Mailgun vs SendGrid: Which Email Service Wins in 2026?

Mailgun takes a developer-first approach, campaign tools exist, but they still feel like a layer on top of an API-first product. You can create email marketing campaigns using a WYSIWYG editor and templates, segment lists, and track engagement with robust analytics, but the workflows assume you’re comfortable wiring things via API or external tools.

Even for a basic newsletter, I found myself thinking in endpoints and webhooks rather than ‘lists and campaigns’. It’s excellent for high volume senders who already run their own app logic, but beginners might find it overwhelming.

SendGrid, on the other hand, goes bigger on the email marketing campaigns front with their Marketing Campaigns product. It’s basically a complete campaign management suite that lives separately from their Email API—you get visual campaign builders, scheduling tools, audience management, the whole nine yards.

The nice thing about SendGrid’s approach is that marketers get their own set of tools while developers still have access to flexible APIs. If your team needs to juggle promotional campaigns and transactional emails at the same time, SendGrid makes more sense here.

Winner: SendGrid—its dedicated Marketing Campaigns product offers more comprehensive campaign management.

Mailgun’s editor has improved over the years. The HTML editor lets developers build custom email templates using Handlebars variables for personalization—pretty standard stuff, but it works well. You can store up to 100 templates per domain and there’s version control, which is handy when you’re iterating.

The template library isn’t huge compared to marketing-focused platforms, but it’s solid enough. And the preview feature? Actually useful—you can see how your emails will render on different devices before hitting send.

SendGrid gives you a modern drag-and-drop design editor and a code editor for custom needs. You can store up to 300 dynamic transactional templates on your account, available to be increased to 1,000 by SendGrid support. The design editor handles text, images, buttons, social icons—all with real-time preview.

Developers can use their dynamic template system with Handlebars syntax for more sophisticated personalization. Where SendGrid really shines is email testing: you can preview how your emails render across dozens of popular inbox providers and devices. No more “it looked fine on my screen” excuses.

Winner: SendGrid—more developed setup for needs beyond transactional email.

Mailgun’s automation is really geared toward API-triggered workflows—don’t expect visual automation builders here. The platform handles sending transactional emails based on application events just fine, and they’ve got send time optimization powered by machine learning to figure out the best delivery windows (Scale plans).

Webhooks for real-time event notifications? Check. Rules for inbound email routing? Also check. But if you want to build complex drip campaigns or multi-step nurture sequences, you’re going to need to either code it yourself or bring in external marketing automation tools. If you’re comfortable writing a bit of glue code, it feels great; if you’re not, it feels pretty bare.

SendGrid has dedicated automation features baked into their Marketing Campaigns product. You can create automated welcome series, drip campaigns, and triggered emails based on what subscribers do.

The automation builder handles simple triggers like list joins and time-based delays. Is it as sophisticated as something like ActiveCampaign? No, but it covers the common use cases without making you write a single line of code. For anything more complex, you can always hook it up to Zapier or use their webhooks.

Winner: SendGrid—built-in automation builder makes it accessible without coding.

This is where Mailgun really comes alive. The platform was literally built from the ground up for sending transactional emails, and you can tell. Password resets, order confirmations, shipping notifications, all those triggered messages—Mailgun handles them like a champ.

They’ve got message queuing, automatic retries, sender reputation management—basically everything you need to make sure your critical transactional messages actually reach people. And if you’re a high-volume sender or enterprise, their Rapid Fire Delivery SLA guarantees 99% attempted delivery for up to 15 million messages within five minutes. That’s serious.

SendGrid’s Email API plan is built for transactional email delivery, too. You get reliable delivery with automatic bounce handling, suppression management, and real-time event tracking. SendGrid’s infrastructure backs a 99.99% uptime SLA, and emails typically hit recipient servers in under 2 seconds.

