Mailgun vs Substack
Side-by-side plans, pricing, and feature gates for Mailgun and Substack, verified . Mailgun is primarily transactional email; Substack is primarily email marketing.
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.
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
Substack
- Standard
Free to publish; 10% of paid subscription revenue
Free
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
When Substack wins
- New writers with no list yet who want platform-driven discovery
- Writers who would rather give 10% of revenue than pay a flat $20-100/month with no readers
Where Substack is the wrong fit
- Established creators with a paid list above ~5,000 subscribers; the 10% share exceeds what Kit, Ghost, or beehiiv would charge in flat fees at that scale
- Operators who want full control over deliverability, subscriber data, and migration optionality
- Brands needing automations, segmentation, or marketing tooling
Common questions
- Is Mailgun cheaper than Substack?
- Both Mailgun and Substack have free or custom entry pricing, so a direct entry-tier price comparison is not meaningful.
- Does Mailgun or Substack have a free plan?
- Both have free plans. Mailgun: Hobby tier capped at 100 emails per day. Substack: Free to publish; 10% of paid subscription revenue.
- Are Mailgun and Substack in the same category?
- No. Mailgun is primarily a transactional email tool; Substack is primarily a email marketing 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, Mailgun or Substack?
- Mailgun ships 5 plans; Substack ships 1. 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 Mailgun or Substack?
- Each tool has a dedicated alternatives page on TierGauge with ranked options and verified pricing: /alternatives/mailgun for Mailgun and /alternatives/substack for Substack. Alternatives are derived from each tool's editor-flagged competitors plus same-category tools we track.
Mailgun: https://www.mailgun.com/pricing/ · Substack: https://substack.com/going-paid
Last verified . Pricing changes between refreshes; confirm at the vendor before purchasing.