Read this comprehensive review of Mailgun Email Marketing Service including its benefits, features, pricing, comparison of different Mailgun alternatives, etc.:
Advertising is a crucial part of any business. When you own a business, in order to grab customers, you need to make people aware of what you are offering, how it differs from others in the market, and how a customer would benefit from opting for it.
In today’s scenario, due to industrialization and capitalization, there are a huge number of opportunities available for businesses to grow. But there is cutthroat competition in almost every industry and you need to take effective, planned, and judicious steps to make your business a success.
The advertising and marketing strategies and techniques have also evolved with time and technological advancement. The modern marketing strategies do not include giving ads in newspapers, or pamphlets, or something like that. These are now considered secondary options.
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Mailgun Review
Considering the need for the hour, marketing strategies are now based on passing the information to the customers digitally. Email marketing is the highly preferred method of attracting customers.
Email Marketing Services
Email marketing is considered being an effective method to increase sales by making people aware of the benefits you are offering to them. You can make people aware of the offers and discounts you are ready to give and thus make people compelled to use your products.
Once people use the product and find it worth buying, they would definitely want to buy it again and again. It has been found that email marketing gives you 4400% returns on investment! Moreover, you can still connect with your customers through email, when your website is down due to any reason.
There are service providers who offer to ease the process of email marketing. Here we will study one such service provider called Mailgun, its features, pros and cons, prices, and ratings. We will also give a verdict about Mailgun and will compare the leading service providers based on several grounds.
What Is Mailgun
=>> Visit Official Mailgun Website
Mailgun is a leading provider of email API services you can use to send, validate, and receive emails through your domain at scale. It also lets you track the performance of your sent emails with robust open, click, bounce, and delivery tracking. It has an email validation service, powered by its email sending cache, which provides some of the most accurate validation results on the market.
Mailgun lets you create eye-catching emails in minutes with the help of its Mailjet email builder. You can create personalized emails targeted at a specific audience. Email analytics, based on performance data of your sent emails, lets you know the best time of the day to send your messages.
You have the option to choose how to send you messages, through API (A flexible and the most popular method of sending emails, which integrates with languages like Python, PHP, Ruby, and more.) or through SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, which is an easy way to transfer your emails.)
How It Works
You need to sign up for Mailgun, which is free for 3 months. Verify your company email and start working.
Here is a short video demonstration of how it works:
Mailgun Features
The features are as follows:
#1) Email Deliverability Services
For companies sending 500,000 emails or more every month, Mailgun offers Deliverability Services to ensure the highest email deliverability possible. This involves creating a custom deliverability solution tailored to your specific business needs and includes a Technical Account Manager to provide ongoing support, email best practices, and troubleshooting in case something goes wrong.
#2) Email builder
You can build impressive emails with Mailjet’s email builder, which is part of Mailgun’s offering and thus grab your customers’ attention. You can create personalized emails for a targeted audience so as to get the maximum possible benefits.
#3) Advanced Email Analytics
Mailgun lets you know how your emails are performing through informative graphs in the dashboard. You can get an insight into how your emails are accepted, delivered, failed, opened, and clicked. Beyond simple analytics, Mailgun’s Send Time Optimization feature lets you schedule your emails to be delivered at the price time your users are most likely to engage with them.
#4) Intelligent Inbound Routing
Mailgun enables customers to route inbound emails automatically with flexible RegEx rules, either via API or visually in the dashboard. If any problem arises, then there is 24/7 customer service available to help.
#5) Email List Management
Upload your email lists to Mailgun for easy list management and look for the email accounts that have unsubscribed or marked your emails as spam. This can save you time and money and even maintain your overall sending reputation.
It also offers the feature of List segmentation. This feature allows you to divide your email list into parts and send the right message to the right audience. You can also get a one-on-one consultation with an expert on List management issues or technical API support or IP and domain reputation management.
#6) Powerful Email APIs
Mailgun’s suite of powerful APIs allows you to start sending emails from your application quickly and easily. All you need to do is add a domain, verify it by adding DNS records, and you can start sending in less than 24 hours.
Its servers can handle millions of emails every hour, so rest assured that your time-sensitive emails will be sent quickly.
#7) SMTP Services
SMTP services by Mailgun are cloud-based, which let you set up marketing campaigns, send transactional emails, track emails, get advanced email analytics, set email parsing and routing commands, and much more, all without the problems and bottlenecks of legacy email providers. SMTP services are easier to work with than the API platform, but if you want more efficiency, you should opt for an API platform instead.
