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Comparison

The best Plunk alternatives

Plunk is the open-source option that includes automation rather than only sending — campaigns, workflows and transactional in one AGPL codebase, with a hosted tier at $0.001 an email. People leave over the ecosystem size, the AGPL, and who owns deliverability once you self-host.

Alternatives below, with what each costs, what its free tier really gets you, and what it is bad at. We make one of them. It's marked, and it isn't open source.

21 options Prices checked 2 August 2026 No affiliate links
The short answer

Pick by the reason you're leaving

Nobody replaces a platform in the abstract. Something specific stopped working. Start from that, not from a feature matrix.

Closest open-source optionuseSend

AGPL too, wrapping your own Amazon SES account with a modern dashboard.

Keep your existing providerNotifuse

AGPL, provider-agnostic, with a visual builder on top.

Most established open sourcelistmonk

Over 22,000 stars and a single Go binary, if newsletters are the job.

Closest hosted modelLoops

Contact-priced with transactional included, and nothing to run.

Best hosted equivalentEmail Bump

Campaigns, flows and transactional on one plan, with deliverability handled. That's us.

Context

What actually goes wrong with Plunk

Plunk does more than most open-source email tools, which makes its trade-offs about scale rather than capability.

Self-hosting means owning deliverability. The hard part of email isn't the software. Run Plunk yourself and blocklist removals, IP warm-up and Gmail deferral patterns become your problem, with documentation instead of an abuse desk.

A small ecosystem. Far fewer integrations than the commercial platforms, and a smaller community to search when something breaks. Fine if you're comfortable in the code, a real cost if you aren't.

AGPL-3.0. Running an unmodified copy for your own sending raises nothing. Modifying it and exposing it to users over a network means offering them the source. Worth reading properly before building a product on top.

Pay-as-you-go moves with your volume. Plunk Cloud at $0.001 an email has no monthly floor, which is excellent for low volume. A 50,000-contact list mailed weekly is 200,000 emails a month — $200 — which is no longer the cheap option.

The baseline

How Plunk is priced

Everything below is compared against these numbers, read on 2 August 2026.

Self-host or hosted

The model

$0
AGPL-3.0Self-hosted — Docker images; you supply the SMTP and the infrastructure
$0.001
per emailPlunk Cloud — Pay-as-you-go with no monthly floor
Worth knowing

The fine print

  • Transactional, campaigns and a trigger-and-condition automation builder in one codebase.
  • SMTP relay, so existing tooling keeps working.
  • $0.001 per email is $1 per 1,000 — mid-table against hosted providers.
  • AGPL-3.0, with the network clause that implies.
  • Around 5,000 GitHub stars and active development.
Side by side

