---
title: "Mailgun alternative"
description: "How Unitpost compares to Mailgun — pricing, free tier, API design, and where Mailgun is still the better choice. Plus a one-key migration path."
url: https://www.unitpost.com/alternatives/mailgun
section: Alternatives
updated: 2026-07-27
---
# Mailgun alternative

## Unitpost vs Mailgun

> Sinch-owned email infrastructure aimed at developers, with strong validation and deliverability tooling.

**Mailgun free tier:** 100 emails/day on the trial

**Mailgun pricing shape:** Volume tiers with noticeable jumps between them, plus paid add-ons for validation and dedicated IPs.

## What Mailgun does well

- Email validation is a genuinely good, widely used product we do not offer
- Deep deliverability tooling, including inbox placement testing
- Log retention and analytics depth aimed at high-volume senders
- EU data residency, which we do not offer yet

## Choose Mailgun if

- You need email address validation as part of your pipeline
- You need EU data residency for compliance reasons
- You want inbox-placement testing and detailed deliverability analytics

## Choose Unitpost if

- You want Bearer token auth rather than HTTP Basic with api:key
- You want marketing email in the same product rather than as a separate concern
- You want a permanent free tier rather than a trial
- You want a visual builder for non-developers alongside code mode

## Feature comparison

| Capability | Unitpost | Mailgun |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Authentication | Bearer token: Authorization: Bearer pk_live_… | HTTP Basic auth with api:key |
| Email validation | Not offered | A mature, widely used validation product |
| EU data residency | Not offered — US region only today | EU region available |
| Free tier | 3,000 emails/month, 100/day, no credit card | Trial only, 100 emails/day |
| IP allowlisting | Not offered yet | Supported |
| Idempotency keys | Idempotency-Key on sends, 24-hour dedupe window | Not offered |
| Pricing curve | Smooth — your plan price is a sending allowance you spend down | Tier jumps can be steep between volume bands |
| Idempotency keys on send | Idempotency-Key on sends, 24-hour dedupe window | — |
| Webhook secret rotation without dropped deliveries | svix-compatible HMAC-SHA256 with a 24-hour dual-signing rotation grace | Rotation replaces the secret immediately |
| Hybrid template editing | Visual drag-and-drop and React/TSX code mode over one shared document — the same @unitpost/email library renders both | Varies |
| One-key import from Mailgun | Migration Assistant moves contacts, segments, topics, templates, domains, suppressions, and webhooks in about 4 minutes with a read-only key | n/a |

## FAQ

### Does Unitpost do email validation like Mailgun?

No. We validate syntax and check the TLD against the IANA allowlist at the API boundary, and we suppress addresses that hard-bounce or complain, but we do not offer standalone list validation as a product. If validation is part of your pipeline, Mailgun's is mature and we do not have an equivalent.

### Do you offer EU data residency?

Not today — we operate in the US only. We do ship a DPA with Standard Contractual Clauses, and we honour Global Privacy Control and Do Not Track signals, which none of the four major providers we benchmarked do. But if EU residency is a hard compliance requirement, Mailgun's EU region is the answer and we are not.

### Is Unitpost's API easier to use than Mailgun's?

For most developers, yes — mainly because of auth and consistency. We use a Bearer token where Mailgun uses HTTP Basic with api:key, our list endpoints are uniformly cursor-paginated with one response envelope, and errors follow a single documented code set. Mailgun's API is older and carries more historical variation across endpoints.

## Related

- [Brevo alternative](https://www.unitpost.com/alternatives/brevo): How Unitpost compares to Brevo — pricing, free tier, API design, and where Brevo is still the better choice. Plus a one-key migration path.
- [Loops alternative](https://www.unitpost.com/alternatives/loops): How Unitpost compares to Loops — pricing, free tier, API design, and where Loops is still the better choice. Plus a one-key migration path.
- [Resend alternative](https://www.unitpost.com/alternatives/resend): How Unitpost compares to Resend — pricing, free tier, API design, and where Resend is still the better choice. Plus a one-key migration path.