Mailgun has been one of our recommended email providers for many years. Mailgun offers a plan called âConceptâ, 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 Mailgunâs 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.
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 itâs the best or not).
Right. There are too many reasons that email canât be free, Iâm 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, Iâm going to keep recommending Mailgun. Iâve been happy with their service and they are easy to set up (plus itâs what Iâve scripted ). 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.
Iâve just moved our forum to using Amazon SES and am quite happy with it. AWS is a complex beast and it isnât the simplest provider, but it wasnât 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 donât 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. Youâll 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, theyâre not free for small communities after the trials run out.
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.
Amazonâs 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 doesnât allow me to pay any vendor without Otp. And the Mailgun payment gateway isnât 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 THEYâVE DISABLED MY ACCOUNT, WHICH IS VERY UGLY FOR AS SMALL PAYMENT AS UNDER $2.
Wait a minute, where is the link for this @Bathinda because I cannot find any mention of 1k free emails per month anywhere on the website or blog. Can you please link to a specific source.
I think that for a time they wouldnât charge you if your total was under a dollar a month, but now they roll over the payments so itâs no longer free. Theyâve changed things a number of times in the two years since this topic started.
If you have read their pricing then you probably understand it.
I also failed to see the 1000 emails for free per month.
Iâve been using their trial plan for 2 years; it costs 1$ for 1000$ emails, with 5000 free emails for the first 3 months.
I believe their âflexâ plan was renamed âtrialâ recently
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 âpay as you goâ (1$ for 1000$)?
Iâve registered a new Mailgun account on a trial plan recently, in February, for a forum, Iâm not an admin of, so Iâll need to pay attention to this.
I believe their âflexâ plan was renamed âtrialâ recently
I quote myself. Iâve been checking on the new account I registered, in the account settings it says: âPlan: Flex Trialâ:
Current plan:
But Iâll definitely keep an eye on it. I donât want the plan to be automatically set to a 35$/month one.
Information about the $1 minimum can be found in their help center, which explicitly states the sent count does not accrue over months.
I think that is the âFoundation Trialâ mentioned in the above article, I suspect âFlex Trialâ is some legacy plan youâre 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.
But it would be weird that the current plan would automatically switch to a way more expensive plan I definitively donât need. Mailgun isnât one of that shady companies, right?
Comparison with the account âflexâ I opened in 2020:
So my guess is that âFlex Trialâ would automatically switch to âFlexâ when the three first months of 5000 free emails/months end⌠But their choice of word doesnât seem to mean that.
Maybe I should contact them to have a reply and no doubt.
edit: On my flex plan, if I click on âSee downgrade options for a lower volumeâ, hereâs what appears:
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.
This does not apply to or impact hosted Discourse customers. This applies to self-hosted customers who use Mailgun for their outgoing email.
). 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.