All 21, on the things that decide it

ProviderStarts atFree tierMarketing emailLicenceData region
Email BumpHosted$19/mo at 10,000 contacts5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a monthIncluded — campaigns, flows, segments and the API share one billProprietaryUnited States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
useSend (formerly Unsend)Self-hostableFree to run; you pay Amazon SES for the sendingSelf-hosted — the software is freeIncluded: contacts, campaigns and transactional in one appAGPL-3.0Wherever you deploy it
NotifuseSelf-hostableSelf-host free, or Notifuse Cloud from $16/moSelf-hosted — the software is freeIncluded: visual builder, scheduling, A/B tests, segmentationAGPL-3.0Wherever you deploy it
listmonkSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sendingSelf-hosted — the software is freeThat's the whole product: lists, subscribers, campaigns, templatesAGPL-3.0Wherever you deploy it
FreeResendSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay Amazon SES for the sendingSelf-hosted — the software is freeNone — transactional onlyMITWherever you deploy it
PostalSelf-hostableFree to run; you pay for servers and IPsSelf-hosted — the software is freeNone; it's infrastructureMITWherever you deploy it
LoopsHostedPaid plans are priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your emailIncluded — that's the core of the productProprietaryUnited States
ResendHosted$20/mo for 50,000 emails (Pro); marketing contacts are a second plan from $40/mo3,000 emails a month capped at 100 a day, 1 domain — plus a separate 1,000-contact marketing free planBroadcasts, on a separate contact-priced plan. No journey builder.ProprietaryUnited States
PostmarkHosted$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)100 emails a monthBroadcast streams only — 15 on Basic, 30 on Pro, unlimited on Platform. No visual automation builder.ProprietaryUnited States
Amazon SESHosted$0.16 per 1,000 emails (Essentials, first 10M/mo)Up to $200 in AWS free-tier credits for new accounts, over the first 6 monthsNone. SES is a sending pipe.ProprietaryYour choice of AWS region, including several in the EU
MailgunHosted$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)100 emails a day, with 1-day log retentionSold separately as Mailgun Optimize / Mailjet rather than bundledProprietaryUnited States or European Union, per account
SendGridHostedEssentials from $19.95/moNone any more — a 60-day trial at 100 emails a dayMarketing Campaigns is a separate product with its own contact-based pricingProprietaryUnited States, with EU options on enterprise agreements
MailtrapHosted$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)4,000 emails a month, capped at 150 a day, 3 days of logsBulk stream on Business and above; no journey builderProprietaryUnited States, with EU sending available
MailerSendHosted$5.60/mo for 5,000 emails (Hobby)500 emails a month, 1 domain, 1 templateTemplates and basic automation; MailerLite is the sibling product for campaignsProprietaryUnited States and European Union
Zoho ZeptoMailHostedCredits, where 1 credit = 10,000 emails, valid 6 monthsFirst credit free — 10,000 emails, valid for one monthNone. ZeptoMail is transactional-only by policy; Zoho Campaigns is the other product.ProprietaryMultiple, including EU data centres
AhaSendHostedPaid tiers start at 25,000 emails/mo (Pro); the rate isn't published as a flat figure1,000 emails a month, unlimited domains, no card requiredTransactional focus; no campaign builderProprietaryEuropean Union, multi-region
Scaleway TEMHosted€0.25 per 1,000 emails after the first 300 a month (Essential)300 emails a month, every monthProhibited by policy — TEM is transactional onlyProprietaryEuropean Union (multi-region, France-headquartered)
MailjetHostedStarter $9/mo for 8,000 emails6,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day, 1,000 contactsCampaigns and an editor; automation and landing pages arrive on PremiumProprietaryEuropean Union (France)
SMTP2GOHostedStarter $10/mo for 10,000 emails ($100/year)1,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day and 25 an hour until your domain is verifiedNone — it's a relayProprietaryServers worldwide, with location-specific options
MailerooHostedPaid plans start above the free 3,000 emails a month3,000 emails and 1,000 inbound a month, 2 domains, free dedicated IPA separate campaign product; the API plans are transactionalProprietaryMultiple
Elastic EmailHostedStarter $19/mo for up to 50,000 emails1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails a monthAn email designer and contact management; not a full automation platformProprietaryUnited States and European Union

Read off each vendor's own pricing or documentation page on 2 August 2026. Where a vendor renders prices from a slider and publishes no static table, the cell says so instead of repeating a number from someone's affiliate post.

In detail

Every option, and what it's bad at

01Hosted service

Email Bump

Best for: Teams paying twice — once for the transactional API, again for the newsletter

Marketing and transactional email in one product, billed on contacts rather than sends. The transactional API takes the same field names most developer email APIs use, so the migration is a base URL and a key. Also the only one on this list with a first-class CLI and MCP server, so an agent can run the whole account without a browser.