In my tests, both password reset and order-style emails landed in inboxes quickly and consistently. SendGrid is definitely capable when it comes to transactional use cases, but because they’ve spread their focus across marketing too, some advanced transactional features like email parsing are more bare-bones compared to Mailgun’s more feature-rich implementation.

Winner: Mailgun—purpose-built for transactional emails with superior parsing and routing.

Mailgun doesn’t have landing pages or forms. The platform is laser-focused on email delivery infrastructure, so if you need lead capture tools, you’ll have to bring in third-party builders and connect them through API or webhooks.

On the bright side, this gives you flexibility to use whatever other tools you prefer—but it does mean extra setup and probably another subscription. Their webhook system makes integration with landing page builders pretty painless if you’ve got the technical chops.

SendGrid throws in signup forms as part of their Marketing Campaigns product. You can create forms with reCAPTCHA protection, embed them on your site, or share them through hosted “landing page” links. Forms connect directly to your contact lists and can kick off automation workflows.

Now, these aren’t full-blown landing page builders—for anything more sophisticated, you’d still need external tools. But SendGrid’s native forms give you a decent starting point for building your list without adding another tool to your stack.

Winner: SendGrid—native signup forms provide lead capture without third-party tools.

Mailgun offers mailing lists, basic attributes, and list-level targeting so you can focus sends on smaller groups, including segments based on traits like company size, demographics, or engagement. You can create multiple lists per domain and keep data separated for different products or clients.

Bulk imports and exports are straightforward, and Mailgun’s email validation tools help clean out invalid or risky addresses before you send. Segmentation exists, but it’s driven mostly by tags, variables, and the API rather than a visual segment builder. For high volume senders who want granular control and don’t mind getting a bit technical, Mailgun delivers what you need.

SendGrid’s Marketing Campaigns interface makes list management pretty straightforward. You can upload contacts via CSV, segment by custom fields and engagement data like opens or clicks, and layer multiple conditions without writing code. Just note that traits like location or lifecycle stage need to be stored as custom fields first—it won’t pull that data automatically.

Pro plan supports up to 200,000 contacts and the Contacts API lets you keep audiences in sync with your app or CRM systems. It’s a solid setup for marketers who want to manage audiences on their own, with enough API flexibility for developers when they need it.

Winner: SendGrid—visual segmentation tools make audience targeting accessible to non-developers.

Mailgun doesn’t really play in the ecommerce space out of the box. It’s commonly paired with ecommerce stacks via integrations (WooCommerce, Shopify, Sharetribe, etc.) to send order confirmations, shipping updates, cart recovery flows, and other transactional messages.

Big names like Lyft, Microsoft, and Etsy use Mailgun to send hundreds of billions of emails every year, so it’s definitely possible—the platform just stays focused on email delivery infrastructure rather than commerce-specific workflows.

SendGrid can work with ecommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento, though Zapier or similar apps—it’s not the deep native integration you’d get with something like Sender.

Marketing Campaigns support dynamic content through Handlebars, so you can personalize emails based on data you pass in, but don’t expect built-in product recommendation engines or other ecommerce features. It’s not an ecommerce marketing suite, but it can handle the transactional side, plus basic email campaigns.

Winner: Both platforms offer excellent transactional email services, but SendGrid wins for the ability to build ecommerce automations.

Mailgun doesn’t mess around with email deliverability. They’ve got dedicated IPs available on higher plans, automatic IP warmup, real-time blocklist monitoring—the works. Their email validation service (add-on) catches invalid addresses before you send, which keeps bounces down and protects your domain reputation.

Inbox placement testing shows you exactly where your emails are landing across major providers. Mailgun claims a 97.4% average delivery rate, and their reputation monitoring will ping you about potential issues before they actually hurt your delivery.

SendGrid has built solid relationships with major mailbox providers—we’re talking direct peering with Google, Yahoo, Apple, and Microsoft. They provide domain authentication via SPF, DKIM, and DMARC with step by step instructions for getting everything set up.

