or projects. On the free plan though, only one user can be added.
Can I send transactional emails with Mailgun?
Absolutely! You can use the platform both for email marketing and sending order confirmations, password resets, or other personalized messages. It supports all types of email strategy, whether you need email personalization for cold outreach or email sequences for marketing automation.
Does Mailgun charge extra for additional emails?
Yes, Mailgun’s pricing structure does include additional fees for sending extra emails beyond your plan’s allocated volume. You can check the prices on their pricing page.
How many emails can I send with Mailgun?
That depends on the specific plan you choose. On the free plan, you can send 5,000 emails per month. For paid plans, the limits are from 10,000 to 2,500,000 and anything above.
Does Mailgun provide an email suppression management feature?
Yes, as a part of their Reputation Monitoring. Mailgun automatically creates a list of bounced and unsubscribed addresses or spam complaints and prevents users from sending emails to those addresses.
This helps users maintain a clean recipient list and protect their domain reputation from complaints (because of getting unwanted emails, for example).
