Mailjet alternatives: moving API email off a campaign-first plan
Mailjet sells one email platform for campaigns and application mail, and its tiers are built around the campaign side: contacts, segmentation, automations, landing pages. If your product only needs an API and a relay, you are choosing among plans whose upgrades mostly add features you will not use. The sensible alternatives split in two. For a similar all-in-one account, Brevo and MailerSend are the nearest. For API-only sending, Resend, Mailgun, Postmark and Amazon SES do less and tend to cost less at volume. Costs below are at 6,000, 15,000 and 50,000 emails a month, read from vendor pages on October 7, 2026.
What Mailjet's own plans tell you
Mailjet's pricing page lists these tiers, each with a volume slider that defaults to 15,000 emails:
| Plan | Price | Emails per month | What the card adds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 6,000, capped at 200 per day | 1,000 contacts; APIs, SMTP relay and webhooks |
| Starter | $9 | 8,000, no daily limit | 2,000 contacts, brand kit, one subaccount |
| Essential | $19 | 15,000, no daily limit | Unlimited contacts, segmentation, 500 validations, no Mailjet logo |
| Premium | $29 | 15,000, no daily limit | Automations, landing pages, advanced statistics, priority support |
Read that for a transactional workload. Webhooks and the SMTP relay come with the Free plan, which is good. Essential and Premium include the same 15,000 emails, so the extra $10 on Premium buys marketing features and priority support, not capacity. And the dedicated IP is a Premium extra that Mailjet lists as available on request from the 100,000-email plans up.
Reasons teams look elsewhere
- Paying for campaign tooling. Of the four cards, the features that differ are contacts, segmentation, automations and landing pages. A product that sends receipts from its own database never touches them.
- Daily cap on Free. 6,000 a month works out to 200 a day, and the card states 200 emails per day. A signup spike can be refused even when the month is under limit. The paid tiers state no daily limit.
- History for support. The page lists "Activity logs" among the extras of its Custom enterprise plan. Check what your tier keeps before you rely on it for customer lookups.
- Contact-based limits. Free allows 1,000 contacts and Starter 2,000. If you store each recipient as a Mailjet contact, a growing user base hits that before it hits the email limit.
- One vendor, many names. The pricing page is branded Sinch Mailjet, and Mailgun's header links to Sinch Email. If you are leaving because of vendor consolidation, moving between the two does not change the parent.
Cost at 6,000, 15,000 and 50,000 emails
Mailjet: $0 for the 6,000 Free allowance (with the 200 daily cap), $19 for 15,000 on Essential; I did not read a 50,000 price, so use the slider. Resend lists $20 for 50,000, and its Free plan stops at 3,000, so 6,000 and 15,000 both need Pro at $20. Mailgun Basic is $15 for 10,000 plus $1.80 per extra thousand: $15 + (5 × $1.80) = $24 at 15,000; $35 on Foundation at 50,000. Postmark Basic is $15 for anything up to its 10,000 starting volume, which covers 6,000, and its slider on Postmark's pricing page read $55 at 50,000 on October 7, 2026; 15,000 is not a slider stop, so check the slider for it instead of using the $1.80 overage rate. Amazon SES at $0.16 per thousand is $0.96, $2.40 and $8. SMTP2GO is $15 at 10,000 plus $1.20 per extra thousand, giving $21 and $63. Mailtrap's billing docs list Basic at $15 for 10,000 and $20 for 50,000, so 15,000 costs $20 too ($15 + 5 × $1.00 overage) and 50,000 stays at $20. MailerSend's Hobby is $6.30 for 5,000 with extra usage at $1.50 per thousand, so $7.80 at 6,000 and $21.30 at 15,000; Starter is $31.50 for 50,000.
| Provider | 6,000 | 15,000 | 50,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mailjet | $0 (Free, 200 per day) | $19 | Check slider |
| Resend | $20 | $20 | $20 |
| Mailgun | $15 | $24 | $35 |
| Postmark Basic | $15 | Not a slider stop | $55 |
| Amazon SES | $0.96 | $2.40 | $8 |
| SMTP2GO | $15 | $21 | $63 |
| Mailtrap (Basic) | $15 | $20 | $20 |
| MailerSend | $7.80 | $21.30 | $31.50 |
The MailerSend rows at 6,000 and 15,000 are computed from its published overage rate. Mailjet at $19 for 15,000 is not expensive; the case for leaving rests on what you get for it, not on the sticker.
Choosing a replacement
Staying all-in-one: Brevo is the closest match in shape. Its Starter plan is $9 for 5,000 emails with no daily limit, and Standard at $18 adds marketing automation. Its free plan is 300 sends a day, which is higher than Mailjet's 200 but still daily-capped.
API only, lowest price: Amazon SES is $8 at 50,000, but you take on logs, suppression handling and the sandbox review documented in our SES alternatives guide.
API only, least fuss: Resend at $20 flat for the 50,000 band is the easiest to budget. Postmark is the choice when message history and support lookups matter more than cost.
A more traditional ESP model: Mailgun gives you SMTP relay, API, inbound routing and a free plan of 100 emails a day, but its Basic plan keeps logs for a single day.
If you run a SaaS
If your Mailjet account sends both lifecycle campaigns and transactional mail for a subscription product, Sequenzy may fit: its pricing page lists 2,500 free emails a month and $19 for 15,000, and it integrates with Stripe, Paddle and Lemon Squeezy. Compare it with Brevo and the API-first providers above.
Migrating from Mailjet
Templates
Mailjet's feature table lists MJML and its own templating language. MJML is a standalone markup language, so if your templates are MJML you can compile them to HTML and use them with any provider. Variables written in Mailjet's templating language will not carry over and need rewriting for the new provider's syntax.
Subaccounts and contacts
Starter and up include a subaccount. Map each one to a separate sending domain or stream at the new provider so that reputation stays separated. If you used Mailjet contacts and segmentation for campaigns, export those lists before you cancel; transactional-only providers do not hold them.
Webhooks and sending
Mailjet's Send API and SMTP relay can both be replaced by pointing your application at the new provider's endpoint. Start with SMTP-based services because only the host and credentials change. Event webhooks follow, with their payloads adapted to the new provider's event names.
Related pages
For head-to-head comparisons see Mailjet vs SendGrid, plus Resend pricing, Mailgun pricing and the transactional vs marketing email guide.
FAQ
Is Mailjet's free plan good for transactional email?
It includes the API, SMTP relay and webhooks, with 6,000 emails a month and a 200-per-day cap. That is fine for light traffic and unforgiving for bursts.
What is the closest alternative to Mailjet?
Brevo or MailerSend, both of which keep a hosted dashboard beside the API.
Can I reuse my Mailjet templates elsewhere?
MJML-based templates can be compiled to HTML and reused. Templates that use Mailjet-specific variables must be rewritten.