Best Bulk Email Services in 2026 by Sending Volume

The best bulk email service depends on how much you send and who runs the campaigns. For the lowest cost per email at millions of sends, use Amazon SES, if you have engineers to build the rest. For a sending API with bulk tooling included, use SendGrid, Mailgun, Mailtrap, or Resend. For marketers who want a campaign builder, use Brevo, which is priced mainly by emails sent, or Mailchimp, which is priced by contacts. Prices below were checked in September 2026.

What is a bulk email service?

A bulk email service sends the same message, or a personalized version of it, to a large list of people who opted in: newsletters, product announcements, seasonal campaigns, and re-engagement pushes. It isn't cold outreach to a scraped list. Mailbox providers judge bulk senders on authentication, complaints, and engagement, so the same volume that works for an opted-in list can get a purchased list filtered or blocked.

Two things decide which service fits: the pricing model and how much you want to build yourself.

The pricing model matters more than most headline rates. Some services bill by emails sent, so you pay only for what goes out. Others bill by contacts stored, so a large list costs money even in months you don't email it. If you mail a big list once a month, that difference can swing the bill by hundreds of dollars.

Bulk email services compared

Pricing compared

Bulk email services: entry paid price

Bulk email services: entry paid price

Item	Value
Brevo	$9
Mailchimp	$13
Mailgun	$15
Mailtrap	$15
SendGrid	$19.95
Resend	$20

What does it cost to email 100,000 people a month?

Entry prices hide the real difference. Here's the cheapest public plan for one monthly send to a 100,000-person list:

Brevo is left out because its price depends on both send volume and stored contacts; use its calculator for your list size. The API services don't include a campaign builder, so your code or another tool assembles and schedules each send. Mailchimp's price includes its campaign builder, automations, and reporting.

Amazon SES: the cheapest raw volume, if you build the rest

Amazon Simple Email Service is the price floor. AWS changed SES pricing on July 21, 2026. New accounts, and accounts with no SES activity since June 1, 2025, start on the Essentials plan: $0.16 per 1,000 emails for the first 10 million a month, $0.14 up to 100 million, and $0.11 beyond that, with no monthly fee and basic deliverability monitoring included. Any account can switch to à la carte pricing instead, at $0.10 per 1,000. A million emails costs about $100 à la carte or $160 on Essentials. Outgoing data is extra at $0.12 per GB, and the old 3,000-email free tier is gone for new customers.

That price buys delivery plus a few building blocks. SES stores one contact list per account with up to 20 topics, adds unsubscribe links and one-click unsubscribe headers, and updates contact preferences when people opt out. It also stores templates you create through the API. On Essentials, Virtual Deliverability Manager reports delivery, bounce, complaint, and engagement rates and lets you search 30 days of sent messages. There's no campaign builder for marketers, so engineers write the code that picks recipients, sends each campaign, and handles bounce and complaint notifications. New accounts also start in a sandbox (200 emails per 24 hours, only to verified addresses or the SES mailbox simulator) until AWS approves production access.

Dedicated IPs cost $24.95 a month each, or you can use managed dedicated IPs at $15 a month per account plus usage fees. AWS also sells Pro ($105 a month) and Enterprise ($500 a month) plans, which carry higher per-email rates and include managed dedicated IPs.

• Best for: Teams with backend engineers and enough volume that per-email savings outweigh the build cost.
• Watch for: Engineering time is the real cost. Nothing here helps a marketer ship a newsletter⁠ this afternoon.

Pricing compared

Price per 1,000 emails: SES vs Mailgun overage

Price per 1,000 emails: SES vs Mailgun overage

Item	Value
SES Essentials	$0.16
Mailgun Scale	$1.10
Mailgun Foundation	$1.30
Mailgun Basic	$1.80

SendGrid: API and campaigns from one vendor

SendGrid, owned by Twilio, sells an Email API for developers and a separate Marketing Campaigns product for marketers. On the API side, Essentials costs $19.95 a month for 50,000 emails or $34.95 for 100,000. Pro starts at $89.95 for 100,000 and scales to $1,099 for 2.5 million, with one dedicated IP and subuser management included. Premier is custom-quoted.

