P H O T O N

CONSOLE

Loading

breadcrumb shape
No $35/mo Minimum • 30-Day Searchable Logs Standard

The True Pay-As-You-Go Mailgun Alternative

Mailgun killed their Flex plan and forced everyone onto a mandatory $35/month fee while restricting logs to just 5 days. Switch to PhotonRelay for pure pay-per-use and full 30-day event retention.

Mailgun 5-Day Log Cutoff Restricted History
Mailgun Foundation Log Retention Only 5 Days
Cannot debug customer delivery complaints from last week without costly upgrades.
PhotonRelay Forensic Event Retention Full 30 Days
Searchable SMTP response codes, bounce categories, and timestamps included for all users.
Zero Monthly Lock-In

Why Developers Are Leaving Mailgun for PhotonRelay

When Mailgun eliminated its developer-favorite Pay-as-you-go "Flex" tier and mandated a $35/month minimum Foundation plan, thousands of developers and startups were left paying for email allocations they never used.

PhotonRelay restores freedom to transactional email: $0 monthly base subscription, 5,000 free emails every calendar month, flat $0.50 per 1,000 emails, and 30-day searchable event history standard.

Mailgun's $35 Minimum vs. PhotonRelay's Pure Pay-As-You-Go

On Mailgun, whether you send 2,000 or 25,000 emails, you pay at least $35.00/month. Cross 50,000 and steep overages hit. See your real costs below.

20,000 emails
5,000 (Free) 50,000 150,000 250,000+
Mailgun (Foundation + Overages)
$35.00
Mandatory $35/mo minimum fee
PhotonRelay (Pay-Per-Use) Save 79%
$7.50
Includes 5,000 free monthly • $0.50 / 1k
No forced minimum: Send 5,000 emails? Pay $0.00. Send 20,000 emails? Pay $7.50 instead of Mailgun's $35.00.
Start Free →

Why Developers Choose PhotonRelay Over Mailgun

Everything Mailgun charges extra for is included as standard.

Zero Monthly Minimum Fee

Mailgun requires at least $35/month regardless of actual sending volume. PhotonRelay charges $0 base fee. You get 5,000 free emails monthly, then pay only $0.50/1k for actual usage.

30-Day Searchable Logs

Mailgun Foundation caps event logs to 5 days. When a customer asks about a receipt from last week, you're blind. PhotonRelay provides 30 full days of searchable forensic delivery logs included free.

No $1.80/1k Overage Penalties

If your app unexpectedly surges past Mailgun plan quotas, you face harsh overage rates of up to $1.80 per 1,000 emails. PhotonRelay maintains a calm, flat rate of $0.50/1k always.

Sub-Second OTP Latency

Time-sensitive 2FA codes, password reset requests, and transactional confirmations dispatch instantly via optimized edge clusters with median latency under 700ms globally.

Unified Global Routing

Mailgun requires configuring separate US and EU endpoints (`api.mailgun.net` vs `api.eu.mailgun.net`), causing configuration errors. PhotonRelay uses unified Anycast routing for all domains.

Post-Paid Invoicing with Grace

Stop paying upfront subscriptions. Exact usage is accumulated across the calendar month, invoiced on the 3rd, and backed by a 7-day settlement grace window.

Instant Migration

Drop-in Replacement for Mailgun SMTP & APIs

Switching from Mailgun to PhotonRelay takes less than 5 minutes. Swap the host to smtp.photonrelay.com and deploy.

# In your .env file, replace Mailgun with PhotonRelay SMTP:
MAIL_MAILER=mailgun
MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=smtp.mailgun.org
MAIL_HOST=smtp.photonrelay.com
MAIL_PORT=587
MAIL_USERNAME=postmaster@yourdomain.mailgun.org
MAIL_USERNAME=photon_your_access_key
MAIL_PASSWORD=your_mailgun_password...
MAIL_PASSWORD=photon_your_secret_token
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=tls

Detailed Comparison: PhotonRelay vs Mailgun

Side-by-side technical and commercial breakdown.

Feature / Operational Metric PhotonRelay Mailgun (Sinch)
Minimum Monthly Fee $0.00 (No minimum spend) $35.00 / month (Foundation)
Recurring Free Allowance 5,000 emails / month forever Trial only (No permanent free tier)
Cost for 10,000 Emails $2.50 (Save 93%) $35.00 / mo
Cost for 50,000 Emails $22.50 (Save 36%) $35.00 / mo
Overage Cost per 1,000 $0.50 flat Up to $1.80 / 1,000 emails
Event Log Retention 30-day searchable history included 5 days (30 days requires upgrade)
Transactional Latency SLA < 700ms (Isolated edge cluster) 2 to 10 seconds
Regional Endpoints Unified global Anycast endpoint Split US vs EU domain configuration
Billing Terms Invoiced on 3rd • 7-day grace Immediate credit card charge
Direct Engineer Support Included for all developers Scale / Enterprise plans only

Stop paying Mailgun's $35/month tax

Sign up in 60 seconds. Get 5,000 free monthly emails. Pay only for what you send.

Migrate to PhotonRelay Now

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about switching from Mailgun to PhotonRelay.

Following their acquisition by Sinch, Mailgun phased out their pay-as-you-go Flex tier to focus on higher monthly revenue commitments from enterprise customers. PhotonRelay was built specifically to maintain developer-first pay-per-use economics ($0.50/1k with zero monthly subscription requirement).

In production, users often report missing activation emails, receipts, or password reset issues several days or a week later. With Mailgun's 5-day cutoff on Foundation plans, the logs are permanently erased, making it impossible to investigate delivery failures. PhotonRelay includes 30 days of full searchable logs out of the box.

You simply add PhotonRelay's DKIM and SPF records in your DNS dashboard (such as Cloudflare, Route53, or GoDaddy). Photon Console automatically verifies your records in under 60 seconds, and you can begin sending immediately.

Yes! Most frameworks (Laravel, Symfony, Django, Rails) allow switching the transport driver to standard SMTP (`smtp.photonrelay.com`) with zero application logic changes. We also provide a high-throughput REST API for custom integrations.
Expert Deliverability Advisory

High-Volume Sending or Deliverability Challenges?

Whether you are migrating 500,000+ monthly emails, configuring dedicated IP pools with custom warming schedules, or resolving spam folder placement, our email delivery engineers are here to assist.