While scoping work for a potential new client recently I discovered to my mild dismay that the plans offered by Mailgun have changed recently and the Flex plan I wrote about in our original post is no longer available to new customers. The Internet Archive seems to suggest that this change was introduced some time in July 2024, but there was no communication about this to existing customers.
If you are already on Flex plan, like we are, you get to keep it at least for now. Mailgun may change their mind about that and "sunset" that plan in the future. So what are the new plans that they're making available and are they any good?
Two new plans
The Foundation plan discussed in our previous post remains largely unchanged, but the Flex Plan has been replaced with two new plans: Free and Basic.
Free
The Free plan comes with a sending limit of 100 emails per day. Technically this would allow you to send anywhere between 2800 and 3100 emails a month if you limit yourself to batches of 100 emails, but this is not really how email newsletters work. In practice this is a suitable plan only if you still have under 100 subscribers.
The limit is also firm - you can't simply pay for more emails (aka overages). To be able to send unlimited emails you must have a monthly plan.
More details about the free plan can be found here.
Basic
The Basic plan is now the cheapest unlimited option, but it starts at €15 a month.
It comes with 10,000 emails a month included in the price and has no daily sending limit. If you're sending more than that you can either pay for the extra emails, or upgrade to the Foundation plan which remains largely unchanged.
Overages
Hidden in the new price structure is also a change to how much overages cost, ie. how much Mailgun will charge you for additional 1,000 emails.
In the now deprecated Flex Plan and previous pricing for Foundation plan a 1,000 emails extra in a month would have cost you $1.
Under the new pricing you can get a 1,000 emails for $1.80 under Basic, $1.30 under Foundation, and $1.10 under Scale. Fundamentally the more expensive your monthly plan, the cheaper the overages; the more you send the less you pay per email.
You should compare the plans they offer on their website in more detail.
Conclusion
The two new plans don't come near the advantages you would have gotten with the Flex plan. If you have more than 100 subscribers and are sending fewer than 10,000 emails a month the options that are available are now less than desirable. They are more expensive and well, less flexible!
If you are already on Flex plan and have already close to sending 10,000 emails a day you now have an option to switch to the Basic monthly plan a little earlier. This will make the billing more predictable until you hit the 10k mark, but note I don't recommend doing so; the cost per email, overages included, is still lower on Flex plan than it is on Basic.
I'm happy to report that the point at which you should switch from a Flex to a Foundation plan remains the same; it's after you start to routinely send more than 35k of emails a month. Foundation remains priced at $35 for 50k emails, which is the best price for people who send between 35k and 50k emails a month.
If you start on Basic plan and you're considering switching to Foundation you should do this just after you reach 21k emails a month. With the price of overages being $1.8 per 1k of emails on Basic Plan, 21k emails will come to about $34.8. You will have to pay $36.6 for 22k emails, which is more expensive than the Foundation plan's base cost offering 50k.
I have shopped around and have not found another reputable email delivery company that has a better starting plan. I note however with suspicion that Mailgun's new Basic plan mimics the base cost, quantity of email, and overage pricing of a pre-existing Postmark's Basic plan exactly.