Starts at
$19/mo at 10,000 contacts
Free tier
5,000 contacts and 5,000 emails a month
Marketing
Included — campaigns, flows, segments and the API share one bill
Data region
United States (Amazon SES, us-east-1)
What it does well
  • One price covers campaigns, automated flows, segments and the transactional API.
  • Sending is uncapped on paid plans under fair use — a viral week doesn't produce an overage bill.
  • Unsubscribed and bounced contacts stop counting, so the bill tracks your real audience.
  • Unlimited team seats and unlimited sending domains on every plan, including free.
  • CLI, MCP server and agent skills cover the same surface as the API, including creating the account itself.
  • Inbound email, SMTP on the same key, and webhooks are part of the plan, not upsells.
What to watch for
  • Sending is US-only today — there is no EU data region.
  • Not open source, and there's no self-hosted build.
  • The free plan puts a 'Powered by Email Bump' badge on marketing footers. Transactional sends never carry it.
  • Younger than Postmark or SendGrid, without their decade-plus of public deliverability history.
02AGPL-3.0

useSend (formerly Unsend)

Best for: Self-hosters who want a modern dashboard on top of their own SES account

The best-known open-source answer to this search. It wraps Amazon SES with a dashboard, contacts, campaigns and webhooks, so you pay AWS rates and keep the UI.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay Amazon SES for the sending
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Included: contacts, campaigns and transactional in one app
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • SES pricing with a real interface on top.
  • Transactional and marketing, REST API and SMTP, webhooks and inbound.
  • Docker images and a one-click Railway deploy.
What to watch for
  • Still described as beta by its own maintainers.
  • Bring your own AWS account, DNS, Postgres and Redis — and your own on-call.
  • AGPL-3.0 has real obligations if you build a product on top of it.
03AGPL-3.0

Notifuse

Best for: Self-hosters who want a visual builder and to keep their existing sending provider

Go and React, AGPL, and provider-agnostic: it drives SES, Mailgun, Postmark, Mailjet, SparkPost or plain SMTP rather than replacing them. Campaigns, A/B tests and segmentation on top.

Starts at
Self-host free, or Notifuse Cloud from $16/mo
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
Included: visual builder, scheduling, A/B tests, segmentation
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • Bring your own delivery provider — switching costs you a config change, not a migration.
  • Liquid templating, REST API and webhooks for the developer side.
  • A hosted tier exists if self-hosting stops being fun.
What to watch for
  • You still need a sending provider underneath; this is the layer above it.
  • Younger and smaller than listmonk.
  • AGPL-3.0.
04AGPL-3.0

listmonk

Best for: Newsletters at volume, on hardware you already pay for

A single Go binary and a Postgres database that will happily push millions of newsletters through whatever SMTP you point it at. Mature, fast, and unapologetically list-first.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay your SMTP provider for the sending
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
That's the whole product: lists, subscribers, campaigns, templates
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • The most established project here — over 22,000 GitHub stars and years of production use.
  • One binary plus Postgres. No Redis, no queue broker, no Kubernetes.
  • Handles very large lists on modest hardware.
What to watch for
  • It is not a transactional email API product — that's not what it's for.
  • Bring your own SMTP and your own deliverability.
  • The admin UI is functional rather than beautiful.
05MIT

FreeResend

Best for: Self-hosting behind Resend's API surface, whatever you're coming from

A deliberately narrow project: a self-hosted server that speaks Resend's API. Point the official Resend SDK at it with RESEND_BASE_URL and your sends go through your own SES account instead.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay Amazon SES for the sending
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
None — transactional only
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • Drop-in: the official Resend Node SDK works against it unchanged.
  • MIT licensed, so no AGPL obligations.
  • Optional DigitalOcean integration creates the DNS records for you.
What to watch for
  • Small project — a few hundred stars and a short commit history. Read the code before you depend on it.
  • Needs Amazon SES, PostgreSQL and Node 18+ that you operate.
  • No campaigns, no contacts, no automation.
06MIT

Postal

Best for: Running your own mail server on purpose

Not an SES wrapper — a complete MTA that sends and receives. If you want to own the IPs, the queues and the reputation, this is the mature option.

