Mailgun was, for a long time, the default answer when a developer asked which email API to use. Simple, well-documented, with a free tier generous enough to build on. That version of Mailgun is largely gone.
Note before we start: This isn’t a takedown of Mailgun. It’s also not a comparison sheet. It’s a platform that many organisations rely on to get their emails to the inbox. But the landscape has changed. Regulatory expectations have sharpened, data residency has become a boardroom conversation, and a new generation of developer-focused email infrastructure has arrived. Infrastructure built with European compliance at its core, not bolted on afterwards.
Since Rackspace spun it off and it was eventually acquired by Sinch in 2021, Mailgun has changed considerably. The free tier disappeared. Pricing increased. Support quality shifted. The platform has moved upmarket in ways that don’t always suit the developers and growing businesses that chose it in the first place. If you’re currently on Mailgun and feeling like the platform has drifted away from you rather than with you, you’re not imagining it.
There’s also a separate question that’s grown harder to ignore: where your email data actually lives. For European businesses, that question has real compliance implications. Spotler SendPro is worth a serious look on both counts.
What’s changed with Mailgun, and why it matters
I want to be fair here. Mailgun still works. The API is solid, and the documentation is decent. But the platform has undergone enough changes in ownership and pricing strategy that it’s worth asking whether it’s still the right long-term choice, particularly if you’re a European business with compliance obligations.
The removal of the free tier in 2021 was the most visible shift, but the more significant one was the change in strategic direction. Mailgun has increasingly focused on enterprise and high-volume senders, which means smaller and mid-market teams often find themselves paying more for features they don’t need, while the things they actually value, like reliable support and pricing predictability, have become harder to count on.
For European businesses specifically, there’s also the question of infrastructure. Despite Sinch being a Swedish company, Mailgun’s core infrastructure and data processing remain US-origin. That creates the same data residency complications that any US-based email provider raises: cross-border transfers to document, supplementary safeguards to maintain, and a compliance posture that requires ongoing legal attention rather than a clean answer.
What European-built infrastructure actually means in practice
Spotler SendPro is built and hosted in Europe by a company headquartered in the Netherlands. That distinction has become more meaningful, not less, as GDPR enforcement has matured.
Data residency by default. Your email traffic, including recipient data, message content, and event logs, stays within the EU. There’s no opt-in required, and no cross-border transfer needs to be documented in your records of processing activities. It works the way European law expects it to from day one.
A compliance posture that matches your own. European businesses operate under European law. Working with an infrastructure provider that does the same means your legal and security teams are working from the same rulebook, not translating between frameworks or maintaining a set of supplementary safeguards on top of standard contractual clauses.
Pricing and relationship stability. Spotler is a mid-market-focused business. It hasn’t been through four changes of ownership in a decade. When you agree to a contract, you’re dealing with a team whose incentives are aligned with keeping you as a long-term customer, not with hitting an exit multiple.
None of this means Mailgun is unusable for European businesses. But it does mean the compliance overhead is real and ongoing, and that’s a cost that doesn’t always show up in the pricing comparison.
The technical case: what SendPro is actually built to do
Compliance alone doesn’t make good infrastructure. The reason I think SendPro is worth taking seriously is that it’s genuinely well-engineered for transactional and high-volume email delivery. It’s not a platform trying to be everything to everyone.
A clean, developer-first API. The SendPro API is built on RESTful principles, with SDKs available via GitHub. Message submission, template rendering via Apache FreeMarker, and event callbacks are handled cleanly. There’s no sprawl, no features you’ll never use cluttering the documentation.
Deliverability as infrastructure, not an afterthought. SendPro’s architecture separates message flows into transactional and bulk types. Your password reset emails don’t share the same sending reputation as a promotional campaign. IP warm-up, dedicated IP options, and built-in reputation monitoring are part of the core offering, not premium add-ons.
Meaningful event tracking. Delivery, open, click, bounce, and complaint events are available in real time via webhooks. The logs are detailed enough to actually diagnose issues rather than just report them. That difference matters more than people realise until they actually need it.