Also Read =>> Transactional Email API Service
Benefits
Mailgun has the following benefits:
- You have options like cloud-based SMTP or the efficient and powerful API platform, to choose from.
- You know the performance of your emails and can also figure out how to increase your number of clients.
- Partner with email experts to build a custom deliverability strategy for your business
- You can build beautiful and persuading emails.
- Send personalized emails to your clients, with their names and order details being the variables.
- Email parsing and routing features let you have a separate collection of your important emails.
- The automatic reply feature saves your time and brings more efficiency to your marketing process.
- Email list management through email validation and removing the ones who unsubscribe or spam your emails ultimately saves your time and money.
- Saves your sender reputation by removing the ones from the mailing list, who unsubscribe/spam your messages or do not open your messages.
Pros And Cons
Pros:
- Email tracker
- Email analytics feature, which acts as a savior
- Easy and efficient tools for creating emails
- Free pricing plan (For three months)
- Easy to use dashboard
- 99.99% uptime
- 24/7/365 customer support
- Easily integrate with any language that you prefer from options like Python, Java, etc.
- Affordable pricing for established businesses
Cons:
- Prices may prove to be high for small businesses
Price Plans
The pricing plan is explained as below:
Flex:
- Email APIs, SMTP Relay, Webhooks
- Suppression Management
- Email Tracking and Analytics
- 99.99% uptime
- 5 Days of Log Retention
- Detailed Documentation
- Limited 24/7 Ticket Support
- 5000 free emails per month, for three months
Foundation:
- Email APIs, SMTP Relay, Webhooks
- Suppression Management
- Email Tracking and Analytics
- 99.99% uptime
- 5 Days of Log Retention
- Detailed Documentation
- 24/7 Ticket Support
- 5000 free emails per month, for three months
- Inbound Email Routing
- 1 Dedicated IP
- Email Address Validations
- Inbox Placement Tests
- 1 Day Message Retention
- 50,000 Emails
Growth:
- Email APIs, SMTP Relay, Webhooks
- Suppression Management
- Email Tracking and Analytics
- 99.99% uptime
- 5 Days of Log Retention
- Detailed Documentation
- 24/7 Ticket Support
- Inbound Email Routing
- 1 Dedicated IP
- 1000 Email Address Validations
- 10 Inbox Placement Tests
- 3 Days Message Retention
- 15 Days Log Retention
- Instant Chat Support
- 1,00,000 Emails
Scale:
- Email APIs, SMTP Relay, Webhooks
- Suppression Management
- Email Tracking and Analytics
- 99.99% uptime
- 5 Days of Log Retention
- Detailed Documentation
- 24/7 Ticket Support
- Inbound Email Routing
- 1 Dedicated IP
- Dedicated IP Pools
- SAML SSO
- 5000 Email Address Validations
- Send Time Optimization
- 15 Inbox Placement Tests
- 7 Days Message Retention
- 30 Days Log Retention
- Instant Chat Support
- Live Phone Support
- 1,00,000 Emails
Enterprise Services: Contact directly for a price quote.
Ratings :
- Our Rating – 5/5 stars
- G2.com- 4.5/5 stars – 244 reviews
- Capterra – 4.4/5 stars – 101 reviews
- TrustRadius – 8.3/10 stars – 41 reviews
- Trustpilot – 4.4/5 stars – 300 reviews
- Glassdoor – 4.5/5 stars – 41 reviews
Mailgun Alternatives
Following are the popular Mailgun Alternatives:
#1) Mailjet
Mailjet offers you the feature to build beautiful emails, provides an email analytics feature, lets you build and segment your contacts list without coding, and sends customized emails for the targeted audience. There is a free plan for a lifetime, which offers you to send 200 emails per day, have unlimited contacts, and offer advanced statistics about the performance of your emails.
#2) Brevo (formerly Sendinblue)
Brevo provides digital marketing and sales tools for your business to expand. The features offered by Brevo include email designing, marketing automation, launching Facebook ads for a targeted audience, and much more.
#3) SendGrid
SendGrid is a potential competitor to Mailgun. It offers a free version for a lifetime, which lets you send 100 emails per day, for a lifetime. This free plan even gives you an email analytics feature. Other plans offer dedicated IP addresses, guaranteed response times, and more.
#4) Elastic Email
Elastic Email is an affordable email marketing platform that lets you send emails through HTTP API or SMTP relay. Provides some efficient automation features and gives you helpful insights into the performance of your emails. You can know the average open rate, average click rate, unsubscribe rate, and bounce rate, and thus improve your email performance based on the statistics.
