Mailgun Review: Email Service For High-Volume Senders​

Consider this your complete guide to the email delivery service Mailgun. This Mailgun review will take an in-depth look at Mailgun email marketing features, Mailgun cost, Mailgun alternatives, customer satisfaction, and more. 

If you’re considering signing up, read this thorough Mailgun review to help you make an informed and confident decision. 

Successful email campaigns can make or break small businesses. They can be the difference between having a loyal customer or being forgotten. 

So check out what Mailgun offers to decide if it’s the right mailing service for you and your business. 

What Is Mailgun? 

So, what is Mailgun, and what is Mailgun used for?

Mailgun is a SaaS (software as a service) that helps business owners and entrepreneurs reach clients via email efficiently and effectively. This email service provider helps big and small businesses reach customers using well-crafted email campaigns, contextual emails, and transactional emails.

Mailgun Features

This section will explore the many Mailgun features members have access to. Take a look at these helpful features and consider how these could help your business be more successful. 

Email Builder

Mailgun offers impeccable email-building designs where you can carefully craft email campaigns from scratch or use one of their many templates. 

Mailgun offers Mailjet’s services to its users, allowing customers access to this advanced email-building tool. With Mailjet’s services, you can create stunning email campaigns in just minutes. 

It also has helpful features like segmentation, personalization, and a/b testing, so you can perfect your emails before sending them out. Creating personalized emails is the best way to grab your customers’ attention and ensure they open your emails. 

Generic templates can be decent, but with Mailjet, you can curate emails that encompass your brand identity, cementing your place in the consumers’ minds. 

Email API

Email application programming interface (API) allows applications to access and use the functions offered by email service providers like Mailgun. 

These functions include actions like generating and sending emails, manipulating email templates, moving or editing inbox folders, building campaign drafts, and more. 

Because email API can help connect these different applications, it also contributes significantly to the email analytics business owners use to craft their marketing strategy. 

Mailgun utilizes one of the most forceful email API platforms, using a solid infrastructure built on API, so these functions are always at the forefront of their operations. Whether you send transactional or conventional emails, Mailgun can send them quickly and in bulk, making your life easier. 

Email Verification

These days, people get asked for their emails left and right. Some people give out fake emails, allowing them to avoid a bombardment of promotions and campaigns. Sending emails to sham addresses or inactive accounts wastes money. 

It may seem like not a big deal, but every fake email you send a campaign to is detracting from the productivity of your email marketing strategy. 

But Mailgun will verify the emails before you send out the campaign, so you can focus on reaching promising customers, not nonexistent ones. And Mailgun boasts some of the fastest and most accurate verification services in the business, so you can feel confident your emails land in actual inboxes. 

Deliverability Services

The experts at Mailgun help users send high-volume email campaigns efficiently. They make it easy to curate and deliver massive email marketing campaigns without letting anything slip through the cracks. 

The Mailgun team helps you curate a custom deliverability solution & email validation service that suits your business needs and makes sense for your target audience. You’ll even get a Technical Account Manager to assist you with troubleshooting, email optimization, and ongoing support. 

You also get dedicated IP and domain reputation tracking and monthly performance reports, so you have a firm grasp on how successful your email campaigns are. In the end, mail delivery services are all about successful deliveries. And Mailgun makes deliverability their top priority. 

Inbox Placement 

Inbox placement is a simple concept. The last thing you want is for your carefully crafted email campaigns to wind up in the spam folder.

To ensure your email makes it to the primary inbox, Mailgun estimates the likelihood of the email winding up in the right place. Mailgun can foresee email deliverability issues and help you change your emails to ensure they land at the top of every inbox. 

Don’t let all your hard work go to waste to have the emails land in junk boxes that your customers will never see. 

Send Time Optimization

Most people don’t check their emails in the middle of a restful night’s sleep. But many do wake up and head straight for their inbox. 

Does this mean you have to wake up at the crack of dawn to get ready to send emails out as the sun rises? No, not when you have software like Mailgun to do this for you. Not only can you set up emails to send on a schedule, but Mailgun has features to help you decide when you should send those emails. 

While many people check their inboxes in the morning, your target audience may not. Therefore, it pays to know the optimal time to reach out to your target audience, raising the chances that they’ll see and engage with your email campaign. 

Email Analytics and Logs

Knowing how your emails perform can help you design campaigns better and curate a successful marketing strategy. Without analytics, you’re just sending your emails into the world and crossing your fingers that they make the impact you want. 

But with Mailgun, you get a complete log of your emails and analytics on their performance. So Mailgun delivers spreadsheets and charts that depict what emails got the most engagement, including clicks, views, deletions, deliveries, opens, and more. 

But rather than send you a confusing mess of numbers and figures, Mailgun sends you a lovely page with colorful charts that are easy to digest. This information is vital in optimizing your emails and making them more enticing and successful with your customers. 

