Mailgun is $1/month per 1,000 emails sent (and first 1,000 are free)

:mega: This does not apply to or impact hosted Discourse customers. This applies to self-hosted customers who use Mailgun for their outgoing email.


2022.05.16 Pfaffman adds: I contacted support about people being confused and they sent:

I think that https://help.mailgun.com/hc/en-us/articles/360048661093-How-does-PAYG-billing-work- (linked in the quote above) is the description of the FLEX/PAYG model that low-volume self-hosters are looking for.

At least one use in India has reported that it’s impossible to pay Mailgun with an Indian credit card:

OP Continues below (End of @pfaffman’s changes)

Mailgun has been one of our recommended email providers for many years. Mailgun offers a plan called “Concept”, which includes 10,000 free emails per month, when you added a credit card on your account. As of March 1, 2020, this plan will be discontinued. Going forward, Mailgun will offer the Flex plan, a pay-as-you-go plan.

Based on current pricing, $0.80/1000 emails, sites that used Mailgun’s free plan can expect monthly costs of no more than $8/mo moving forward, provided they are under the 10k limit that existed historically.

The full email from Mailgun is below. Please note that Discourse is not affiliated with Mailgun in any way. Please direct any questions regarding this change, your Mailgun plan, pricing, etc. to the Mailgun team.

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Does that affect/apply-to hosted Discourse customers? Is there any context for this Topic?

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That is really a bummer. Are there any good alternatives that offer similar plans that you can recommend us?
Thanks for the heads up!

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It does not, no. This only affects self-hosted users who set up email.

The context is this has been the first provider listed on our recommended email list, so we know a lot of self-hosted sites use it (because everyone likes to pick the first thing on the list whether it’s the best or not).

Most providers have moved away from free plans. You can see other recommended options at discourse/docs/INSTALL-email.md at main ¡ discourse/discourse ¡ GitHub, some of whom still have free plans.

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Right. There are too many reasons that email can’t be free, I’m afraid. I always thought that 10K free per month seemed too good to be true.

As someone who sets up several self-hosted sites per month, I’m going to keep recommending Mailgun. I’ve been happy with their service and they are easy to set up (plus it’s what I’ve scripted :wink:). While it is $8/month if you send 10,000 emails per month, most small sites will send much less mail than that. 1000 emails (100 users getting 2.5 emails per week) will cost you 80 cents, which still seems like a pretty good deal to me.

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I’ve just moved our forum to using Amazon SES and am quite happy with it. AWS is a complex beast and it isn’t the simplest provider, but it wasn’t too hard to change over to their SMTP servers. Note that you will need to raise a support ticket with them in order to be moved out of their email sandbox, so if anyone else plans to move to SES, you should set up a test Discourse instance first to check your SMTP settings are working, and also don’t leave it to the last moment because it could take a day or two for them to respond to your support ticket.

Btw, the test email says this at the bottom, which is no longer really true:

(The easy way is to create a free account on SendGrid, SparkPost, Mailgun or Mailjet, which have generous free mailing plans and will be fine for small communities. You’ll still need to set up the SPF and DKIM records in your DNS, though!)

While these companies have free trial periods, and their general fees are quite cheap, they’re not free for small communities after the trials run out.

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how about sendinblue.com? it still has a free plan of 300 email/day. has anyone used it so far?

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I use Sendinblue for a large non-Discourse project and they’re a solid service.

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Well, Mailgun is back to what’s effectively a free plan, but only up to 1250 messages/month. From an email I received from them Thursday:

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As of today 8 May, 2022, Mailgun is giving 1k free per month, thereafter (perhaps) $ 1 for each next 1k mails sent.
While SendinBlue gives 9k per month (300 daily) and Mailet 200 free daily (6k per month), but both stamp the mails with their own logo.

Amazon’s AWS gives 62000 free monthly emails sending if your app/site is hosted on Aws, otherwise just $0.1 every 1k emails (sent or received) [still very cheap in comparison to others]. Though I think it would be a bit more complex but very reliable service.

So I think, Mailgun is no longer a better choice than Aws, particularly for Indian credit card holders.

