Plunk alternatives
10 Best Plunk Alternatives for 2026 (Priced at 5,000 Contacts)
Plunk (useplunk.com) is hard to argue with on price: open source under AGPL-3.0, free to self-host, and $0.001 an email with unlimited contacts on the hosted version. People look for an alternative for three reasons that have nothing to do with the rate. The per-email model turns against a busy sender past a few tens of thousands of emails a month; the product is a young one from a small team, which some buyers count as a risk; and the sequences are yours to design from nothing. These 10 alternatives cover all three, and each entry says who the tool does not suit, ours included. Every price on this page comes from each vendor's own pricing page, at one scenario: 5,000 subscribed contacts sending 25,000 emails a month, on monthly billing wherever a vendor offers a choice, with Plunk itself shown at that email volume.
Every price on this page is as of September 22, 2026, from the vendor's own pricing page.
Quick comparison
Scroll to compare
| Tool | Starting price | At 5,000 contacts | Free plan or trial | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 SendHeronOur pick | €19/mo (Starter, 10,000 contacts) | €19/mo (Starter covers 10,000 contacts and 50,000 emails a month) | 7-day free trial, 1,000 contacts and 5,000 sends, card at checkout | a drafted lifecycle suite from an EU company, with sends included |
 Resend | Free to 3,000 emails a month; Pro $20/mo; marketing free to 1,000 contacts | $60/mo (Pro at 50,000 emails, $20, plus Pro marketing at 5,000 contacts, $40) | Free tier: 3,000 emails a month and 1,000 marketing contacts | developers who want the best API and a free tier to 3,000 emails |
 Sequenzy | Free to 2,500 emails a month; paid from $19/mo at 15,000 emails | $29/mo (30,000 emails; the volume steps are 15,000 then 30,000) | Free plan to 2,500 emails a month, with a Sequenzy watermark | the same pricing model with a bigger free plan and volume steps |
 Bento | $29/mo (Marketing Platform, up to 5,000 active users) | $29/mo (5,000 active users, unlimited marketing sends) | 30-day free trial; no free plan | a flat $29 with a CRM built in |
 Loops | Free to 1,000 contacts; paid from $49/mo | $49/mo (Growth, 5,000 subscribed contacts) | Free to 1,000 subscribed contacts and 4,000 sends in any 30 days, with Loops branding | SaaS teams that want unlimited sends and a polished editor |
 MailerLite | Free to 250 subscribers; Comfort from $12/mo, Power from $25/mo | $49/mo (Comfort, 5,000 subscribers) or $69/mo (Power, unlimited emails) | Free plan to 250 subscribers; 14-day trial of the paid features | EU data storage with landing pages and forms |
 EmailOctopus | Free to 2,500 subscribers; Pro from €9/mo billed yearly (€10 monthly) | €26/mo billed yearly at 5,000 subscribers (€29 billed monthly), 50,000 emails a month | Free plan to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with branding; no trial | the cheapest EU-hosted newsletter tool with a big free plan |
 Brevo | Free plan; Starter from €7/mo at 5,000 emails | €35/mo (Starter at 30,000 emails; the slider has no 25,000 step, and automation needs Standard) | Free plan, no card | volume pricing with SMS and WhatsApp on the same bill |
 Customer.io | $100/mo (Essentials, billed monthly) | $100/mo (Essentials, 5,000 profiles, 1 million emails included) | No free plan; a startup program gives a year free to companies that have raised under $10M | teams that have outgrown email-only and need every channel |
 Mailchimp | Free under 250 contacts; Essentials from $13/mo, Standard from $20/mo | $100/mo (Standard, 2,501 to 5,000 contacts; Essentials is $75) | Free plan under 250 contacts; 14-day trial of Standard | newsletter teams that want the biggest catalogue |
All prices come from each vendor's public pricing page, on monthly billing. The scenario is 5,000 subscribed contacts sending 25,000 emails a month; a vendor that prices on emails rather than contacts, Plunk included, is shown at the step that covers that volume.
What is Plunk?
