MailerLite vs Mailgun
Trying to choose between MailerLite vs Mailgun as your email marketing software? Here's when to choose each tool – and the pros and cons to know about.
- 4.4 TrustPilot
- 4.7 Capterra
- 4.7 G2
Average 4.6 / 5
MailerLite
MailerLite is an all-in-one email marketing platform that allows you to create newsletters, landing pages, and even websites using pre-made templates. It has 100+ integrations with other platforms and a recurring payment feature for paid newsletters.
Pricing
Free plan, dynamic paid plans depending on the features and the contact list size start from $9/month billed yearly.
Key features
- Drag-and-drop email editor with an AI writing assistant
- No-code website, blog, and landing page builder
- iPad subscriber app for generating leads on offline events
- Paid newsletter subscription
- Automated sequences
- Integrations with online stores
- Email verifier
Support
24/7 email and live chat support
- 4.2 TrustPilot
- 4.3 Capterra
- 4.3 G2
Average 4.3 / 5
Mailgun
An email marketing platform equipped with dedicated delivery and validation tools. Features include transactional emails, email APIs, and SMTP relays.
Pricing
Starts at $35 a month for 50,000 emails/month
Key features
- Drag-and-drop email builder
- Personalization
- Analytics
- Email validations
- Transactional emails
- Integrations with various services via APIs
Support
Ticket support on all plans, chat and phone on weekdays for higher plans.
General info about company
MailerLite
MailerLite was founded in 2005 as a web design agency but then switched to email marketing. The company is remote-first, with employees in 40 countries.
Mailgun
Founded in 2010 by Ev Kontsevoy and Taylor Wakefield. In 2021, Mailgun was acquired by Sinch. Company headquarters are in San Antonio, Texas.
Difficulty
MailerLite
No coding or design skills are required to create emails and web pages. The platform also offers an extensive knowledge base with tutorials, which makes it beginner-friendly.
Mailgun
The service is aimed at developers and people with advanced coding knowledge, so it’s not easy to use for the general public.
Best for
MailerLite
E-commerce, freelancers, small businesses
Mailgun
Large companies with extensive mailing lists that require both marketing and transactional emails, deliverability monitoring, and a stable technological solution.
Free plan
MailerLite
A generous forever free plan with a limit of 1 user, 1,000 contacts, and 12,000 monthly emails. The free plan includes:
- Email editor and automation builder
- Website builder and 10 templates for landing pages
- Sign-up forms and pop-ups
- 24/7 email and chat support for the first 30 days
Mailgun
No free plan, only a 30-day free trial paid plans.
Pricing
MailerLite
Growing business:
- $9-205/month billed yearly, depending on the number of subscribers, with a limit of 50k contacts at the highest price
- Unlimited emails and 24/7 support
- Includes extra features like dynamic emails, selling digital products, blogs, and an unsubscribe page builder
- 3 users available
Advanced:
- $19-1,600/month billed yearly, with a limit of 500k contacts at the highest price
- An email limit if you have more than 50k subscribers, up to 6 million, depending on the number
- Includes features like custom HTML editor, AI writing assistant, Facebook integration, promotion pop-ups, and more
- Unlimited users
Entreprise:
- Depends on the scope of work
- Only available for businesses with 100k and more subscribers
- Includes the services of a dedicated success manager, onboarding, account audit, and dedicated IP and deliverability consultation
Mailgun
Billed monthly:
- Foundation starting at $35 for 50,000 emails a month. Includes APIs, webhooks, ticket support.
- Scale starting at $90 for 100,000 emails a month. Includes everything from the previous plan and 5,000 email validations, live chat and phone support, dedicated IP pools.
- Enterprise with custom pricing. Includes everything from the other plans and dedicated support, comprehensive onboarding, early access to new features.
Extra emails and email validations available for additional price
Support
MailerLite
Customer support is available 24/7 via email and live chat — however, it’s only available for 30 days on the free plan. Users can also hire experts in email marketing, copywriting, no code development, and more.
MailerLite also offers an extensive Customer Self-Service Center. It includes:
- A large categorized knowledge base, that includes articles about troubleshooting most common issues
- Video tutorials
- A Circle community where users can communicate with each other
- A free ML Academy with 5 free online courses about MailerLite and email marketing
Mailgun
Ticket support with 24-hour response time, Knowledge Center, Comprehensive SDKs, Customer Feedback Forum, and Documentation available on all plans.
Chat and phone support are available on the Scale and Enterprise plans. Chat support is available Monday through Friday from 7 am to 7 pm CST. Phone support is available Monday through Friday from 8 am to 5 pm CST.