There's no permanent free plan. New accounts get a 60-day trial capped at 100 emails a day. Searchable email activity lasts 3 days on Essentials and 7 days on Pro, with longer history as a paid add-on.

• Best for: Teams sending a few hundred thousand to a few million emails a month who want analytics and templates without building them.
• Watch for: Short activity history on lower plans, and the marketing product is priced separately.

Mailgun: developer API with long logs

Mailgun is built for developers who want visibility into every message, plus inbound routing. Free allows 100 emails a day. Basic is $15 a month for 10,000 emails, with overage from $1.80 per 1,000 and one day of logs. Foundation is $35 for 50,000, with overage from $1.30 and 5 days of logs. Scale is $90 for 100,000, with overage from $1.10, 30 days of logs, and dedicated IP pools.

Mailgun's overage rates are far above SES's per-email price, so pick a plan that covers your normal volume rather than living on overage.

• Best for: Developers who need detailed logs, inbound routing, and volume pricing.
• Watch for: Overage adds up fast, and it's a developer tool, not a campaign builder.

Mailtrap: bulk and transactional kept apart

Mailtrap sells three separately priced products: Email API/SMTP for sending, Email Marketing for campaigns, and Email Sandbox for testing. The Email API/SMTP product sends bulk mail through a separate Bulk Stream with its own IP pools, so a big campaign doesn't share infrastructure with your password resets. Free covers 4,000 emails a month (150 a day). Basic is $15 for 10,000 (up to $30 for 100,000) with 5 days of logs, Business is $85 for 100,000 with 15 days of logs, and Enterprise is $750 for 1.5 million. Dedicated IPs and 24/7 support start on Business.

The separate Email Marketing product adds a campaign builder, lists, and automations. Free covers 500 contacts and 1,500 sends, Essential is $15 for 10,000 contacts and 30,000 sends, and Pro is $59 for 25,000 contacts and 125,000 sends.

• Best for: Developer teams sending bulk and transactional mail who want separation by default.
• Watch for: Separately priced products take more comparison work.

Resend: modern API with lightweight marketing

Resend is a developer API known for clean docs and React Email support. Free covers 3,000 emails a month (100 a day). Pro is $20 for 50,000 or $35 for 100,000, with $0.90 per extra 1,000. Scale runs from $90 for 100,000 to $1,150 for 2.5 million, and a dedicated IP costs $30 a month on Scale for senders above 3,000 emails a day.

Resend also has a separate marketing product with broadcasts and audiences, priced by contacts: 1,000 contacts free, then from $40 a month for 5,000 contacts with unlimited broadcast sends.

• Best for: Developers who want a modern API and occasional broadcasts from the same account.
• Watch for: More expensive than SES at very high volume, and the marketing tools are lighter than Mailchimp's or Brevo's.

Brevo: campaign builder priced by sends

Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) prices mainly by emails sent, the main difference from Mailchimp. Free sends 300 emails a day and stores up to 100,000 contacts. Free and Starter limit automations to 2,000 contacts. Starter begins at $9 a month for 5,000 emails, and Standard, at $18 a month, lifts that automation limit and adds A/B testing. Paid plans also cap stored contacts (the entry tier includes 500), so check the calculator with both your list size and your monthly sends.

Brevo also offers SMS, WhatsApp, and CRM features, with SMS credits sold separately.

• Best for: Small marketing teams that want a builder and send less often than their list size would suggest.
• Watch for: Contact caps on paid tiers and a daily cap on the free plan.

Mailchimp: polished builder, priced by contacts

Mailchimp has one of the most familiar campaign builders for non-technical marketers. The catch for bulk senders is pricing by contacts: subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts all count until you archive them. Free covers 250 contacts and 500 sends a month (250 a day). Essentials starts at $13 and Standard at $20 for 500 contacts, and Premium starts at $350 for 10,000. Essentials tops out at 50,000 contacts and Standard at 100,000, where Standard costs $800 a month.

• Best for: Brand-led marketers who value templates, prebuilt automations, and integrations.
• Watch for: One of the most expensive options for a large list you mail rarely. Archive unsubscribed contacts so you don't pay for them.

