Mailgun's inbound routing and log tooling are genuinely strong. But its Scale plan is $90 a month for 100,000 emails, and log retention — the thing you actually need when debugging — is one day on the plans most people start on.
Mailgun's Basic plan is $15/mo for 10,000 emails, Foundation is $35 for 50,000 and Scale is $90 for 100,000. Bluey's transactional Essentials tier is $9.95 for 50,000 and $14.95 for 100,000. The other thing worth checking before you commit: Mailgun keeps just one day of logs on Basic and Foundation, and five days on Scale, so a delivery problem reported on Monday about Friday's send may no longer be visible. Pick Mailgun if inbound routing is central to your product or you need its validation and deliverability services; pick Bluey for straightforward outbound sending at a materially lower price with marketing included.
100,000 transactional emails is $90 on Mailgun Scale and $14.95 on Bluey Essentials. Unless you are using inbound routing or the validation service, you are largely paying for the same outbound job twice over.
One day of retention on Mailgun's Basic and Foundation plans means a problem reported on Monday about Friday's send has already aged out. Bluey keeps three days on Essentials and seven on Pro — still short of Postmark, but past the weekend.
Mailgun is a sending API; campaigns, automations and a CRM are somewhere else on your invoice. Bluey ships them on the same account as the transactional API.
Mailgun has capabilities Bluey does not, and for some products they are the whole reason to choose it.
For plain outbound transactional sending, though, Mailgun's Scale pricing is hard to justify against a tier that does the same job for $14.95.
Mailgun to Bluey is a credentials-and-webhooks migration. Both speak SMTP and REST, so the send path barely changes.
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Start free and get the checklistConsiderably. 50,000 emails a month is $9.95 on Bluey against $35 on Mailgun Foundation; 100,000 is $14.95 against $90 on Mailgun Scale. The gap is largest exactly where most SaaS products sit.
No. This is Mailgun's clearest advantage and we are not going to fudge it — if your product parses inbound mail, routes replies into a ticketing system or runs email-to-app workflows, Mailgun does that well and Bluey does not do it at all.
One day on Basic and Foundation, five days on Scale, and 30 days on higher tiers. It is worth checking against your actual support workflow: a one-day window means a delivery complaint raised on Monday about a Friday send cannot be investigated.
Not in the sending plans. Mailgun is a transactional API; campaign tooling is a separate product. Bluey includes campaigns, visual automations, a CRM and landing pages on the same account as the transactional API.
Yes, and you should do it before your first send. Mailgun exports bounces, unsubscribes and complaints, and Bluey imports all three. Skipping this step is the fastest way to mail someone who already opted out and start a new sender's reputation badly.
Pricing verified 4 September 2026 against each provider’s public pricing page. Bluey figures use the Grow plan (send-based). Competitor tiers shift at least quarterly; figures marked “~” are interpolated between published tiers.
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