One biggest thing which is putting hindrance to me vis-a-vis Mailgun is that my Indian Credit Card doesn’t allow me to pay any vendor without Otp. And the Mailgun payment gateway isn’t giving me to either pay thru OTP enabled credit card, or any other method. And in the end, neither my credit company is responding positively, nor Mailgun is giving me another (paypal etc) way to pay them.

AND THEY’VE DISABLED MY ACCOUNT, WHICH IS VERY UGLY FOR AS SMALL PAYMENT AS UNDER $2.

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Thanks for the update! 1k a month is plenty for some personal projects. Appreciated!

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Wait a minute, where is the link for this @Bathinda because I cannot find any mention of 1k free emails per month anywhere on the website or blog. Can you please link to a specific source.

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I think that for a time they wouldn’t charge you if your total was under a dollar a month, but now they roll over the payments so it’s no longer free. They’ve changed things a number of times in the two years since this topic started.

If you have read their pricing then you probably understand it.

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I also failed to see the 1000 emails for free per month.
I’ve been using their trial plan for 2 years; it costs 1$ for 1000$ emails, with 5000 free emails for the first 3 months.

I believe their “flex” plan was renamed “trial” recently :thinking:
A thing bugs me a bit though: Sign Up Free | Mailgun

After your trial, you will be moved to the Foundation 50k, but you can always select pay-as-you-go or a different plan of your choice.

Does that mean that they automatically move us to their Foundation 50k offer (which is 35$ per month), or do they let us choose the “pay as you go” (1$ for 1000$)? :thinking:

I’ve registered a new Mailgun account on a trial plan recently, in February, for a forum, I’m not an admin of, so I’ll need to pay attention to this.


I believe their “flex” plan was renamed “trial” recently :thinking:

I quote myself. I’ve been checking on the new account I registered, in the account settings it says: “Plan: Flex Trial”:
image
Current plan:
image

But I’ll definitely keep an eye on it. I don’t want the plan to be automatically set to a 35$/month one.

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Information about the $1 minimum can be found in their help center, which explicitly states the sent count does not accrue over months.
https://help.mailgun.com/hc/en-us/articles/360048661093-How-does-PAYG-billing-work-

I think that is the “Foundation Trial” mentioned in the above article, I suspect “Flex Trial” is some legacy plan you’re sitting on. If you do find it wants to shift you over to the $35/month Foundation plan, you can definitely probably switch to Flex, free up to 1000/month, $1 for the 1001st email.

It is slightly hidden behind obscurity, naturally. Click the upgrade button from your screenshot, then find See downgrade options for a lower volume on the right and clicking that will reveal the Flex / Pay as You Go plan.

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Thank you! Perhaps we can alter the title of this topic to reflect what Mailgun is offering. Perhaps

Mailgun offers 1,000 emails / month per $1

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I don’t think I’m on a legacy plan as the new account that was created in 2022, March 8th.
I don’t have any downgrade option:

But it would be weird that the current plan would automatically switch to a way more expensive plan I definitively don’t need. Mailgun isn’t one of that shady companies, right?

Comparison with the account “flex” I opened in 2020:

Notice that the current plan is “Flex”.

So my guess is that “Flex Trial” would automatically switch to “Flex” when the three first months of 5000 free emails/months end… But their choice of word doesn’t seem to mean that. :man_shrugging:

Maybe I should contact them to have a reply and no doubt. :smile:


edit: On my flex plan, if I click on “See downgrade options for a lower volume”, here’s what appears:

:thinking: :face_with_raised_eyebrow::grey_question:

If I click on “Pricing detail”:

image

Overages
Next 1,001 to 1,001 $1.00 per message

Uh? I guess that’s a typo…


Also, I send about 7000-8000 emails/month and my billing reflects that:

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Nope, it’s worded weirdly but it adds up.

When you cross the threshold at 1001 messages they charge you for those first 1000 messages at the additional rate of $0.001 per message. They charge it to that 1001 message though so strictly speaking the first 1000 are still free.

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Okay, so a proper revised title for this topic would be:

Mailgun is $1/month per 1,000 emails sent (and first 1,000 are free)

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