On the Enterprise plan, users also have access to managed support.
Features
MailerLite
- Email marketing automation
- Sign-up forms
- Landing pages
- Website builder
- Blog builder
- Email verifier
- Transactional emails
- Click maps
- The ability to sell digital products like e-books and online courses
- Setting up a paid subscription for emails
Mailgun
- Drag-and-drop email builder and templates
- SMTP services for sending transactional emails
- Email validations
- Email previews on 100+ devices and clients
- Inbox placement testing
- Send time optimization
- Email analytics
- Integrations with various services via APIs
- Additional email optimization services for monitoring
Templates
MailerLite
70+ templates for newsletters:
- Blog digests
- Events
- Holiday emails
- Featured product
- Notifications
- Surveys and quizzes
- Deals and offers
- Emails for creative professionals
40+ templates for landing pages:
- For bloggers
- For creative professionals
- Events
- Surveys and quizzes
- Coming soon
- Celebrations
- Books
- Non-profits
18 website templates for different industries and purposes:
- Business
- E-commerce
- Education
- Events
- Food and drinks
- Portfolio
- Wellness
Mailgun
- Basic 7 templates with different layouts.
- Mailgun Templates API allows to integrate other templates into the service and manage the existing ones.
Video/screenshots
MailerLite
Mailgun
Integrations
MailerLite
139 integrations with services for CRM, loyalty programs, e-commerce, project management, surveys, and more.
Mailgun
64 integrations including WordPress, Zendesk, Webflow, Airtable, Google Sheets, Jotform, and more.
Devices
MailerLite
-
MailerLite has a web app, an iOS app, and an iPad app only for subscribing leads on offline events.
Mailgun
- Available only on the web.
- No installable solution.
Languages
MailerLite
English
Mailgun
English
Automation
MailerLite
- 15 automation recipes for welcome emails, abandoned cart, membership renewal, online courses, and more.
- Paid versions include an AI writing assistant powered by OpenAI that allows users to write marketing copies faster.
- Automated A/B testing for up to 3 workflow variations.
Mailgun
Basic automations using API (requires coding)
Pros
MailerLite
- A very simple and minimalist product that is good for beginners
- Many unique features like paid newsletters and selling digital goods
- Great customer support
- A lot of integrations available
- Easy migrations from other services
- Extensive video tutorial library for new users
Mailgun
- Useful API that easily integrates into other services
- Deliverability features
- Reliability and data protection
- Helpful support
Cons
MailerLite
- May come off as too simple for experienced marketers
- You need to get approval to start working with the service
- 2FA requires a third-party app instead of a phone number
- Stripe integration can be troublesome
- Confusing categories in the interface
- Outdated documentation at times
Mailgun
- Learning curve for beginners
- Interface is not very intuitive
- Stiff pricing structure
Reviews from experts
MailerLite
Great level of satisfaction in terms of the results we are obtaining in our campaigns, as well as how it is to work with MailerLite on a daily-basis. Also, very important to mention the amazing customer service provided. Always very quick, detailed and helpful. Message Factory couldn’t be any happier by working with MailerLite!
On the down side, MailerLite felt a bit unpolished at times. Things like the odd feature that was incomplete, or a tab that seemed to be in the wrong place – small things that slowly added up, resulting in a bittersweet experience.
MailerLite is great, and I’m sure it will only get better with time. It just fails to deliver an exceptional email marketing experience right now
Mailgun
What do you like best about Mailgun?
Easy to use and reliable. The reporting features are very helpful too. The option for dedicated IP is great for businesses sending lots of emails. The email verification API also helps us protect our domain reputation.
What do you dislike about Mailgun?
Only one API key. I wish we could generate multiple ones with different access levels so we could easily revoke them if anything goes wrong. I wanted to have one key for email verification only, and one key for each application that uses the email API.
What do you like best about Mailgun?
You can integrate it to almost anything. The way that it manages the stream of emails it must send out is what makes this tool almost irreplaceable.
What do you dislike about Mailgun?
Hard to find something to not like about this. It is a very useful tool, it's not for novices. You need to know about email campaigns to know how to make best of it.
What problems is Mailgun solving and how is that benefiting you?
Keeping me out of spam list for the most part. Keeping our email in the green zone when it comes to spam detectors. It makes it easy to remove any bad emails, dnc's, and gauge things correctly.
*This information is current as of 02/13/2024. While we regularly update our articles, it`s possible that this article may not contain some of the latest information.
