Mailgun alternative
A Mailgun Alternative For Teams Who Would Rather Not Run One
Mailgun Foundation is $35 a month (September 2026). We are $60. They are cheaper and we are not going to argue otherwise.
With Cascadia you get
- Your app keeps its own code
- Setup is not a separate invoice
- Priced on delivery, not seats
- We already know your stack
- Somebody is answerable for it
- We tell you when to spend less
The short version
Why teams pick Cascadia over Mailgun
We exist for the other case, where the mail has to land and there is nobody free to make sure it does.
What you get here
- Deliverability is our job, not yours
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC published and kept aligned
- Sending subdomain warmed before live traffic depends on it
- Application mail routed and every template tested
- Bounce and complaint rates watched on your behalf
- A straight answer about one recipient, on request
- Delivery history kept and searchable without building it
- Existing reputation damage audited and repaired
What ships in the standard plan here
You get a good dashboard and a plan tier. The authentication records, the warmup pace, the template testing, the suppression hygiene and the judgment call about whether five days of logs is enough are all still sitting on your side of the line.
- Deliverability is our job, not yours
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC published and kept aligned
- Sending subdomain warmed before live traffic depends on it
- Application mail routed and every template tested
- Bounce and complaint rates watched on your behalf
- A straight answer about one recipient, on request
- Delivery history kept and searchable without building it
- Existing reputation damage audited and repaired
- Support included at the entry price
- One monthly price covering the platform and the work
Where Cascadia goes further
Records published and kept aligned, a subdomain warmed on a schedule, templates tested one at a time, and a delivered rate that a person actually reads each month.
The trend gets read by a person
Delivered rate and bounce rate are held against last month rather than glanced at. Above 99 percent is the normal range for transactional mail. Anything under 98 gets opened up before you have noticed there was something to notice.
Setup is ours, not a documentation link
Records go up, the subdomain warms on a schedule, application mail gets routed, and every template is sent and read by a person before a customer sees it.
We can still answer about last month
Give us an address and a rough date and we will tell you whether the message was accepted, bounced or rejected, and what the receiving server said about it.
Damaged reputation is a job we take
If the domain has spent years mailing addresses that were never valid, we audit what is published, correct it, file delisting requests wherever you have been flagged, and clear the addresses driving the bounces.
Who this comparison is for
The dashboard is green, so nobody looks
Mail goes out and nothing appears to be wrong, which is exactly the state in which a delivered rate drifts down for six months. Nobody is holding this month against last month.
Your support tier was a pricing decision
Ticket support on Basic. Chat when you reach Foundation. Whether you can reach a person on the day mail stops landing was decided when somebody chose a plan, and it was probably chosen on volume.
The log window is shorter than the question
Basic retains one day of logs. Foundation retains five. Thirty days requires the Scale plan. Nobody reports a missing receipt within five days.
Moving your sending off Mailgun in four steps
Most of this is ours and most of it is DNS. The part nobody can compress is warming, because mailbox providers form their view of a new sending domain slowly and entirely on their own schedule.
- 1
We read what is published today
Your current SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, what the domain has actually been sending, and whether it has been flagged anywhere.
- 2
We publish records and stand up the subdomain
A dedicated sending subdomain goes up with SPF, DKIM and DMARC aligned across all three. Your primary domain keeps its reputation to itself, held apart from whatever the application is doing.
- 3
We route the mail and read every template
Your application starts sending down the authenticated path rather than out of the web server. Every template is sent and opened by a person, order confirmations included, instead of being assumed to render.
- 4
Volume climbs while we watch it
Sending rises across two to three weeks as providers learn the domain.
What clients say about working with Cascadia
“I’ve always dreaded website management, but Cascadia has done an incredible job with my WordPress site, making it one less thing for me to worry about.”
“I’ve worked with Cascadia for several years now. They are always ready to help in any way I ask and can implement my ideas with ease. A company that values their clients!”
“Cascadia has been great to work with! We recently needed some updates, and Cascadia was quick to get them completed! We highly recommend Cascadia Web Services.”
“Cascadia is very responsive and we’re happy with them as our primary IT vendor.”
“They do great work, been using for years. Prompt responses to requests.”
Ready to move from Mailgun?
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Mailgun alternative questions
Straight answers about switching, pricing, and what moves with you.
See Managed Transactional EmailWhat is a Mailgun alternative?
Any other route to getting your application mail delivered. That takes in rival platforms such as Postmark, SendGrid and Amazon SES, and it also takes in managed services like this one, where somebody runs the sending for you rather than handing you an account and a link to the documentation.
How is Cascadia different from Mailgun?
Mailgun sells you a platform and a plan tier. We sell you the work that has to happen around one. The sending domain, the authentication records, the warmup schedule, the template testing and the monthly delivery numbers are ours to get right and ours to explain when they slip. Nobody on your side logs into anything.
How far back can I look at what was sent?
On Mailgun that is a plan question. Basic retains one day of logs, Foundation retains five, and thirty days requires the Scale plan. We keep your delivery history and answer questions against it as part of the service, which reads like a detail right up until the first time somebody asks about a message from last month.
Can you move me off Mailgun without downtime?
Yes. The new sending path is built and tested alongside the one you are running, and the application only switches once messages are landing. Nothing gets turned off before the replacement is demonstrably working.
Will my emails still go out during warmup?
Yes. Warming governs how quickly volume climbs on the new domain, not whether mail goes out at all. Plan on two to three weeks to reach full volume, and expect us to tell you where you are in that ramp rather than leaving you to work it out.
What if my domain reputation is already damaged?
That is a repair job rather than a setup job, and it runs longer. We audit what is actually published, correct the records, file delisting requests anywhere the domain has been flagged, and clear out the addresses driving the bounces. Where the damage accumulated across years, expect several weeks before the numbers settle.
Does this replace Mailgun or sit on top of it?
It replaces the part you were operating. We own the sending path end to end, which leaves no platform account for anyone on your team to administer and no second invoice arriving to be reconciled against the first.
Can I keep my existing templates?
Yes. Anything built in Mailgun’s template builder gets rebuilt on the new path, and every template is sent and read during setup rather than assumed to render. The ones that break tend to be the oldest, the ones nobody has opened since they were written.
What happens to my suppression list?
It moves with you. A list of addresses that have bounced or complained is worth real money in reputation terms, and starting without it means spending your first day at full volume mailing addresses you already knew were bad.
Is this only for WordPress and WooCommerce sites?
No, though they are the common case. Anything that can send down an authenticated path can be routed, and the work on our side looks much the same whether the mail leaves a WordPress site, a custom application, or both at once.
How quickly does setup start?
Records go up within a day or two of DNS access, and templates are usually finished inside the same week. Warming sets the real timeline, so the honest answer to when it is all done is two to three weeks.
What if I want to leave?
Thirty days’ notice ends it, and everything is portable. The DNS records sat on your domain throughout because they were always yours. Templates, suppression list and sending history come back in a standard format, and we will tell you what to point the site at next so the mail does not simply stop.
Ready to stop operating your sending?
Sixty dollars a month, 25,000 delivered emails included, and the deliverability work carried by us rather than by whoever happens to have a free hour.