Ah, I think I missed/misread the part about registering a new account, so was under the impression the “Flex Trial” was on your two years old account.
Hopefully that’s just while you’re on the trial. I did create my account back in September though so conceivably it may have changed for accounts created more recently than that. I’ve edited my previous post to use “probably” rather than “definitely”.
I guess it’s possible that the article I referenced is outdated and only there for existing users on that plan but that plan is no longer available to new accounts.
I do find the wording very unclear. The pricing page uses “Try us out! Get 5,000 free emails per month for 3 months before moving to our Foundation plan” which is ambiguous, it could imply that it will automatically transition to Foundation at the end of the trial or it could be a recommendation to upgrade after it ends.
In the FAQ on the same page, for the question about testing out Mailgun, it says “For the first three months on the Trial plan, you get a complimentary 5,000 free emails per month. After your three-month trial expires, you’ll pay based on what you use.”
That seems to imply that it will move to Flex rather than Foundation at the end of the trial.
Getting a definitive answer from Mailgun certainly seems like the way to go.
What we figured out in this thread is that you will not be charged if you send less than 1,000 emails per month. Once you reach 1001 emails you begin being charged $1 per 1,000 emails afterwards.
The Flex plan is still mentioned on other pages but not on their main Pricing page.
It seems as though either:
The Flex plan can only now be discovered during the three months of the Trial plan - “you can always select pay-as-you-go”.
The Flex plan only exists for old customers (I send over 1000 emails a month and still pay $0.001 per email).
Probably the former.
They were very aggressive (as far as persistent emails can be aggressive!) about moving from Flex to the $35pm Foundation plan when I first signed up. Maybe they weren’t successful enough in that approach and decided instead to hide or remove the Flex option.
You’re going round in circles on your own there Once you’re above the 1000 it works out as $.001 per email overall (though you could say that the very first email always works out being free!)
I edited the OP to add a link to the FLEX/PAYG pricing and that it seems to be impossible to pay if you live in India. I think that it’s safe for the rest of this discussion to be deleted before much longer.
After reading this topic, I tried Mailgun. But it turns out that their free plan allows only sending emails to manually verified addresses (whereas the one I’m going to recommend to you doesn’t).
This paragraph is added after discussion to correct what I said above: No, that sandbox restriction will be removed once a payment method added. To subscribe to a Flex (Pay as you go) plan, you need to subscribe to Foundation Trial first, then downgrade to it. (Thank you again the friendly Discourse community:)
I then searched on the internet and found Mailersend. It’s super cheap. Their free plan include 12 000 emails without daily sending limits! And their UI is modern and simple. I just used it and it works perfectly, so I would like to recommend it to you guys. Give it a try
It means that I’m in a sandbox, like what Simon said.
Unless I subscribe to a certain plan, I can only send emails to several authorized addresses that I inputed manually, I’m not allowed to massively “import” addresses to get them authorized.
No, because adding a custom domain requires me to subscribe to a certain plan first, while the plans that Mailgun offers don’t suite my needs. My community is of small scale, sending in maximum 10k per month. Their plans start from 50k per month at the price of 35$ (a little expensive), and now they don’t offer a pay-as-you-go choice any more.
To be frank, I felt that the free plan Mailgun offers is just too useless for small communities. Sandbox until you pay…
In contrast, Mailersend is much more generous. They give 12k free emails per month, also leaving me the possibility to scale up. And I’m not forced to pay to add a custom domain.
Mailgun has a pay-as-you-go plan: 1$ / 1000 emails. A good choice for small communities.
I use it on 3 Discourse instances and never encountered any issue.
That said, if Mailersend is reliable and offers indeed 12000 emails for free without hidden fees or time limit, I suppose that could be a better solution, though the 1 domain limit may be a bit of an issue if you want to use it for multiple forums.
But despite this, I imagine that being in a free plan means being in a sandbox, then sending with sandbox domain must be a hard work… Can you share how you simplified the work?
Yes, indeed.
Then I’m the one who test it. I will report to you guys a few months later.
I did nothing particular, I also created a new Mailgun account in February with the Flex plan, and had no issue since. Adding a domain didn’t cost anything. I’m still in pay-as-you-go, 0.001$ per email.
Yes, you have to subscribe to a plan and provide a credit card. Their site is confusing and it looks like you’ll have to pay a bunch per month, but you don’t.
Once you’re above the 1000 it works out as $.001 per email overall (though you could say that the very first email always works out being free!)
Their free plan include 12 000 emails without daily sending limits! And their UI is modern and simple. I just used it and it works perfectly, so I would like to recommend it to you guys. Give it a try 