Predictable pricing. SendPro’s pricing model is transparent and volume-based. There’s no history of sudden tier restructuring or the removal of the free tier. For teams that budget infrastructure costs annually, that stability is genuinely valuable.
Where SendPro fits and where it doesn’t
It’s worth being clear-eyed about this. If you’re looking for a platform with a built-in campaign builder, visual automation workflows, and a broad integration marketplace, you’ll want to look at Spotler Mail+ instead, or a combination of both. That’s a configuration Spotler actively supports with unified billing.
But if your team is building or maintaining an application that sends transactional email at any meaningful volume, order confirmations, account notifications, triggered messages, SendPro is built for exactly that use case.
The table below gives a cleaner picture of how the different options compare across common requirements.
At a glance: how the options stack up
The migration question
If you built on Mailgun, migrating away feels like an effort you didn’t budget for. I understand that. But given how much Mailgun itself has already changed around you, the question isn’t really whether to absorb some migration cost. It’s whether you’d rather absorb it now, on your own terms, or later, when the next pricing change or acquisition forces the issue.
SendPro supports both SMTP and API-based sending, so you can migrate at the integration layer that makes most sense for your stack. A staged approach works best: start with a lower-volume message type, validate deliverability and event tracking, then expand. Spotler’s onboarding team walks you through the process, including IP warm-up planning for higher-volume accounts.
Worth asking yourself
Before you renew with Mailgun, I’d encourage you to sit with a few honest questions:
- “How many times has our email provider changed its pricing since we integrated it?”
- “Where is our transactional email data processed, and can we demonstrate that to a regulator if asked?”
- “Are we confident our provider’s strategic direction still aligns with what we need?”
For teams that chose Mailgun five years ago, the honest answer to at least one of those is uncomfortable. That’s worth acting on.
Getting started with SendPro
If you’d like to explore what a migration looks like for your stack, the SendPro product page is a good starting point. You can also look at the API documentation directly. It’s thorough, and reading it will tell you a lot about how the platform is designed and what the team values.
For teams considering a broader Spotler platform, combining SendPro for transactional sending with Mail+ for marketing, there’s a plan comparison that explains how the two products work together.
Your email infrastructure is worth choosing carefully. It’s worth choosing European.
I’d be excited to show you what can be achieved in a quick demo:
Is Spotler SendPro GDPR compliant?
Yes. Spotler SendPro is built and hosted entirely within the EU, by a company headquartered in the Netherlands. All email data, including recipient addresses, message content, and event logs, is processed and stored within the EU by default, with no cross-border transfer to third countries. This simplifies your records of processing activities under GDPR Article 30 and removes the need for supplementary transfer safeguards.
How does SendPro pricing compare to Mailgun?
SendPro uses a transparent, volume-based pricing model, unlike Mailgun, which has applied tier restructuring several times since 2021. Unlike Mailgun, which removed its free tier and introduced new plan structures, SendPro’s pricing is straightforward and has remained stable. For mid-market sending volumes, many teams find SendPro comparable or more cost-effective after accounting for the full cost of Mailgun’s current plan structure. The SendPro pricing page provides a clear breakdown.
Can I migrate from Mailgun to SendPro without rewriting my integration?
In most cases, yes. SendPro supports both SMTP relay and a RESTful HTTP API, so you can typically migrate at whichever integration layer your current Mailgun setup uses. If you’re using Mailgun’s HTTP API, you’ll need to make some endpoint and authentication changes, but the overall integration pattern is similar. Spotler’s onboarding team supports the migration process directly, including reviewing your current setup and advising on the best migration path for your stack.
Is Mailgun a European company?
Mailgun was originally a US company, acquired by Rackspace and later by Sinch AB, a Swedish telecommunications company. However, Mailgun’s core infrastructure and data processing remain US-origin, which means data residency and cross-border transfer considerations still apply for European businesses. Spotler SendPro, by contrast, is built and hosted entirely within the EU by a Netherlands-headquartered company, with no cross-border data transfer by default.