Plunk calls itself "the open-source email platform" and aims at SaaS businesses, indie hackers and developers. One product covers transactional email over an API and SMTP, campaign broadcasts to a list or a segment, and event-triggered automations with delays, conditions and branching, plus dynamic segmentation, custom domains with DKIM, SPF and DMARC set up for you, inbound email with webhooks, open and click analytics, and REST SDKs for Node.js and Python. Its site describes the hosted service as EU-hosted and GDPR compliant.
The code is AGPL-3.0 licensed and deploys with Docker Compose, so anybody can inspect it, fork it, or run it on their own infrastructure with full data ownership and no per-email cost. That is the thing Plunk has that almost nothing else in this category does, and it is why AI assistants cite it as a reference point when somebody asks for an open-source email tool.
What people outgrow is the shape of the bill and the size of the product. Per-email pricing is the cheapest model in the world for a big quiet list and the most expensive one for a small busy one, and a two-person open-source project cannot offer the editor depth, the drafted lifecycle suite or the support tiers of the tools below. Neither is a flaw. They are the trade.
Plunk pricing explained
Plunk has two hosted plans and one non-plan. Free forever covers 1,000 emails a month with no card, every feature (transactional, automations, campaigns, custom domains, tracking, unlimited contacts) and Plunk branding on the emails. Pay as you grow is $0.001 an email, which is $1 per 1,000, with no base fee, no branding, unlimited emails, and a monthly spend cap you set yourself so a runaway automation cannot surprise you. Every feature is on every plan; there are no tiers and no add-ons.
Self-hosted is free at any size. The AGPL-3.0 code runs from Docker Compose on your own infrastructure, so the licence cost is zero forever and the running cost is your server and your sending provider. What you take on is deliverability, upgrades and uptime, which are real work and the reason most people pay someone.
The arithmetic is the whole comparison. At 25,000 emails a month the hosted plan is $25; at 50,000 it is $50; at 100,000 it is $100; at 500,000 it is $500. Contacts never cost anything, so a 100,000-contact list that mails once a month pays $100 and a 2,000-contact list that mails every day pays about $60. Against contact-priced tools with pooled or unlimited sends, Plunk wins when the list is large and the sending is light, and loses when the reverse is true, and the crossover comes earlier than most people expect: SendHeron's €19 Starter carries 50,000 emails a month, which is $50 of Plunk sending.
- Free
- $0
- 1,000 emails a month, Plunk branding, every feature
- Pay as you grow
- $0.001 per email
- No base fee, no branding, a monthly spend cap you set
- Self-hosted
- Free
- AGPL-3.0, Docker Compose, your own infrastructure
Per email, $1 per 1,000; no tiers, every feature on every plan.
1. Best for a drafted lifecycle suite from an EU company, with sends included: SendHeron
SendHeronOur pick
The sequences drafted from your website, every contact in Germany, and 50,000 emails a month inside the €19 Starter tier.
SendHeron keeps the two things a Plunk user chose Plunk for, contact data in the EU and a price a bootstrapped SaaS can carry, and adds the two things Plunk does not have: a drafted lifecycle suite and a send allowance that does not tick per email. Starter is €19 a month for up to 10,000 subscribed contacts and 50,000 emails, Growth is €49 for 40,000 contacts and 150,000 emails, Scale is €99 for 100,000 and 250,000, and Max is €179 for 200,000 and 500,000. Every feature is on every tier, only subscribed contacts count, and unsubscribed or bounced addresses are stored free. It is an EU company with contact data stored in Germany and a published sub-processor list.
The setup is the part nothing else on this page does. Paste your website URL, SendHeron proposes the tags and events your product should emit, then drafts a lifecycle suite in your brand voice: welcome, trial, win-back, cancel-save, as sequences with real triggers, delays and branches, and the snippets your developer needs to wire each signal. Everything is a draft. Nothing activates or sends until you read it and switch it on, one sequence at a time.
Where Plunk still wins, plainly: you can self-host it and SendHeron you cannot; it is open source and SendHeron is not; its free plan is permanent where SendHeron's trial is 7 days; and below roughly 20,000 emails a month, depending on the exchange rate, $0.001 an email is less than €19. If your list is large and quiet or you want the code under your own roof, Plunk is the right call and this page says so.