How to choose by volume and control

• Millions a month, engineers available: Amazon SES. SendGrid Pro if you'd rather pay for a template editor and fuller analytics than build them.
• Developer team, mixed bulk and transactional: Mailtrap for built-in separation, Mailgun for logs and routing, Resend for the cleanest API. The email API comparison⁠ goes deeper on developer features.
• Marketer, large list, infrequent sends: Brevo, after checking contact caps.
• Marketer who values the builder most: Mailchimp, if your budget absorbs contact pricing.

Whatever you pick, deliverability hygiene decides whether the mail arrives. Authenticate with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, mail only people who opted in, support one-click unsubscribe, and keep your spam complaint rate below 0.1%. Since 2024, Gmail has required anyone sending about 5,000 or more messages a day to personal Gmail accounts to use SPF, DKIM, and DMARC and to support one-click unsubscribe on marketing and subscribed messages, and it treats a 0.3% spam rate as the hard ceiling. The email deliverability guide⁠ covers the checklist, and how to reduce email bounce rate⁠ covers list cleaning.

Where Dreamlit fits

Dreamlit, the company behind this blog, isn't a bulk sending tool. If you're mailing a newsletter list, pick from the services above.

If your "bulk" email is really a SaaS product mailing its own users, and the goal is more of them activating and paying, Dreamlit takes activation email off your team's to-do list. Our experts find the gaps between signup and paid, run the emails that close them, and are accountable for the numbers. It's built for products with 500 or more signups a month.

Mailing your own product's users? See how Dreamlit works.

References

• Amazon SES pricing⁠
• AWS: Introducing Amazon SES pricing plans⁠
• Amazon SES: Request production access⁠
• Amazon SES: List management⁠
• Amazon SES: Subscription management⁠
• Amazon SES: Virtual Deliverability Manager dashboard⁠
• SendGrid Email API pricing⁠
• Mailgun pricing⁠
• Mailtrap pricing⁠
• Mailtrap bulk stream⁠
• Resend pricing⁠
• Brevo pricing⁠
• Brevo: Free plan limits⁠
• Mailchimp pricing⁠
• Mailchimp: About pricing plans⁠
• Google: Email sender guidelines⁠

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Frequently asked questions

What is the best bulk email service?

It depends on who runs the sends. Engineering teams sending millions of emails pay least with Amazon SES. Developers who want bulk tooling without building it pick SendGrid, Mailgun, Mailtrap, or Resend. Marketers who want a campaign builder pick Brevo, which prices mainly by emails sent, or Mailchimp, which prices by contacts.

Which bulk email service is cheapest at high volume?

Amazon SES. New accounts start on the Essentials plan at $0.16 per 1,000 emails, about $160 for a million, but any account can switch to à la carte pricing at $0.10 per 1,000, about $100 for a million, before data charges. SES includes a basic contact list, unsubscribe handling, and a deliverability dashboard on Essentials, but no campaign builder, so you write the code that assembles and sends each campaign.

Is bulk email the same as spam?

No. Spam goes to people who never asked for it. Legitimate bulk email goes to people who opted in, with a working unsubscribe link and honest sender details. Mailbox providers judge you on authentication, complaints, and engagement, so an opted-in list can usually scale while a scraped list at the same volume is far more likely to be filtered or blocked.

Do I need a dedicated IP for bulk sending?

Usually only once you send hundreds of thousands of emails a month at a steady pace, because a dedicated IP needs consistent volume to stay warm. Below that, a provider's shared pool is safer. Amazon SES charges $24.95 a month per standard dedicated IP, SendGrid includes one on Pro, and Resend sells one for $30 a month on Scale.

Do bulk email services charge by contacts or by emails sent?

Both models exist. Amazon SES, SendGrid's Email API, Mailgun, Mailtrap's Email API, and Resend's transactional plans charge by emails sent. Mailchimp charges by contacts, counting subscribed, unsubscribed, and non-subscribed contacts. Brevo charges mainly by emails but also caps stored contacts on paid plans.

How do I keep bulk email out of spam?

Authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, mail only people who opted in, support one-click unsubscribe, and keep your spam complaint rate below 0.1% (Gmail's hard limit is 0.3%). Remove hard bounces and long-inactive addresses, and warm up new domains or IPs gradually.