SendGrid vs Mailgun

Every provider here will get a message from your app to an inbox on a good day. Venture Harbour's comparison makes the same point: there is no one size fits all, only the trade-off you are optimising for. For transactional mail, the trade-off that matters most shows up on a bad day.

Ask each vendor three things before you sign up:

SendGrid and Mailgun are both large platforms. SendGrid's homepage says it delivers more than 200 billion emails every month. Mailgun's pricing page says it sends over 600 billion emails a year. Both also sell list and campaign sending from the same account, so question two is worth asking both of them directly.

On integration, the two are close. SendGrid's homepage presents an Email API and SMTP service. Mailgun exposes an HTTP API and an SMTP endpoint, and its pricing FAQ gives the honest trade-off: SMTP is easy to set up and often plug and play, while the API is more reliable at scale, so Mailgun recommends the HTTP API for applications.

If you are moving between them, Mailgun publishes a migration handbook from SendGrid that maps terminology between the two and covers both the SMTP and API migration paths. Whichever direction you move, run both providers in parallel and cut over per message type. Our guide to switching transactional email providers without downtime walks through the order.

Most teams start on a shared pool, and that is fine. A shared pool is only as clean as the traffic its operator allows on it.

SendGrid sells Marketing Campaigns "for marketers" next to its Email API. Mailgun includes mailing lists on every plan, from Free to Scale. Neither fact means your password resets share IPs with someone's promotion. It does mean you should ask how each one separates transactional and bulk traffic on shared IPs, and what happens to your mail when another sender on your pool draws complaints.

Our guide on shared vs dedicated IPs for transactional email covers when a shared pool is the right call and when it stops being one.

The usual answer to a noisy shared pool is a dedicated IP. The price and the volume needed to qualify vary more than most comparisons show.

A dedicated IP isolates your reputation, and it also puts the full job of keeping that reputation on your own volume. At low volume an IP can sit cold. Pay for one when your volume, a security review or a procurement checklist calls for it, not on day one. Our dedicated IPs and servers page explains how moving to one works without changing your integration.

When a customer writes in to say the sign-in code never arrived, you need the event history for that message. How far back you can look depends on the plan:

Support matters as much as logs. Mailgun's grid shows ticket support on every plan, with chat and phone support on Scale only. Before you sign up anywhere, ask what the support team can actually change: the IP your mail leaves from, its sending rate to a specific mailbox provider, or only advice on your DNS.

SendGrid's plans now sit on Twilio's site after the two merged their websites. Compare them at your own volume on SendGrid's site alongside the figures below.

Reading the Mailgun and Groundmail rows at common volumes: at 10,000 emails a month, Mailgun Basic is $15 and Groundmail is $15. At 50,000, Mailgun Foundation is $35 and Groundmail is $36. At 100,000, Mailgun Scale is $90 and Groundmail is $71. Above that, the per-1,000 rate decides the bill: Mailgun Scale from $1.10, Groundmail $0.50 up to 1 million emails and $0.30 beyond. Groundmail has no plan to pick, and sent and received emails count the same. Full plan details are on our pricing page.

If your product sends on behalf of your customers, from their domains, domain limits matter early. Mailgun allows 1 custom sending domain on Free and Basic and 1,000 on Foundation and Scale; its grid shows no subaccounts on any self-serve plan. Resend allows 3, 10 and 1,000 custom domains on Free, Pro and Scale, plus a $20/mo add-on for 100 more. Groundmail allows 3 domains on Free and up to 1,000 on pay as you go, and our tenants feature is built for platforms that send for customers.

SendGrid's pricing page, as of October 24, 2026.

SendGrid is now part of Twilio, and its website has moved onto Twilio.com with the same email products, documentation and resources. It offers the Email API and SMTP service for application mail and Marketing Campaigns for marketers, with a free trial that needs no credit card.

Pick it if you already run SMS, voice or verification on Twilio and want email on the same account and bill. Ask before you commit how marketing traffic is separated from transactional traffic on shared IPs, and how long message history is kept on the plan you are buying.

Mailgun's pricing page, as of October 24, 2026.

Mailgun gives the clearest plan ladder of the two: Free at 100 emails a day, Basic from $15/mo for 10,000 emails, Foundation at $35/mo for 50,000, and Scale at $90/mo for 100,000, with the first month of Foundation and Scale free. You can send through the US or the EU from a single account, which helps with data residency questions. Email validation is sold alongside sending, with 5,000 validations included on Scale.

The plan ladder also gates things teams often assume are standard. Multi-user access, role permissions, RBAC API keys and the uptime SLA start at Foundation. SAML SSO, dedicated IP pools, send time optimization, and chat and phone support start at Scale.

Pick it if you want a well-documented API, EU sending, and a clear price at 50,000 or 100,000 emails a month. Ask before you commit how mailing list traffic is kept apart from your transactional mail on shared IPs.

Postmark sells four plans, each starting at 10,000 emails, with 45 days of message retention by default and dedicated IPs from $50/month per IP once you send 300,000 a month. Its pricing page also lists message streams for marketing, bulk and broadcast mail. Postmark's pricing.

Resend offers a free-forever plan capped at 100 emails a day and bills monthly only. Its homepage pitches both transactional and marketing email, and its pricing FAQ separates the two by API: /emails for transactional, /broadcasts for marketing. Resend's pricing.

Amazon SES sits inside AWS, which describes its services as pay-as-you-go on its pricing overview: you pay for what you use, with no long-term contracts.

Mailjet sits under Sinch alongside Mailgun and is built for marketers as much as developers, with segmentation, landing pages and automations on its higher plans. Its free plan is the most generous on volume here at 6,000 emails a month. Mailjet's pricing.

Brevo is a marketing, CRM and messaging platform whose pricing FAQ says every plan includes transactional email features, with APIs, SMTP and webhooks. Brevo's pricing.

Groundmail sends transactional email (password resets, sign-in codes, receipts, alerts) from mail servers and IP space we own and operate. Our shared transactional IPs carry only that kind of mail: product email and opt-in newsletters send from their own IPs, and cold email and purchased or scraped lists aren't allowed at all. When you need isolation for volume, a security review or procurement, dedicated IPs and a dedicated server sit behind the same API you started on. Our deliverability page explains how we protect the pool.

Groundmail sends opt-in newsletters only for accounts we approve, marketing campaigns are coming later, and cold outreach is never allowed. Teams that need campaigns today are better served by a marketing platform such as Mailjet or Brevo, or by SendGrid's Marketing Campaigns. Keep your campaigns there and your resets and receipts on a transactional sender. A sign-in code should never wait behind a promotion.

Groundmail sends with one request to POST /emails, or through SMTP if your framework already speaks it. The Free plan covers 3,000 emails a month on up to 3 domains, which is enough to wire up resets and sign-in codes and watch them land. Create your free account and send a test message to your own inbox.