Mailgun vs Resend

Mailgun compared with Resend

Resend is nicer to integrate, cheaper at volume (about $80 versus about $145 at 150,000 emails), and has a far better console and log viewer. Mailgun has something Resend does not have at all: inbound email. If your application needs to receive and route mail, or you want address validation from the same vendor, Mailgun wins outright. If you only send, Resend is the better product on almost every axis except institutional longevity.

Resend compared with Mailgun

Mailgun offers more infrastructure primitives than Resend: full inbound routing, email validation as a metered service, longer log retention on Scale, and dedicated IPs from the 50,000 volume tier. It is also owned by Sinch and feels it, with a heavier console and an enterprise sales motion layered over the self-serve plans. Resend is cheaper at comparable volume, far nicer to integrate, and lacks inbound entirely. Pick Mailgun when you need to receive and route mail programmatically; pick Resend when you only need to send.

Mailgun

Volume-metered on emails sent, with four tiers that differ mainly in included volume, log retention, inbound route allowance, and dedicated IP availability. Email validation is metered separately.

• Free$0
• BasicFrom $15
• Foundation$35
• Scale$90
• CustomQuoted

Modelled at this directory's three reference points, Mailgun is mid-market on price and top of the category on inbound capability. A product with 1,000 users receiving three emails each sends 3,000 a month and fits inside Basic at $15, or the free tier if the daily cap allows. Ten thousand users at three emails each is 30,000 sends, still inside Basic at $15 but far better served by Foundation at $35 for the log retention and the inbound routes. Fifty thousand users at three emails each is 150,000 sends, which is Scale at $90 plus roughly $55 of overage, about $145 a month. That sits between Resend at around $80 and Postmark at around $199 for the same volume, and it is roughly ten times Amazon SES. What separates Mailgun from the cheaper options is inbound routing with rules rather than a single webhook, and validation from the same vendor. What separates it from the more expensive ones is that Postmark keeps a year of full message content where Mailgun keeps 30 days of events. Buy Mailgun for inbound; buy something else if outbound is all you do.

Resend

Two separate meters. Transactional email is billed on monthly send volume with per-thousand overage. Marketing email is billed separately on contact count. Neither meter charges for team seats.

• Free$0
• Pro$20 for 50,000 emails, $35 for 100,000 emails
• Scale$90 for 100,000 rising to $1,150 for 2.5M emails
• Marketing Pro$40 to $650
• EnterpriseCustom

Modelled at the three volumes this directory uses, Resend's transactional meter behaves nothing like a contact-priced ESP. A product with 1,000 users sending each of them roughly three notifications a month is inside the free tier at zero. Ten thousand users at three emails each is 30,000 sends, comfortably inside the $20 Pro plan. Fifty thousand users at three emails each is 150,000 sends, which is $35 for the first 100,000 plus $45 of overage, or about $80 a month. Against Postmark that is roughly half the price at volume, against SendGrid it is competitive, and against Amazon SES it is about five times more expensive. You are paying a modest premium over the raw infrastructure price for a console you can navigate, docs you can read, and support that answers. For most small software businesses that trade is obviously worth it.