Starts at
Free to run; you pay for servers and IPs
Free tier
Self-hosted — the software is free
Marketing
None; it's infrastructure
Data region
Wherever you deploy it
What it does well
  • MIT licensed, ~16,700 stars, years of production use.
  • Sends and receives — a full mail platform, not a relay.
  • Total control over IPs and routing.
What to watch for
  • You now own IP warm-up, blocklist removals and abuse handling. This is a job, not a weekend.
  • Needs a database, a message queue and correctly configured DNS.
  • Nobody to call at 3am when Gmail starts deferring you.
07Hosted service

Loops

Best for: SaaS teams who want lifecycle email without assembling it

Contact-priced like Email Bump, with transactional sending folded in at no extra charge. Opinionated and pleasant; less of an infrastructure product than Postmark or SES.

Starts at
Paid plans are priced by subscribed contacts via a slider, not published as a fixed table
Free tier
1,000 contacts and 4,000 sends a month, with a Loops footer on your email
Marketing
Included — that's the core of the product
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Transactional sending is included rather than billed as a second subscription.
  • Free plan is generous enough to run a small product on.
  • Genuinely quick to set up.
What to watch for
  • The free plan puts Loops branding in your footer and caps you at 10 emails/second.
  • Paid pricing lives behind a slider, which makes budgeting a guess until you sign up.
  • Thinner on raw email infrastructure — inbound, SMTP nuance, deep log retention.
08Hosted service

Resend

Best for: Developer experience, and an official SDK in whatever you write in

The current default recommendation for developer email. Thirteen official SDKs, a CLI, a clean dashboard, and react-email — the open-source library that made writing email in React tolerable. Transactional volume and marketing contacts are billed as two separate plans.

Starts at
$20/mo for 50,000 emails (Pro); marketing contacts are a second plan from $40/mo
Free tier
3,000 emails a month capped at 100 a day, 1 domain — plus a separate 1,000-contact marketing free plan
Marketing
Broadcasts, on a separate contact-priced plan. No journey builder.
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Official SDKs for 13 languages plus a CLI — the widest first-party coverage here.
  • react-email is open source, genuinely good, and portable to any provider.
  • Inbound receiving, SMTP and webhooks are all first-class.
  • $0.90 per extra 1,000 emails is half Postmark's Basic overage rate.
What to watch for
  • Transactional volume and marketing contacts are billed as two separate subscriptions.
  • 30-day data retention on every plan, including Scale.
  • Overage is charged automatically per extra 1,000 emails against the card on file.
  • No EU region, and sending domains are capped by plan: 1 on Free, 10 on Pro.
09Hosted service

Postmark

Best for: Transactional mail where a receipt arriving late is a support ticket

The long-standing deliverability specialist. Separate message streams keep transactional and broadcast reputation apart, retention goes to a year, and support answers with an engineer rather than a bot.

Starts at
$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)
Free tier
100 emails a month
Marketing
Broadcast streams only — 15 on Basic, 30 on Pro, unlimited on Platform. No visual automation builder.
Data region
United States
What it does well
  • Deliverability track record is the longest of anything on this list.
  • Retention is customisable up to 365 days on Pro and Platform, against Resend's flat 30 days.
  • Inbound email processing on Pro and above.
  • Support is a genuine differentiator, not a plan checkbox.
What to watch for
  • Overage is $1.80 per 1,000 on Basic — twice Resend's $0.90 — so bursts get expensive.
  • Broadcasts are a stream, not a marketing tool: no segments, no journeys.
  • Dedicated IPs start at $50/mo per IP.
10Hosted service

Amazon SES

Best for: High volume where you already have engineers to own the plumbing

The wholesale layer most of this list resells. Nothing is cheaper per email, and nothing asks more of you: no dashboard worth the name, no templates, no contact model, no suppression UI beyond the basics.

Starts at
$0.16 per 1,000 emails (Essentials, first 10M/mo)
Free tier
Up to $200 in AWS free-tier credits for new accounts, over the first 6 months
Marketing
None. SES is a sending pipe.
Data region
Your choice of AWS region, including several in the EU
What it does well
  • $0.16 per 1,000 is roughly a fortieth of Resend's Pro rate at the same volume.
  • Regions everywhere, so data residency is a config value.
  • Scales past anything a SaaS plan will sell you.
What to watch for
  • You build the dashboard, the templates, the retries, the suppression list and the reporting.
  • New accounts start in a sandbox; production access and quota increases are reviewed.
  • Attachments are billed separately at $0.12/GB, and deliverability tooling costs extra.
11Hosted service

Mailgun

Best for: Teams that need an EU sending region from a large, established vendor

A veteran developer email API, now part of Sinch. US or EU sending from one account, plus validation and deliverability services sold alongside.

