Marketing techniques have evolved with time, and so have the technologies required to support them. Email marketing is opted by many businesses for its efficiency and personalized approach, particularly when almost half of the population uses email. 

Email campaigns require servers that support bulk mailing and quick and assured delivery. Normal email providers and their SMTPs may be unable to support these email campaign requirements. 

This is when Email API (Application Programming Interface) becomes useful. It is a programming interface that allows developers to connect an application to an email provider and access its features. Investing in email APIs enables you to create successful email campaigns. Are you looking for the right email provider that also provides email API? Mailgun is the perfect answer, then. Explore the features of Mailgun, the pricing list, and the setup guide in this detailed article. Continue reading to know more!

What is Mailgun

Mailgun is an email API service that can be used to send, receive, and validate emails through your domain by integrating with an email provider. It allows you to track and analyze your email’s performance and enhance sent emails with strong delivery tracking capabilities. Additionally, Mailgun can be used to validate your emails with its email-sending cache for more accurate validation results. 

Mailgun was founded in 2010 for developers and businesses. Since then, it has become useful for sending bulk emails and validating email addresses to maintain a reputable sender verification score. 

Additionally, its email analytics provide insights into the best time to schedule your emails and your campaign performance based on your sent email performance. Mailgun’s API gives you more control over your email delivery rate and integrates seamlessly with various platforms like Asana, Amazon, and Dropbox. 

Features of Mailgun 

Mailgun offers a myriad of exclusive features to enhance your email experience and provides a dedicated email marketing infrastructure for businesses. Let’s take a look at some of its features.

1. Email Deliverability

Mailgun offers enhanced delivery solutions to its users through custom delivery solutions that fit your business needs. Take advantage of dedicated SMTP servers, RESTful APIs, and email routing and parsing capabilities. 

2. Email Analytics

One of the best benefits of using Mailgun is its in-depth reporting and analytical capabilities, which can help you improve your marketing strategies. It predicts and analyzes your campaign performance based on the performance of the sent emails. Furthermore, it also displays the data on a user-friendly dashboard through graphs and charts for effective comprehension. With features like message tags to organize email analytics data more accurately, webhooks, and log retention, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of your email marketing campaigns and segment data for more customized reporting. 

4. Email List management

Maintaining an updated subscriber list is crucial for successful email marketing. Mailgun offers powerful validation features to update your mail list with active subscribers and remove email addresses that have unsubscribed or marked your mail as spam in the past. 

Sending mail to inactive email addresses is a waste of time and resources. It also decreases your sender score, increasing your chances of being recognized as spam by your client’s ISP and blocked. 

Furthermore, Mailgun offers options to segment the email list to send targeted emails to your audience for personalized transactions and marketing emails. It also offers consultations on improving the email list, expert advice on issues with list management, domain management, and technical issues with API. 

5. Inbound routing

Inbound routing is an effective but lesser-known communication strategy in email. It is a feature that allows you to forward emails to a particular domain, either within your organization or outside, as per your choice, to streamline and automate your emails. Mailgun allows effective inbound routing automatically with its flexible regular expression parsing and Inbound Route rules.

6. Robust Email APIs

Mailgun provides one of the most robust email APIs on the market. It enables businesses to send hundreds of emails quickly without any fuss. You can just add your domain, verify your DNS records, and send emails immediately. 

Mailgun’s RESTful APIs integrate seamlessly with your email service provider to provide secure and consistent communication channels. 

7. SMTP services 

Mailgun does not stop with API services alone. It extends to SMTP services, too. It provides a cloud-based SMTP server that allows you to send emails quickly, access performance analytics, track your emails, and more without the limitations of an email provider. 

Depending on your business needs, you can choose between SMTP and API. SMTP provides ease of use, while API offers efficiency. With Mailgun, you can explore your options and choose the service that best suits your business. 

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Mailgun Pricing

Mailgun offers free services with limited features and three paid plans with advanced features like bulk mailing, email analytics, and delivery optimization for businesses looking for dedicated email marketing options. There are also dedicated enterprise options available. 

Mailgun has two major plans: Send Pricing and Optimizing Pricing, with several individual tiers. Let us give you an insight into the various Mailgun pricing structures. Here’s a quick summary of the Mailgun Send Pricing tiers:

Additionally, Mailgun Optimize Pricing has two unique structures. They are as follows:

1. Pilot

This Mailgun plan is $49/month, and the first month is charge-free. It allows unlimited users to validate 2,500 email addresses, conduct 25 inbox tests, and preview 500 emails. With this Mailgun plan, you will also get detailed documentation support and the option of adding more emails for validation, testing, and preview for additional pricing. 