Who SendHeron suits, and who it does not
SendHeron fits the SaaS team that has outgrown metered sending, wants the lifecycle suite drafted rather than designed, and has to answer "where is my customer data" to a European buyer. The visual sequence builder branches on tags and properties with AND and OR rules; tags and segments start sequences from your own backend; receipts and campaigns share one account, one reputation and one suppression list, and transactional mail keeps flowing up to 10 percent past a spent pool. Founders with several products get a workspace each under one subscription.
It is the wrong tool for a self-hoster, for anybody who needs the source, for a product under a few thousand emails a month that Plunk's free plan already covers, and for a team that needs push, SMS, in-app, a company data model or a client login. Its largest tier is 200,000 contacts.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
The meter. Plunk bills every email; SendHeron's Starter includes 50,000 a month for €19, which is $50 of Plunk sending, and Growth includes 150,000 for €49 against $150. Past the crossover the gap widens with every send, and a lifecycle suite that actually runs (welcome, trial, win-back, dunning, receipts) sends more than people budget for.
The blank canvas. Plunk gives you an automation builder and an empty workspace; SendHeron reads your site and hands you a drafted suite with the tag schema to wire. That is a different first week.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Export your contacts from Plunk, then upsert each one over the API with the tags your sequences will trigger on; the Node SDK wraps the calls and the API reference states the rate limits to pace against. Plunk's events become SendHeron tags or tracked events, whichever your sequences branch on. Load your unsubscribes as suppressions before anything sends.
Templates paste in as HTML and you can keep them as HTML or rebuild them in the block builder. Automations are rebuilt, because the two tools model branching differently; the setup drafts a starting suite from your website and we help map the old flows onto it during onboarding. Transactional sends move to the send-template endpoint, which the SDK wraps with typed outcomes.
- Starting price
- €19/mo (Starter, 10,000 contacts and 50,000 emails a month)
- Billed on
- Subscribed contacts, with a pooled monthly send allowance; unsubscribed and bounced stored free
- Free plan or trial
- 7-day free trial, 1,000 contacts and 5,000 sends, card at checkout
- Standout
- The AI setup drafts a lifecycle suite from your website URL; a person activates each sequence
2. Best for developers who want the best API and a free tier to 3,000 emails: Resend
Resend
The developer-first email API, free to 3,000 emails and 1,000 contacts, with broadcasts and automations in a separate marketing product.
Resend is the tool a Plunk user is most likely to have considered already, because it sells the same thing to the same person: an email API a developer likes, with a marketing product beside it. Transactional: free for 3,000 emails a month at 100 a day, Pro at $20 a month for 50,000 emails or $35 for 100,000, Scale from $90 for 100,000 up to $1,150 for 2.5 million, with $0.90 per extra 1,000. Marketing: free to 1,000 contacts, then Pro marketing at $40 a month for 5,000 contacts, $80 for 10,000, $180 for 25,000 and $250 for 50,000, with unlimited broadcasts and 10,000 automation runs a month, then $0.0015 a run. Billing is monthly only.
At the reference scenario that is $20 plus $40, so $60 a month, against Plunk's $25 for the same 25,000 emails. Where Resend is cheaper than Plunk is transactional volume: 50,000 emails is $20 on Resend Pro and $50 on Plunk, and 100,000 is $35 against $100. Where it is cheaper than everything, including SendHeron, is under 1,000 contacts, where both halves are free.
On residency, Resend offers an EU sending region, and its own documentation says region selection controls where mail is sent from and does not control where customer data is stored, which is the United States regardless. Plunk's EU hosting is the thing you give up.
Who Resend suits, and who it does not
Resend suits the developer-led product where every email is rendered by your own code and marketing is a handful of broadcasts a year. The SDKs, the documentation and the developer experience are the best in the category, and the transactional pricing beats Plunk's from about 20,000 emails a month.
It does not suit a team that wants lifecycle sequences designed in a visual builder as the centre of the product, a team whose contact data has to stay in the EU, or anybody who wants the code. It is closed source and hosted in the US.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
The per-email rate at volume. Plunk's $0.001 an email is $100 at 100,000; Resend Pro is $35. If your sending is mostly transactional and it is growing, this is the cheaper meter.