Starts at
$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)
Free tier
100 emails a day, with 1-day log retention
Marketing
Sold separately as Mailgun Optimize / Mailjet rather than bundled
Data region
United States or European Union, per account
What it does well
  • EU region on an established platform with real support contracts.
  • Scale at $90/mo for 100,000 emails includes a dedicated IP.
  • Email validation and deliverability tooling available as add-ons.
What to watch for
  • Log retention is 1 day on Free and Basic, 5 days on Foundation — painful when debugging.
  • $1.80 per 1,000 overage on Basic.
  • Extra dedicated IPs are $59 each per month.
12Hosted service

SendGrid

Best for: Enterprise volume, and procurement teams who want Twilio on the contract

The incumbent. Owned by Twilio, sold alongside their messaging products, and built for scale most senders never reach. The free plan is gone — what's left is a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day.

Starts at
Essentials from $19.95/mo
Free tier
None any more — a 60-day trial at 100 emails a day
Marketing
Marketing Campaigns is a separate product with its own contact-based pricing
Data region
United States, with EU options on enterprise agreements
What it does well
  • Scale and reliability at volumes most of this list never sees.
  • Part of Twilio, so SMS and voice sit on the same contract.
  • Extensive SDK coverage and a very large body of existing integrations.
  • Enterprise procurement, SLAs and compliance paperwork are all in place.
What to watch for
  • The permanent free tier was replaced by a 60-day trial — a real change if you last looked a while ago.
  • Marketing Campaigns is priced separately from the Email API, so a product with a newsletter pays twice.
  • Higher-tier prices aren't published as a static table.
  • Support quality is the most consistent complaint in this category.
13Hosted service

Mailtrap

Best for: Teams who want the test sandbox and production sending from one vendor

Best known for its email-testing sandbox, which catches staging mail before it reaches a real inbox. The sending product grew out of that and keeps the same debugging bias.

Starts at
$15/mo for 10,000 emails (Basic)
Free tier
4,000 emails a month, capped at 150 a day, 3 days of logs
Marketing
Bulk stream on Business and above; no journey builder
Data region
United States, with EU sending available
What it does well
  • The staging sandbox has no real equivalent at Resend.
  • Free tier is 4,000 emails/month against Resend's 3,000.
  • Bounce categorisation and per-domain debugging are unusually good.
What to watch for
  • Log retention is short on cheaper plans: 3 days free, 5 days on Basic.
  • Dedicated IP and bulk stream only arrive on Business, which starts at $85/mo.
  • Two products in one console takes a minute to get used to.
14Hosted service

MailerSend

Best for: Small teams who want the cheapest paid tier with a template builder

From the MailerLite family. Drag-and-drop templates non-engineers can edit, an inexpensive entry plan, and SMS bolted on for the same money.

Starts at
$5.60/mo for 5,000 emails (Hobby)
Free tier
500 emails a month, 1 domain, 1 template
Marketing
Templates and basic automation; MailerLite is the sibling product for campaigns
Data region
United States and European Union
What it does well
  • $5.60/mo for 5,000 emails is the cheapest real paid plan here.
  • Non-developers can edit templates without a pull request.
  • 100 SMS a month included on every plan.
What to watch for
  • Free plan is 500 emails/month — a sixth of Resend's free tier.
  • Hobby caps you at 1 domain, 3 templates and 1,000 API requests a day.
  • API log retention is 7 days even on Professional.
15Hosted service

Zoho ZeptoMail

Best for: Low, spiky transactional volume you'd rather not subscribe for

Pay-as-you-go credits instead of a monthly plan. One credit is 10,000 emails and lasts six months, which suits products that send in bursts.