Dedicated IPs are available on higher plans with automated warmup. SendGrid’s deliverability insights dashboard gives you granular color into how you’re performing across different mailbox providers. 

Winner: Tie—both offer reliable deliverability features.

Mailgun doesn’t do SMS. If you need SMS alongside email, you’re going to have to integrate a separate provider. That means managing multiple platforms, separate billing, additional integration work—not ideal. For businesses that really need unified email and SMS communications, this could be a dealbreaker.

SendGrid also doesn’t natively do SMS; that’s handled by Twilio’s (parent company) SMS/WhatsApp APIs. The integration lets you keep customer data unified and coordinate multi-channel campaigns. If you’re already in the Twilio ecosystem, adding SMS to complement your email campaigns is pretty seamless.

Winner: SendGrid—Twilio integration enables SMS/WhatsApp when needed.

Mailgun brings robust analytics to the table with detailed tracking of deliveries, opens, clicks, bounces, and complaints. The dashboard lets you filter engagement data by date range, campaigns, and recipient domains.

Log retention depends on your plan—5 days on Foundation and up to 30 days on Scale. Webhook integrations let you pipe email events into your own analytics systems for custom reporting. The platform tracks over 40 email signals, giving you plenty of data to optimize your sending strategy.

SendGrid delivers comprehensive reporting through both their Email API and Marketing Campaigns interfaces. You get near-real-time stats on opens, clicks, bounces, blocks, and spam reports, with the ability to view trends over different time ranges.

The deliverability insights dashboard breaks things down by mailbox provider and geography. Marketing Campaigns adds engagement metrics like unique opens, click maps, and device breakdowns. 

Winner: Tie—both offer detailed analytics; SendGrid has better marketing reports, Mailgun better API events.

Mailgun’s web API was designed by developers, for developers—and it shows. The RESTful API supports Python, PHP, Java, Ruby, C#, Node.js, and Go with solid documentation and code samples. SMTP relay is there for systems that prefer the traditional route.

With 60+ native integrations covering popular CMS platforms and automation tools, Mailgun goes for quality over quantity. The API gives you fine-grained control over email delivery, parsing, routing, and detailed analytics, which makes it ideal for custom implementations.

SendGrid offers both RESTful APIs and SMTP relay with official helper libraries in seven programming languages (C#, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, and Ruby). Its ecosystem includes 120+ integrations and partner connectors spanning CRM, marketing automation, ecommerce, and developer tools—their WordPress integration is especially popular.

SendGrid’s API documentation is thorough with interactive references and sandbox testing. For teams using multiple tools in their stack, SendGrid’s broader integration ecosystem usually means less custom development to get everything connected.

Winner: Tie—both have mature APIs and extensive integration ecosystems.

Mailgun ties support to your pricing plan. Free and Basic plans get 24/7 ticket-based support, while live chat and phone ticket support are reserved for higher tiers like Scale and Enterprise. Enterprise customers also get dedicated Technical Account Managers and SLA-backed guaranteed response times through Mailgun’s deliverability services.

Their help center has comprehensive documentation, and the deliverability team apparently has over 320 years of combined experience (which, honestly, is a wild stat). Support quality is generally well-regarded, though I’ve seen some users mention inconsistent experiences on the lower tiers.

SendGrid offers 24/7 ticket support on all plans, including the free tier. Live chat and phone support is reserved for paid customers, while Advanced plan guarantees you a fast response time. Their knowledge center is packed with guides and tutorials.

Here’s the thing though—customer support has become a pretty common complaint since Twilio bought them. From my own tests, tickets sometimes took days to reply. Higher-tier customers seem to fare better with dedicated support, but smaller users? They might find the experience frustrating when something critical goes wrong.

Winner: SendGrid for accessibility on lower tiers.

Mailgun doesn’t have a mobile app. Account management, analytics, email operations—all of it happens through the web dashboard or API. If your team needs mobile access, you’re stuck with the responsive web design or building custom mobile integrations.