Product size and pedigree, with the trade stated: Resend is a larger company with a longer roadmap, and it is closed source, US-hosted and split into two products where Plunk is one.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Contacts import over the API into a Resend audience; templates become code (React Email or your own HTML); transactional sends move to the API in an afternoon with the SDK, which is the same shape as Plunk's. Broadcasts replace campaigns and automations replace Plunk's, with the run count in mind.
Under 1,000 contacts, run Resend beside Plunk for a month at no cost and decide with real numbers.
- Starting price
- $20/mo (Pro, 50,000 emails); marketing free to 1,000 contacts, then $40 at 5,000
- Billed on
- API emails sent, plus contacts for the marketing product; monthly billing only
- Free plan or trial
- Free: 3,000 emails a month and 1,000 marketing contacts
- Standout
- The best developer experience in the category, and cheaper than Plunk from about 20,000 transactional emails a month
3. Best for the same pricing model with a bigger free plan and volume steps: Sequenzy
Sequenzy
Pay for emails sent and nothing else, like Plunk, but in steps: free to 2,500 a month, $19 at 15,000, $29 at 30,000, with unlimited contacts and a long feature list.
Sequenzy is the closest thing on this page to Plunk's pricing argument, and it says so at the top of its pricing page: pay for emails sent, nothing else. The free plan covers 2,500 emails a month with every feature and a watermark, which is two and a half times Plunk's free allowance. Paid steps are $19 a month at 15,000 emails, $29 at 30,000, $49 at 60,000, $99 at 120,000 and $199 at 300,000, with Enterprise above. Contacts, sending domains, lists, segments and team members are unlimited on every plan, and an SMS and MMS add-on is $16 a month with 1,000 credits and a US or Canada toll-free number.
The feature table is long: a visual automation builder with event, tag, list and inactivity triggers, a transactional REST API with templates and attachments, campaigns with send-time optimisation and A/B tests, reply tracking with a team inbox, revenue attribution against Stripe, Paddle and Lemon Squeezy, Shopify and WooCommerce automations, AI-drafted sequences, and an MCP server and CLI. Dedicated IP pools are on paid plans.
Two things a Plunk user will notice. The steps are coarser than Plunk's linear rate, which cuts both ways: 30,000 emails is $29 here and $30 on Plunk, but 16,000 emails is $29 here and $16 on Plunk. And the legal entity is a Delaware LLC whose pricing and privacy pages do not name a hosting region, where Plunk states EU hosting. It is also closed source.
Who Sequenzy suits, and who it does not
Sequenzy suits the bootstrapped SaaS that likes Plunk's model but wants a bigger free tier, revenue attribution against a payment provider, reply tracking, and a founder-run support line. At 30,000 emails for $29 it is essentially Plunk's price with more product around it.
It does not suit a self-hoster, anybody who needs a stated data location, or a busy sender at 300,000 emails a month, where $199 is where contact-priced tools start to win. It is a small company, like Plunk.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
Very little on price, and that is the point: this is the same model with a rounder feature set and a free plan that goes further. The AI-drafted sequences and the payment-provider attribution are the concrete gains.
What you give up is the source and the EU statement. If either was why you chose Plunk, Sequenzy is a step sideways, not up.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Contacts come in over the API, the CLI or a CSV; Sequenzy's own testimonials describe agents scripting the sync from another provider through its MCP server. Load your unsubscribes first.
Rebuild automations in the builder, whose triggers (events, tags, lists, inactivity) are a superset of Plunk's, and connect your payment provider before you build anything revenue-driven.
- Starting price
- $19/mo at 15,000 emails; free to 2,500 emails a month
- Billed on
- Emails sent per month, in volume steps; contacts, domains and seats unlimited
- Free plan or trial
- Free plan to 2,500 emails a month, with a watermark
- Standout
- Plunk's pricing model with a bigger free plan, revenue attribution and a team inbox
4. Best for a flat $29 with a CRM built in: Bento
Bento
Marketing, CRM, automation and forms for $29 a month up to 5,000 active users, with unlimited marketing sends and transactional as a metered add-on.
