A password reset that lands in spam is a support ticket waiting to happen. In 2026, three providers keep coming up whenever developers compare transactional email services on deliverability: Mailtrap, Mailgun, and Amazon SES. We looked at how each transactional email service handles stream separation, authentication, dedicated IPs, and bounce management, plus what that infrastructure costs at real sending volumes.
Mailtrap vs Mailgun vs Amazon SES: quick comparison
| Mailtrap | Mailgun | Amazon SES | |
| Stream separation | Native, all plans | Manual (IP pools) | Manual (configuration sets) |
| Authentication setup | Automatic after DNS records added | Manual, during domain verification | Manual (Easy DKIM) |
| Dedicated IP | Included on Business+, auto warmup | $59/mo add-on | $24.95/mo add-on |
| Bounce handling | Automatic suppression | Manual, via event webhooks | Manual, via Amazon SNS |
| Free tier | 4,000 emails/mo, no expiry | 100 emails/day | $200 AWS credit (new accounts); legacy 3,000/mo for pre-2025 accounts |
| Starting price | $15/mo | $15/mo | $0.10 per 1,000 emails |
Choose Mailtrap if you want a transactional email service that handles stream separation, authentication, and IP warmup for you. Choose Mailgun if you need granular routing control and domain-scoped API keys, and don’t mind configuring deliverability tooling yourself. Choose Amazon SES if your team already runs on AWS and cost per email matters more than having that infrastructure included.
Mailtrap
Mailtrap is a transactional email service built for teams that want high inbox placement and detailed delivery analytics without assembling the infrastructure themselves.
Transactional and bulk traffic run on separate sending streams by default, on every plan including the free one, so a bulk campaign that trips spam filters doesn’t affect the password reset going out from the same account a moment later. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC configure automatically once the DNS records are added, and DKIM keys rotate every month without manual input, closing a gap that quietly causes inbox placement drift on other platforms. Dedicated IPs on the Business plan include automatic warmup, so there’s no scheduling a two-to-four-week ramp by hand. Bounce suppression runs automatically too, with hard bounces, soft bounces, transient failures, and spam complaints tracked and suppressed as separate categories.
| Plan | Price | Emails/month |
| Free | $0 | 4,000 |
| Basic | $15-$30 | 10,000-100,000 |
| Business | $85+ | 100,000+, dedicated IP included |
Mailgun
Mailgun is a transactional email service built for developer teams that need granular control over routing, domain-scoped credentials, and sending infrastructure.
Stream separation isn’t native. Teams that want transactional and bulk traffic isolated set that up manually through IP pools. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup happens through DNS configuration during domain verification, which adds onboarding time but gives a team full visibility into what’s configured. Dedicated IPs cost $59 per IP per month, the highest of the three providers here, with warmup scheduled manually. Bounce and complaint data arrives through event webhooks that a team builds its own reporting around, and log retention scales with plan: one day on Basic, five days on Foundation, thirty days on Scale. Deeper deliverability tooling, like inbox placement and seed list testing, is sold separately as the Mailgun Optimize add-on, and list cleaning runs through the separate Mailgun Validate product.
| Plan | Price | Emails/month |
| Free | $0 | ~3,000 (100/day) |
| Basic | $15 | 10,000 |
| Foundation | $35 | 50,000 |
| Scale | $90 | 100,000 |
Amazon SES
Amazon SES is a pay-as-you-go transactional email service built for teams already running their infrastructure on AWS.
Stream separation isn’t included. Isolating transactional and bulk traffic means building it with configuration sets and IP pools. SES supports SPF, Easy DKIM, and DMARC, but setup still runs through manual DNS records and IAM configuration. Dedicated IPs are available as an add-on for $24.95 per IP per month, with warmup handled manually. Bounce and complaint notifications route through Amazon SNS rather than arriving as a built-in event, and suppression logic has to be layered on top of SES’s account-level suppression list. A dashboard with delivery metrics and recommendations exists too, but only through the paid Virtual Deliverability Manager add-on; without it, monitoring is limited to aggregate bounce and complaint rates in CloudWatch. New accounts also start in a sandbox mode restricted to verified recipients, and exiting it requires a manual request to AWS that’s typically reviewed within about a day, though turnaround isn’t guaranteed.
Pay-as-you-go pricing at $0.10 per 1,000 emails is still the cheapest option of the three compared here at any volume. As of July 2026, AWS also sells three named plans, Essentials, Pro, and Enterprise, that bundle features like the Virtual Deliverability Manager for a monthly fee plus a higher per-email rate; a team that just needs raw sending capacity is typically better off on the original pay-as-you-go pricing. The free tier changed too: the classic 3,000-emails-a-month benefit for 12 months now applies only to AWS accounts created before July 15, 2025. Accounts created after that date get AWS’s general $200 in free-tier credits instead, not a dedicated SES allowance.
| Plan | Price |
| Pay-as-you-go | $0.10 per 1,000 emails |
| Essentials (2026) | $0.16 per 1,000 emails, no monthly fee |
| Free tier | $200 AWS credit (new accounts) or 3,000/mo for 12 months (pre-2025 accounts) |
Final verdict
Mailtrap fits teams that want a transactional email service with stream separation, authentication, and bounce suppression already built in, without configuring each piece by hand. Mailgun fits teams that need routing flexibility and domain-scoped credentials and are comfortable handling deliverability configuration themselves. Amazon SES fits teams already on AWS where cost per email outweighs having that infrastructure included from the start.
FAQ
What is the difference between Mailtrap, Mailgun, and Amazon SES for deliverability?
The three differ mainly in how much deliverability infrastructure comes built in. Mailtrap includes native stream separation, automatic authentication setup, and automatic bounce suppression on every plan. Mailgun and Amazon SES both leave that configuration to the sending team, either through manual setup or paid add-ons like Mailgun Optimize or Amazon’s Virtual Deliverability Manager.
Do you need a dedicated IP for a transactional email service?
Not always. Shared IP pools work fine below roughly 50,000 emails a month, since the provider manages the pool’s reputation. Past that volume, a dedicated IP isolates a sender’s reputation from everyone else on the platform. Mailtrap includes one on Business and above, Mailgun charges $59/month per IP, and Amazon SES charges roughly $24.95/month. All three still require a gradual warmup period, whether it’s automatic or scheduled by hand.
Is Amazon SES cheaper than Mailtrap or Mailgun?
Per email, yes. At $0.10 per 1,000 emails, Amazon SES costs less than either alternative at any volume. That price doesn’t include stream separation, bounce suppression, or delivery monitoring, all of which Mailtrap includes by default and Mailgun partially covers through paid add-ons. Whether SES works out cheaper overall depends on how much of that infrastructure a team has to build itself.
Choosing a transactional email service among Mailtrap, Mailgun, and Amazon SES comes down to how much deliverability work a platform handles versus how much a team wants to build itself. All three can get email delivered. They differ in how much of that reliability is included on day one.