2. Starter

At a $99 monthly charge, this Mailgun pricing tier validates 5,000 email addresses. Besides that, placement tests for $50 inboxes and optimization of 1,000 emails through the preview feature are included as well. Furthermore, with tempting offers like spam trap and blocklist monitoring and complete access to Google Postmaster Tools, your email campaigns will be successful. 

3. Contract 

This Mailgun plan is similar to the Enterprise plan of the Send Pricing category. You can give Mailgun all your requirements, and it will create a tailor-made solution to let you maximize your email optimization efforts. 

How to Set up Mailgun?

Mailgun supports email marketing with email builders and bulk mailing options. It can be integrated with email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook. Mailgun’s email analytics can be used with Neo’s email campaigns to improve the efficiency of your email marketing campaigns. 

Furthermore, Mailgun offers a one-month no-cost trial, allowing users to enjoy its advanced features with easy configuration. Below are the steps to set up your Mailgun account:

Step 1. Sign up for your Mailgun account.

• Visit the official website and click on Get Started For Free button. 

• You will be taken to the signup page. Here, you will be required to choose your plan in the right-hand side section. 
• You will also need to add your information, including personal and payment details. 

• You will then have to verify the work email address you provided.

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Step 2: Add and Verify your domain

• Now that your Mailgun plan is active, you must add and configure your work domain. 
• Access your dashboard and head to the Sending option. From there, click on Add New Domain. 

• A step to ensure here is that if you are using your main domain with Mailgun, then it should be exclusively integrated with your Mailgun account. So, migrate your domain if you were using it with other email providers. 
• You can add your domain, check the US domain server region, and click Add Domain. 

• Configure your DNS records. Once you’ve added your domain, you will be taken to the DNS configuration page. 

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• Add your TXT records (2 in total, one for DKIM and another for SPF), add MX records (2 again, and set the right priority), and, lastly, a CNAME record with your domain name. 
• You will need to wait for a day or two for your DNS configuration to be verified before you can start using your Mailgun plan. 

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Step 3. Other Configurations

• Choose how you want to send your email, whether through SMTP or API, as Mailgun offers both services. SMTP is reliable for large emails and can be easily integrated with other systems. API has better efficiency and scaling options with an easy-to-use interface. Choose an option that better suits your email needs.
• Send your emails through Mailgun’s HTTP API or SMTP server using your API key or SMTP user account. 

Moreover, Mailgun with Neo as its email host can be a successful combo. It can enhance your email marketing campaigns and give you access to a host of powerful tools. 

Neo: Robust Email Hosting Service

Neo is the perfect email solution for small to mid-sized businesses and provides various interesting features, from a custom domain to an email blast option, for effective email campaigns. It also offers a free one-page website with all of its plans to help you boost your online presence further. 

Key Features of Email Marketing with Neo

1. Create visually engaging emails with HTML-based rich text formatting or email templates. 
2. Create dedicated contact lists to send bulk emails effectively. 
3. Track your emails through read receipts to analyze their performance.
4. Use Neo’s generative AI to create brand-consistent emails and repurpose content. 

Neo and Mailgun: The Perfect Combination

Mailgun could enhance Neo email campaigns with its high delivery rate and sender score optimization tools. Carefully crafted emails from Neo can reach the right audience quickly with Mailgun’s accelerated services, quick bulk delivery rate, and secured transmission. Furthermore, Mailgin also allows you to send emails at the right times, while Neo allows you to schedule your bulk mail, resulting in automation. You can even leverage Mailgun's analytics to implement the insights with Neo for better engagement.

Neo vs Mailgun: Reviewed Independently

Neo and MailGun are both useful platforms for email marketing and basic email options. Let’s compare the two email providers. We have also rated them based on their pricing, functionality, features, ease of setup, and accessibility.

Wrapping Up

SMTP servers or email APIs are integral to successful email campaigns, as many email clients and ISPs have rules and guidelines that block domains that send out bulk emails. Investing in a good and cost-efficient plan is important as it provides all the necessary features to streamline your email marketing efforts and gives you useful insights to help your campaigns perform better.

Mailgun is one of the most affordable and reliable email APIs in the market. Give a trial run with their 30-day demo and choose a Mailgun plan that suits your business needs. You can even integrate it with Neo and propel your email marketing to the next level. So register on Neo today and enjoy your free trial. 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q1. What is Mailgun?

Mailgun is an email service with an API built for developers to access email client applications to send, receive, and analyze emails. 

Q2. How to buy a Mailgun plan?

You can choose any of Mailgun’s Sending and Optimization plans according to your needs, as explained in this blog. You may even choose a customizable option if none of the plans meets your goals. Head to Mailgun’s official website, go to the pricing section, and buy a plan.

Q3. How many emails can Mailgun send?

The number of emails Mailgun can send depends on the plan you selected. You can add more emails to your plans for additional fees.