The web interface technically works on mobile browsers, but it’s not optimized for smaller screens, so anything complex gets pretty clunky on a phone or tablet.

SendGrid is in the same boat—no dedicated iOS or Android app. Everything runs through the web interface, which has reasonable mobile browser compatibility but wasn’t designed with mobile workflows in mind.

Both platforms clearly prioritize API-first approaches, assuming most users are interacting programmatically rather than through mobile interfaces. If mobile app access is a must-have for your workflow, neither platform is going to make you happy right now.

Winner: Tie—neither platform offers dedicated mobile apps.

On G2, Mailgun is frequently praised for reliability, straightforward API integration, and strong deliverability—especially for dev-heavy teams that need predictable transactional email performance. Some reviewers mention frustration when accounts are suddenly blocked for compliance reasons, calling out the need for clearer communication.

SendGrid G2 feedback highlights its scale (huge email volumes), good inbox placement, and ease of setup via SDKs and integrations.

However, there are repeated complaints about sudden account suspensions when traffic patterns change and slow responses to those suspensions on lower tiers. Users also note that automation is functional but not as flexible as full-blown marketing automation tools.

On Capterra, Mailgun scores highly for reliability and developer friendliness. Users like that the basic plans already include tracking and analytics that others charge more for, but some mention rough edges during migrations (e.g., the Sinch login transition) and a learning curve for non-technical staff.

SendGrid Capterra reviews often describe it as an “honestly great app for email marketing” with solid deliverability and good value once you’re on the right tier. Negative comments tend to focus on UI quirks, domain verification complexity, and the feeling that support becomes noticeably better as you move into higher-priced plans.

Reddit threads tend to position Mailgun as the go-to for developers who want precise control over their email infrastructure. People share positive experiences with API integration and deliverability.

That said, some threads mention account suspension issues hitting legitimate businesses, and there are concerns about shared IP reputation on lower plans. The dev community generally recommends Mailgun for transactional use cases over marketing.

Reddit users often describe SendGrid setup as quick—API integration takes minutes, according to many posts. Long-term users report reliability for both transactional and marketing emails.

But there are multiple threads venting about frustrating support experiences, unexpected account suspensions, and delivery issues to specific providers like Outlook. Some developers flat-out recommend alternatives for mission-critical applications because of support concerns.

Yes. Mailgun has a big focus on email deliverability, with built-in email validation, blocklist monitoring, domain authentication helpers (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI), and tools to monitor domain reputation and IP reputation.

Higher-tier plans add inbox placement tests, send-time optimization, and dedicated IPs, all of which help maximize inbox placement for both transactional messages and campaigns.

Yes. Mailgun is used by many high volume senders for both transactional and bulk campaigns. Its infrastructure is designed to send at large scale; the main responsibility on your side is to follow best practices (validated lists, compliant content, sane rates) so you don’t damage your sender reputation.

Plans scale up via volume-based pricing, with options for custom pricing at enterprise scale.

SendGrid Mailgun migration is pretty straightforward, especially if you’ve got developers on your team. Both platforms work with similar concepts—RESTful APIs, SMTP relay, webhooks, template systems. Mailgun has migration documentation and their deliverability team offers hands-on support to smooth out the transition.

You’ll need to update DNS records for domain authentication, modify API calls to hit Mailgun endpoints, and move over any templates you want to keep. The main adjustments are Mailgun’s slightly different webhook schema and template syntax. Most teams wrap up migration within a few days to a week.

Yes, both SendGrid and Mailgun have email validation to help you maintain list quality and deliverability. Mailgun includes email validation starting at the Scale plan ($90/month), with 5,000 validations included and more available if you need them. Their validation API checks syntax, domain validity, and whether the mailbox actually exists in real-time.

SendGrid offers email validation as an add-on through their Pro plan, with the first 5,000 credits included and pay-as-you-go pricing after that. Both services help keep bounce rates low and protect sender reputation by flagging invalid addresses before you hit send.