Mailgun alternatives

Mailgun alternatives

Mailgun is a Sinch product, sold beside Mailjet under Sinch Email, and SendGrid is a Twilio product now consolidating onto twilio.com. So two of the obvious replacements for Mailgun belong to the same CPaaS parents as the SMS vendors you may already be leaving. That is worth knowing before you move.

The rest of the choice is concrete. Mailgun's API accepts multipart/form-data only and puts your sending domain in the URL path; the newer platforms take JSON. Bird is on this list, and so is every case where somebody else is the better answer.

Read the email migration guideCompare Bird and Mailgun directly

Why do teams look for a Mailgun alternative?

Two reasons recur, and neither is about deliverability. The first is the request itself: Mailgun's send accepts multipart/form-data only, with the sending domain in the URL path, which is a 2010 shape that every newer platform has replaced with JSON. The second is ownership. Mailgun has been part of Sinch since the Pathwire acquisition and is sold alongside Mailjet, so a team consolidating vendors sometimes finds it has not consolidated at all.

Bird

Best for teams who want email beside their other channels, and agents that can operate it. Bird's send takes JSON with an Idempotency-Key and returns an Idempotency-Replay header when it replays, so a retry after a timeout cannot send twice. Fifteen email webhook event types cover the lifecycle from accepted through bounced, complained and unsubscribed, and the same workspace and key run SMS, WhatsApp, voice, Verify and Realtime. The hosted MCP server at mcp.bird.com lets an agent send and inspect a domain after a browser sign-in. The trade-off is scope: if you want email and nothing else forever, a single-channel API is a simpler thing to own.

See Bird Email

Resend

Best for a small product team that wants the fastest possible first send. Resend calls itself the email API for developers and has the cleanest onboarding in the category, with React Email for templates written as components. If your team is building a product rather than an email programme, this is the one to try first. It is also the youngest platform here, so the operational surface is thinner than Mailgun's on things like long event retention and inbound routing.

Compare Bird and Resend

Postmark

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Best for transactional email where speed to the inbox is the whole requirement. Postmark separates promotional from transactional traffic with Message Streams, and says outright that the two never mix, which is the cleanest answer in this set to the problem of a newsletter damaging your receipts. The deliberate limit is the other side of that discipline: it is a focused transactional product, so a team that also wants campaigns, SMS or WhatsApp will be buying a second vendor.

Compare Bird and Postmark

Amazon SES

Best for high volume where you already run the surrounding infrastructure. SES is the cheapest way to put a lot of mail on the wire and it bills purely on what you use, which is why it stays the default for teams already inside AWS. What you are taking on is everything above the send: SES gives you the pipe, and the templates, suppression logic, event storage and reporting are yours to build and operate.

Compare Bird and Amazon SES

Twilio SendGrid

Best for the name a security review has already cleared. SendGrid is the most widely deployed email API in the category, which in an enterprise procurement cycle saves real weeks. Two things to weigh: it is now Twilio SendGrid and its web presence is being folded into twilio.com, so it carries the same portfolio question as Mailgun does under Sinch, only with a different parent.

Compare Bird and SendGrid

MailerSend

Best for a mixed team where non-engineers own the templates. MailerSend calls itself a team-friendly email API and means it: the template editing and the roles around it are built for marketers and developers working in the same account, and it ships examples in eight languages plus SMS and WhatsApp. If your bottleneck is that engineers currently deploy every copy change, this is the one that removes it.

Compare Bird and MailerSend

Brevo

Best when the real requirement is campaigns and a CRM, not an email API. Brevo describes itself as an email and SMS marketing, CRM and automation platform, and that ordering is honest: the transactional API exists, but the product is built around campaigns, contacts and automations. If your team has been using Mailgun to send marketing mail and building the audience tooling yourselves, Brevo replaces both. If you want infrastructure to build on, it is the wrong shape.

Compare Bird and Brevo

Questions people actually ask

Is Mailgun the same company as Sinch?
Mailgun is a Sinch product. Sinch acquired Pathwire, Mailgun's parent, and now sells Mailgun beside Mailjet under its Email business unit. It matters for one practical reason: if you are moving away from Sinch for SMS or voice, moving your email to Mailgun keeps you with the same vendor, and the same is true of moving to SendGrid if you are leaving Twilio.
What actually has to change in my code?
Mailgun's send is a multipart/form-data POST to api.mailgun.net with your sending domain in the URL path, authenticated with HTTP Basic using the username api. Bird's send is a JSON POST with a bearer key and the domain as a field rather than part of the route. The migration guide maps the fields, including the webhook events, so the change is mechanical.
Which alternative is cheapest?
For raw volume with no features attached, Amazon SES, and it is not close. That comparison is only fair if you count what you then build on top: suppression handling, templating, event storage and reporting all ship with the other platforms on this page and are yours to write on SES. Read each provider's published rates for your own volume rather than a blended figure from any of us.
Can an AI agent operate my email account?
On Bird, yes: point an MCP client at mcp.bird.com, sign in through the browser, and an agent can send, look up a message, and inspect a sending domain against the real workspace with nothing installed and no API key in a config file. Most email platforms on this page do not publish a hosted MCP server, so check the current state with the vendor rather than trusting this sentence if that capability is what you are buying on.
Is Bird the right answer on this page?
If you want email on the same platform and key as SMS, WhatsApp, voice and Verify, and you want agents able to operate it, yes. If email is the only channel you will ever send and you want the simplest possible product, Postmark or Resend is a better fit. If you need the absolute lowest cost per message and will build the rest, SES wins. If the real job is campaigns and a CRM, Brevo is.

Where to go next

Migrate email to BirdThe field-by-field move from Mailgun, SendGrid, Amazon SES or Resend, including webhook events.Bird vs Mailgun for emailThe head-to-head: the send call, event types, inbound routing, and where Mailgun is the better pick.Every email comparisonThe same structure applied to SendGrid, Amazon SES, Postmark, Resend, MailerSend and Brevo.Email pricingPublished plans and volume rates, read from the billing catalog rather than typed into the page.Email deliverabilityWhat actually moves inbox placement: authentication, list hygiene, warmup and complaint handling.

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