Mailing Lists Management

Not every email is relevant for every one of your customers. So having an easy way to manage your various mailing lists can streamline marketing campaigns and make the results more successful. 

By separating different customers into categories, you can create targeted email campaigns to engage specific groups, such as long-time customers, potential customers, or cold customers. 

Rather than bombarding every email on your mega mailing list with every promotion, you can be more tactful, meaning every email will be more thoughtful and exciting in the eyes of the customer. 

This feature also shows you who has marked your emails as spam or unsubscribed from the email list, giving you more insight into your target audience and what people appreciate in emails. 

Rapid Fire Burst Sending

The rapid-fire burst sending might sound intense, and it kind of is. Rapid fire bursting is when you send tons of emails all at once, flooding inboxes at just the right moment. 

Due to privacy reasons and other issues, manually doing this takes an excessive amount of time and effort. 

But with Mailgun, you don’t have to click send on every email. Instead, you can schedule these rapid releases of your email campaigns, targeting the right customers at the most opportune moment. 

And as your business and client base grows, along with your mailing list, it’ll be simple to reach out to every client so they stay informed and engaged with your company. 

24/7 Support

Unlike many other email services and marketing platforms, Mailgun has excellent tech support and a helpful team that’s ready to answer your questions and concerns promptly. While other companies may promise this, many do not follow through. 

But Mailgun is one of the few who live up to their promise of 24/7 support, responding to inquiries promptly and thoroughly. 

Not only do they have a 24/7 support team to answer simple questions and help with troubleshooting, but you also have your Technical Account Manager by your side every step of the way. 

Business owners and entrepreneurs who have not fully taken advantage of the online world can be hesitant to sign up for these services because they fear they won’t know how to navigate anything. 

But Mailgun has created a team who understands that struggle and is happy to help you figure out the best way to reach customers in today’s digital world. 

Mailgun Pricing Plans

Mailgun has three main pricing plans available to customers, plus a free Mailgun trial and enterprise services.

Their plans are flexible and even have some customization options, depending on how many emails you plan to send out in a month. Also, keep an eye out for a limited-time Mailgun discount or rare Mailgun deal, which could save you money on sign-up fees or membership costs. 

For those considering utilizing the features Mailgun offers, you’ll need to decide which plan suits your needs. So what does Mailgun cost?

Mailgun Trial

The Mailgun trial is a free one-month trial where you can send out a maximum of 5,000 emails. The trial is completely free, but after 30 days, you will get charged for one of the plans, depending on what you agreed to when you signed up. 

You can send more than 5,000 emails for a fee. It costs $1 for everything extra thousand emails sent out. 

• Mail API

• SMTP relay

• Webhooks

• Suppression management

• Track emails

• Email analytics

• 99.99% guaranteed uptime SLA

• Five days of log retention

• Detailed documentation

• 24/7 ticket support

• Drag-and-drop template builder

The Mailgun trial is ideal for someone unsure what email campaigns can do for them and what the volume of emails would be. Before you use a service like Mailgun, it can be challenging to determine how many emails you want to send out monthly, as your mailing lists are likely disorganized and hard to analyze. 

Foundation Plan

The most affordable of the Mailgun plans, aside from the free trial, is the Foundation plan. It costs $35 per month and includes everything the free trial offers. In addition, you’ll have access to the following features:

• 50,000 emails per month

• Inbound mail processing

• Email address verification access

• One day of message retention

You also have the option to exceed your verification and email limits for an additional fee, discounted from the trial fees. Every 1,000 emails cost $0.80, and every 100 verifications cost $1.20. But those fees only apply if you go over your monthly limit. 

Scale Plan

Scale is the most comprehensive plan for standard business owners and entrepreneurs. It costs $90 per month and includes all Mailgun features available. You will get access to all the tools and perks of the first three plans, along with:

• SAML SSO

• 100,000 emails per month

• 5,000 email address verifications

• Send time optimization

• 30 days of log retention

• Up to 7 days of message retention

• Live phone support

• Dedicated IP pools

Extra emails and email verifications are available for the same additional fees mentioned for the Foundation and Growth plans. The Scale plan doesn’t offer additional emails compared to the Growth plan, but it does have more features and verifications. 

Enterprise Services

The Enterprise services are a bit different. They aren’t technically a Mailgun pricing plan. The Enterprise services are for individuals who want to launch massive and complex email marketing campaigns. 

The average business owner or entrepreneur likely doesn’t need this, but robust companies can benefit from it. 

The pricing for these services is unclear, as you have to discuss what you want with a Mailgun representative before receiving a cost quote. 

Enterprise services include most of what the other plans come with, plus:

• Scale plan plus custom features

• Deliverability Services

• Rapid fire burst sending 

Mailgun’s Enterprise services are for those who need to send bulk emails at scale, so most users don’t opt for this choice, as the smaller scale plans are plenty for most businesses. 

