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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.
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.
Everything Mailgun charges extra for is included as standard.
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.
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.
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.
Time-sensitive 2FA codes, password reset requests, and transactional confirmations dispatch instantly via optimized edge clusters with median latency under 700ms globally.
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.
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.
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
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 |
Sign up in 60 seconds. Get 5,000 free monthly emails. Pay only for what you send.
Migrate to PhotonRelay NowEverything you need to know about switching from Mailgun to PhotonRelay.