Buttondown vs Mailgun
Side-by-side plans, pricing, and feature gates for Buttondown and Mailgun, verified . Buttondown is primarily email marketing; Mailgun is primarily transactional email.
Plans side by side
Every published plan from each vendor, with the headline monthly anchor price. Some prices scale with subscriber count or seats; full detail lives on each tool's page.
Buttondown
- Free
Up to 100 subscribers with markdown editor, custom-domain sending, and hosted archives.
Free - $9 add-ons
Pay per feature; this bundle is illustrative of the $9 add-on tier.
$9/mo - $29 add-ons
Pay per feature; this bundle is illustrative of the $29 add-on tier.
$29/mo - $79 add-ons
Pay per feature; this bundle is illustrative of the $79 add-on tier.
$79/mo
Mailgun
- Free
Hobby tier capped at 100 emails per day
Free - Basic
Entry paid tier with 10,000 emails/month included
$15/mo - Foundation
50,000 emails/month with template builder and full inbound routing
$35/mo - Scale
100,000 emails/month with SAML SSO, dedicated IP, and live support
$90/mo - Enterprise
Custom contracting for high-volume senders
Custom
Limits at the entry paid tier
Compares $9 add-ons (Buttondown) against Basic (Mailgun). Both are the lowest-priced non-free, non-custom plan on each side.
| Limit | Buttondown | Mailgun |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts | Custom | · |
| Emails / month | · | 10,000 |
When Buttondown wins
- Independent writers and indie creators running a paid newsletter.
- Privacy-minded operators who want to avoid tracking pixels.
- Markdown-native authors who prefer plain text over WYSIWYG bloat.
Where Buttondown is the wrong fit
- High-volume senders pushing multiple campaigns per day.
- E-commerce teams needing deep behavioral automation and segmentation.
- Marketing teams that want a single flat tier covering every feature.
When Mailgun wins
- Developers integrating receipts, notifications, and password-reset emails
- Teams already on a marketing ESP that need a separate transactional channel
- High-volume B2B applications with strict deliverability requirements
Where Mailgun is the wrong fit
- Marketing teams seeking campaign tooling (use Mailchimp or Kit)
- Creators sending newsletters (use Kit or beehiiv)
- Free-tier hobbyists with low total volume but spiky daily-cap-bumping use cases
Common questions
- Is Buttondown cheaper than Mailgun?
- Both Buttondown and Mailgun have free or custom entry pricing, so a direct entry-tier price comparison is not meaningful.
- Does Buttondown or Mailgun have a free plan?
- Both have free plans. Buttondown: Up to 100 subscribers with markdown editor, custom-domain sending, and hosted archives.. Mailgun: Hobby tier capped at 100 emails per day.
- Are Buttondown and Mailgun in the same category?
- No. Buttondown is primarily a email marketing tool; Mailgun is primarily a transactional email tool. They overlap on use case but sit in different primary categories, so the comparison is between adjacent tools rather than direct competitors.
- Which has more plans, Buttondown or Mailgun?
- Mailgun ships 5 plans; Buttondown ships 4. Mailgun's longer ladder gives more granular upgrade steps, which can mean smoother price escalation as your team scales.
- Where can I see alternatives to Buttondown or Mailgun?
- Each tool has a dedicated alternatives page on TierGauge with ranked options and verified pricing: /alternatives/buttondown for Buttondown and /alternatives/mailgun for Mailgun. Alternatives are derived from each tool's editor-flagged competitors plus same-category tools we track.
Buttondown: https://buttondown.com/pricing · Mailgun: https://www.mailgun.com/pricing/
Last verified . Pricing changes between refreshes; confirm at the vendor before purchasing.