Postmark vs Mailgun
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Postmark and Mailgun.
Quick Verdict
4.2/5
Postmark
0 reviews
3.7/5
Mailgun
0 reviews
Postmark is rated higher (4.2 vs 3.7). Postmark is a transactional email service with best-in-class inbox delivery rates. Focuses solely on transactional email (not marketing). Detailed bounce analytics, message streams, and server-side DKIM. Mailgun is a developer-focused email API service owned by Sinch. Inbound email parsing, email validation API, and detailed analytics. Popular for startups building email features into their apps.
Postmark Fastest transactional email delivery — inbox-focused | Mailgun Email API for developers — by Sinch | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ | 3.7 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting price | Free tier available | Free tier available |
| Best for | SaaS developers who need dependable delivery for password resets, receipts, and notifications, with the analytics to prove it landed | Developers and SaaS teams sending transactional email from applications who also need inbound email parsing, validation, and deliverability tooling |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ||
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tierapi access | free tierapi access |
| Visit Postmark → | Visit Mailgun → | |
Postmark
Pros
- + Transactional/broadcast stream separation protects application email reputation
- + Real free tier: 100 emails/month forever, no expiry — good for evaluating deliverability honestly
- + Published, tiered pricing with explicit overage rates and no sales-gated numbers
- + Deep per-message delivery and bounce analytics with sandbox testing mode
- + Boring in the good way: stable SMTP/API since 2010 with the team carried through the 2022 acquisition
Cons
- - Per-email cost is well above SendGrid at volume
- - No marketing campaigns, contact lists, or automation — transactional and broadcast sending only
- - Inbound processing, long retention, and dedicated IPs gated behind higher tiers and volume minimums
- - Owned by ActiveCampaign since 2022; long-term product consolidation is a real, if mild, risk
Mailgun
Pros
- + Inbound email parsing on every plan, including Free — the strongest developer-side feature in this category
- + Published four-tier pricing with explicit overage rates ($15/$35/$90 per month tiers)
- + Credit-backed 99.99% availability SLA on API, SMTP, and outbound delivery
- + US or EU (Ireland) sending regions per account, with GDPR/HIPAA/SOC/ISO 27001 compliance paperwork
Cons
- - One day of log retention on Free and Basic — debugging old delivery issues is impossible without exporting logs
- - Chat and phone support only on the $90/month Scale tier; support quality under Sinch ownership draws community criticism
- - Dedicated IPs cost extra below high volumes (third-party listings quote ~$59/IP/month)
- - US operating entity under a Swedish parent — CLOUD Act exposure remains for privacy-sensitive EU buyers
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