#5) SocketLabs
SocketLabs lets you send your promotional emails or password reset emails or notifications with much ease and authenticity. There is a free version that allows you to send 2000 emails per month, and in addition, it provides reporting and analytics, and product documentation features.
Comparing Mailgun And Its Alternatives: Based On Prices
The below table compares the pricing plans of alternatives:
| Tool Name | Price Plans |
|---|---|
| Mailgun | Flex: Free for 3 months; you get 5000 emails per month (then pay as per your needs) Paid plans start from $35 to $90 per month (For enterprise plan, contact directly for a price quote.) |
| Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) | Free: $0 per month (300 emails per day) Paid plans start from $25 to $65 per month. (For enterprise plan, contact directly for a price quote. ) |
| SendGrid | Free: $0 per month (100 emails per day) Paid plans start from $14.95 per month. |
| Mailjet | Free: $0 per month (200 emails per day) Paid plans start from $9.65 per month |
| Elastic Email | Email API plans start at $0.10 per 1000 emails + $0.40 per day. Email marketing plans start at $15 per month |
| SocketLabs | Free Forever: $0 per month (2000 emails per month) Paid plans start from $39.95 to $79.95 per month. (Basic plan gives a free trial for 30 days). (For High Volume plan, contact directly for a price quote. ) |
Verdict
Mailgun is undoubtedly a highly recommended email marketing software. It provides some very cool marketing features like email list management, email tracking, and email analytics, etc that make it a popular tool.
Most of the users have reported the software to be speedy and easy to use. Another big plus point is easy access to many languages like Python, Ruby, Java, C++, and more, which helps manage your commands and fulfillment of your exact needs. If there exist some minor issues, they are usually quickly resolved by the Customer support team.
Suggested Reading =>> Free Email Service Providers
Frequently Asked Questions
Q #1) What is Mailgun used for?
Answer: It is basically used by developers and businesses for the following purposes:
- To create eye-catching emails.
- Send or receive emails in bulk.
- Checking performance of your sent emails through email analysis tools: whether they were delivered or not, opened or not, clicked or not.
- Maintaining email lists: checking whether the email accounts in your list actually exist or not, removing the ones who spam/unsubscribe from your emails so as to maintain your reputation.
- Email parsing and routing.
Q #2) Is Mailgun an API?
Answer: Yes, it works on powerful APIs. You can integrate with any of your desired languages from Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, etc, and create and deliver millions of emails easily and quickly.
Q #3) Is Mailgun an autoresponder?
Answer: Yes it lets you create commands, with the help of APIs to automatically respond to emails.
The auto responding feature automatically responds to your customers’ requests on password change, order placement, etc. If you find any difficulty, you can contact the 24/7/365 customer service for assistance.
Q #4) How do I check my Mailgun messages?
Answer: It stores messages internally, for 3 days, for troubleshooting, compliance verification, and scheduled sends. To check your Mailgun messages, follow these steps:
- Under the storage section, while expanding the long entry, you will see the API URL to the message, with its unique key.
- Copy the URL and enter “api” as the username and the API key as your password, in your browser.
- This opens your parsed messages with Mailgun.
Q #5) How can I use Mailgun for free?
Answer: It is free for 3 months. The Flex price plan offers 5000 free emails per month, for 3 months. Features offered by this plan include email tracking and analytics, 99.99% guaranteed uptime, detailed documentation, SMTP relay, and much more.
You need to pay $0.80 per 1000 emails beyond the free trial limit.
Q #6) How do I make my email not go to spam?
Answer: Your emails are most likely to be going to spam due to a bad reputation. The reasons for a bad reputation can be any of the following:
- Low engagement from the receivers.
- Getting spam reports due to sending emails too frequently or due to any other reason.
- When you share an IP address and bear outcomes of bad behavior from others.
To overcome this problem, try Mailgun’s email analysis feature, which lets your receivers unsubscribe from the mailing list and even tells you about the best time to send your messages. If you’re sending 500,000 emails or more every month, check out their Deliverability Services.
Conclusion
After doing a detailed review of Mailgun, its alternatives, and the comparisons, we can say that Mailgun is a highly useful tool for your digital marketing requirements. The services offered by Mailgun are something any marketing specialist would recommend to opt for.
The Email List management and Email Analytics features can be a savior for your marketing efforts. Another plus point is that you can start working with a simple sign-up process, as Mailgun gives a free trial for 3 months.