Starts at
Credits, where 1 credit = 10,000 emails, valid 6 months
Free tier
First credit free — 10,000 emails, valid for one month
Marketing
None. ZeptoMail is transactional-only by policy; Zoho Campaigns is the other product.
Data region
Multiple, including EU data centres
What it does well
  • No subscription: buy credits, use them within six months.
  • 10,000 free emails to evaluate with is the largest trial on this list.
  • Backed by Zoho, with EU data-centre options.
What to watch for
  • Strictly transactional — marketing sending will get the account closed.
  • Being inside the Zoho console is a taste thing.
  • Credits expire; unused volume is money gone.
16Hosted service

AhaSend

Best for: EU teams who want a modern developer API with the data kept in Europe

The closest thing to a European developer email API: the same shape of REST endpoint and SMTP relay you already use, multi-region EU infrastructure, and a free tier you can actually ship on.

Starts at
Paid tiers start at 25,000 emails/mo (Pro); the rate isn't published as a flat figure
Free tier
1,000 emails a month, unlimited domains, no card required
Marketing
Transactional focus; no campaign builder
Data region
European Union, multi-region
What it does well
  • Data stays in Europe, not just the sending — the usual gap in 'EU-friendly' claims.
  • Unlimited sending domains even on the free plan.
  • USD and EUR billing, OIDC SSO on the top tier.
What to watch for
  • Smaller company; fewer public deliverability case studies.
  • No marketing or automation side at all.
  • Retention is 14 days on Pro, 30 on Max.
17Hosted service

Scaleway TEM

Best for: French and EU public-sector-adjacent teams who need sovereignty on paper

European cloud infrastructure rather than a developer-experience product. Cheap per email, GDPR-clean by construction, and deliberately narrow.

Starts at
€0.25 per 1,000 emails after the first 300 a month (Essential)
Free tier
300 emails a month, every month
Marketing
Prohibited by policy — TEM is transactional only
Data region
European Union (multi-region, France-headquartered)
What it does well
  • €0.25 per 1,000 undercuts every hosted SaaS here except SES.
  • European sovereignty story is the strongest on this list.
  • Scale plan at €80/mo includes 100,000 emails, a managed dedicated IP and a 99.9% SLA.
What to watch for
  • Marketing email is against the acceptable-use policy — this is not a newsletter tool.
  • No inbound email support.
  • Billing counts recipients, so one message with three CCs is four emails.
18Hosted service

Mailjet

Best for: Small teams who want unlimited contacts alongside a send allowance

Sinch's other email product, sitting between a transactional API and a light marketing tool. Metered on emails, and unlimited contacts from the Essential plan — an unusual combination in this category.

Starts at
Starter $9/mo for 8,000 emails
Free tier
6,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day, 1,000 contacts
Marketing
Campaigns and an editor; automation and landing pages arrive on Premium
Data region
European Union (France)
What it does well
  • Unlimited contacts from Essential at $17/mo — you're billed on sends, not list size.
  • A 6,000-a-month free tier with the API, SMTP relay and webhooks included.
  • $9/mo for 8,000 emails is among the cheapest entry plans anywhere here.
  • French company, so EU data handling comes as standard.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's 200-a-day cap bites long before the monthly one.
  • Automation, landing pages and team management only arrive on Premium at $27/mo.
  • Essential and Premium both include 15,000 emails — you pay for features, not volume, between them.
  • Deliverability reports are mixed, as with most generous free tiers.
19Hosted service

SMTP2GO

Best for: Reliable SMTP relay with 30 days of logs on every paid plan

Deliberately unglamorous relay infrastructure. Nothing here is fashionable and the thing people actually praise is that the logs go back thirty days on the $10 plan, which several better-known providers don't manage at ten times the price.