Mailgun Pros

Mailgun has many happy customers who love the service and feel their businesses have benefited from their ability to send bulk emails and craft campaigns. Below are the pros people associate with the Mailgun service and why they think it’s worth the price they pay per month. 

Customer Support: Compared to its competitors, Mailgun has phenomenal customer support. They have people available 24/7 to help you, especially for members with a higher Mailgun pricing plan. Those struggling with email platforms won’t have to worry about not getting help, which gives many people peace of mind. 

Reliable Delivery: Mailgun has an impressive delivery rate compared to its competitors, making it one of the most reliable email services for businesses. Mailgun prioritizes delivering emails over everything else, as they should since it’s their primary function. 

Easy Set-Up: Almost everyone who uses Mailgun reports that it’s an easy interface to navigate, making it simple to set up and start sending emails right away. Even people who aren’t comfortable with platforms like this feel it’s one of the more user-friendly options available. 

Helpful Features: As discussed in this article, Mailgun has loads of features that make email marketing campaigns a breeze, even for people new to the world of email marketing. And many people agree some of the best features are available with the free trial and cheapest plan, so you get access to the ones that matter. 

Mailgun Cons

While many people love what Mailgun offers, no service is without its flaws. A few Mailgun complaints tend to pop up in customer reviews, so below are the common cons to be aware of before you sign up. 

Limited Logs: While Mailgun documentation is reliable and clear, they only hold this documentation for up to two months before erasing it. For most, this isn’t a significant issue, but losing your entire log of emails could create problems. 

Increasing Prices: Long-term users say the prices were once much lower, but they are steadily increasing, and more and more features are behind paywalls. While they still offer their 1-month free trial. It seems they are getting greedier in other areas. 

Fraud Problems: Some users complain that Mailgun does nothing to prevent fraudulent businesses from using their services. When this happens, some IPs may get blocklisted, causing problems for other users and hurting their reputation. 

Mailgun Statistics

While customer comments, whether positive or negative, are helpful when deciding on a subscription-like this, numbers can also make things clearer. Below are some quick statistics on Mailgun versus the industry averages. 

• Mailgun Average Delivery Rate: 97.4% 

  • Industry Average Delivery Rate: 85%

• Mailgun Average Bounce Rate: 0.42% 

  • Industry Average Bounce Rate: 2%

Mailgun Competitors Comparison

If Mailgun doesn’t sound like the right service for you, there are plenty of alternatives to Mailgun. Not all Mailgun reviews are positive, so this may dissuade you from signing up. In that case, consider these Mailgun alternatives below. 

Mailgun vs. SendGrid

If you’re looking for something with similar marketing features to Mailgun and a user-friendly interface, SendGrid is a great transactional email service alternative for small businesses. They serve almost 100,000 customers, sending more than 70 billion emails per month. 

Despite SendGrid’s efforts to make its platform easy to navigate, many users feel Mailgun is more intuitive and easy to use. So for those who want to keep things simple, Mailgun is still the best option. 

Mailgun also remains the best option for people who want to focus on inbox placement and cut down on reaching out to nonexistent emails. 

However, SendGrid is ideal for someone ready to send emails at scale and use more complex campaign builders and features. People sending millions of emails and looking for more complexity will prefer SendGrid. 

Mailgun vs. MailChimp

MailChimp is all about making it simple to send essential emails like newsletters rather than focusing on complex marketing campaigns. 

MailChimp is an excellent choice for someone who wants a platform even simpler than Mailgun. It allows you to design newsletters, share them on social media platforms, incorporate servers you already use, and monitor your results. 

Mailgun focuses more on the analytics of deliverability and performance, while MailChimp focuses on making it as easy as possible for you to send emails in the first place. So if you are less concerned with the data on your emails and want a simple platform that helps you get them to inboxes, MailChimp is the easy and affordable option. 

MailChimp also works better with social media, so if you have a strong presence on Facebook and Instagram and want to leverage that, MailChimp can help. 

Mailgun vs. Mailjet

Mailgun and Mailjet actually work together, but they’re not the same company. Both email services operate under their tech parent company Sinch, but they offer slightly different features. 

Mailjet is the better choice for someone who wants to get creative and craft stunning email campaigns that entice customers. Mailgun’s design service operates through Mailjet, but Mailjet has extra features for its users. 

There are thousands of email templates and style options, so you can carefully craft your emails with your vision in mind. But for speed and volume, Mailgun is still the best choice. Mailjet doesn’t handle the capacity of Mailgun, which is one of the reasons they teamed up. However, for people who want to send emails at scale and do so quickly, Mailjet is not ideal. 

Bottom Line

While Mailgun specializes in email deliveries, its power lies in its reliability. It’s a straightforward service, offering many features on free and entry-level plans. 

The world is interconnected thanks to the web, and emails have become an essential form of communication, especially between businesses and consumers. 

So don’t miss out on what an email provider like Mailgun could do for your company, even if you decide to sign up for one of the Mailgun competitors if they might be a better fit for you and your business.