Starts at
Starter $10/mo for 10,000 emails ($100/year)
Free tier
1,000 emails a month, capped at 200 a day and 25 an hour until your domain is verified
Marketing
None — it's a relay
Data region
Servers worldwide, with location-specific options
What it does well
  • 30 days of log retention on every paid plan, including the $10 one.
  • $1 per extra 1,000 on Starter, dropping to $0.85 on Professional.
  • Professional at $75/mo includes a dedicated IP and email testing tools.
  • Straightforward SMTP relay that works with anything.
What to watch for
  • The free plan's hourly cap of 25 emails makes testing awkward until you verify a domain.
  • Free keeps only 5 days of logs and limits you to 2 team members.
  • No marketing side at all.
  • Phone and live chat support on free lasts 14 days.
20Hosted service

Maileroo

Best for: The most generous free transactional tier, dedicated IP included

3,000 free emails a month plus 1,000 inbound, with a free dedicated IP and automatic warm-up — an unusually complete free plan for a transactional provider.

Starts at
Paid plans start above the free 3,000 emails a month
Free tier
3,000 emails and 1,000 inbound a month, 2 domains, free dedicated IP
Marketing
A separate campaign product; the API plans are transactional
Data region
Multiple
What it does well
  • A free dedicated IP with automatic warm-up on the free plan, which nobody else does.
  • 1,000 inbound emails a month included free.
  • Email verification API, sandbox domain and a WordPress plugin included.
  • SMTP relay and REST API with webhooks and full authentication support.
What to watch for
  • Small and young — fewer public deliverability references than the incumbents.
  • The free plan allows 2 domains.
  • Marketing lives in a separate product rather than the same plan.
  • Paid tiers aren't laid out as a simple published table.
21Hosted service

Elastic Email

Best for: High volume at a low flat rate, if you can live with the reputation risk

One of the cheapest ways to send a lot of email through a hosted product. $19/mo for 50,000 emails is roughly half what most of this list charges, and the trade is a shared sending reputation across a very price-sensitive customer base.

Starts at
Starter $19/mo for up to 50,000 emails
Free tier
1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails a month
Marketing
An email designer and contact management; not a full automation platform
Data region
United States and European Union
What it does well
  • $19/mo for 50,000 emails undercuts almost every hosted competitor.
  • Pro at $49/mo adds inbound email processing, webhooks, sub-accounts and custom rDNS.
  • Reseller features and sub-accounts make it popular with agencies.
  • Private IPs from $40/mo, cheaper than most.
What to watch for
  • Low prices attract senders whose reputation you share; warm up carefully and watch your own numbers.
  • The free plan is 1,000 contacts and 3,000 emails.
  • Starter and Pro both cap at 50,000 emails — the difference is features, not volume.
  • Support is a paid add-on for prioritised assistance.
FAQ

Plunk alternatives, asked and answered

What is the best Plunk alternative?

Staying open source: useSend for an SES-backed dashboard, Notifuse if you want to keep your existing sending provider, listmonk if newsletters are really the job.

Going hosted: Loops or Email Bump, both contact-priced with transactional included and nothing to operate.

Is Plunk Cloud cheap?

For low or irregular volume, yes — $0.001 an email with no monthly minimum beats any plan with a floor.

At $1 per 1,000 it's mid-table against hosted providers, and well above Amazon SES's $0.16. Multiply your monthly sends before assuming it's the cheap option.

Does Plunk do automation?

Yes — a trigger-and-condition builder, which is unusual among open-source email tools. listmonk and Keila don't; Mautic does but on a much heavier stack.

It's simpler than ActiveCampaign's builder, which is the trade for having it in an AGPL codebase you can read.

The hosted version of the same idea

Campaigns, flows and transactional, nothing to run

Contacts metered once, sending uncapped under fair use, and deliverability handled on Amazon SES. Not open source — that's the trade. 5,000 contacts free.

Start free Read the API docs

Keep reading

Email Bump vs PlunkThe head-to-head, including where Plunk is the better buy.Every comparisonAll the platforms we've priced and compared, in one index.Email Bump pricingWhat contact-based pricing costs at every list size.