Bento is the flat-price answer to Plunk's meter. The Marketing Platform is $29 a month for up to 5,000 active users and includes unlimited marketing sends on paid plans, automations, team seats, segmentation, a CRM, forms and popups, deliverability help and reports. Above 5,000 it is $0.01 per active user to 50,000, $0.009 to 250,000 and $0.008 beyond. Transactional email is separate and metered like Plunk's: the first 100 emails free, then $5 a month up to 12,500 emails and $0.09 per 1,000 after, which is cheaper than Plunk's $1 per 1,000. Bento Chat, a shared inbox with live chat and SMS, is $30 a month on top.
An active user is a subscribed user or anyone with an event in the last 30 days, so a dormant part of your list does not count. There is no free plan, by design, but there is a 30-day trial with no charge during it. Bento is a product of an Australian company and its pricing page does not name a hosting region.
Who Bento suits, and who it does not
Bento suits the small SaaS or creator business whose marketing sending has grown past what a per-email meter makes comfortable, and that wants a CRM and forms beside the email. At $29 with unlimited marketing sends it is the cheapest way on this page to stop counting.
It does not suit a self-hoster, a buyer with a residency requirement (hosting is not stated), or a product still small enough that Plunk's free plan covers it. Its transactional product is a second line.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
The meter on marketing mail. Plunk charges every campaign send; Bento's marketing sends are unlimited on paid plans, subject to fair use. A weekly newsletter to 5,000 people is $20 a month on Plunk and $0 extra on Bento.
The single-purpose tool. Bento adds a CRM, forms, popups and a chat inbox; Plunk is email.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Bento lists migration help on its pricing page; export contacts from Plunk, hand them over, and let the team import them. Suppress your unsubscribes first. Transactional sends move to Bento's transactional product or stay on Plunk, which is a reasonable split.
Rebuild automations as Bento flows during the 30-day trial, which is long enough to run a real sequence end to end.
- Starting price
- $29/mo (Marketing Platform, up to 5,000 active users)
- Billed on
- Active users, meaning subscribed or active in the last 30 days; $0.01 each from 5,001
- Free plan or trial
- 30-day free trial; no free plan by design
- Standout
- Unlimited marketing sends for a flat $29, with a CRM and forms included
5. Best for SaaS teams that want unlimited sends and a polished editor: Loops
Loops
Marketing, lifecycle and transactional email in one product, free to 1,000 contacts and $49 at 5,000, with no send cap on paid plans.
Loops is the tool most SaaS teams land on when they want an email product rather than an email primitive. It is priced on subscribed contacts only: free up to 1,000 subscribed contacts with 4,000 sends in any rolling 30 days and Loops branding, then $49 a month at 5,000, $99 at 10,000, $149 at 15,000, $199 at 25,000 and $399 at 100,000. Paid plans have unlimited sends at up to 1,000 emails a second, free team seats, and transactional included. The editor works from reusable components and one theme, and the integrations list covers Stripe, Supabase, Clerk, PostHog, Segment, Auth0, Zapier and Make. It also ships a CLI and an MCP server.
For a Plunk user the two facts to weigh are the inversion of the model and the hosting. Loops charges for contacts and gives sends away; Plunk does the opposite. And Loops's privacy policy places its operator in the United States with data transferred there and no EU option, where Plunk states EU hosting.
Who Loops suits, and who it does not
Loops suits the product-led SaaS with a modest list and heavy sending, where unlimited sends on a contact price is the best deal on this page, and the team that wants a finished editor and a long integrations list rather than an API and a builder.
It does not suit a large quiet list (25,000 contacts mailing monthly is $199 on Loops and $25 on Plunk), a residency requirement, or anybody who wants the source.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
The meter, entirely, for a busy small list: a 3,000-contact product that sends daily is about $90 a month on Plunk and $49 on Loops. And the product gap: Loops is a polished, finished thing with a brand behind it.
What you give up is EU hosting, the code, and the ability to store a huge list for free.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Export contacts from Plunk and import them into Loops's audience by CSV or its contacts API. Suppress your unsubscribes first. Transactional sends move to Loops's transactional API, included on paid plans.
Rebuild automations as loops; the trigger set covers most SaaS journeys. Templates paste in as HTML or are rebuilt on Loops's components.
- Starting price
- $49/mo at 5,000 subscribed contacts; free to 1,000
- Billed on
- Subscribed contacts only; unlimited sends and free seats on paid plans
- Free plan or trial
- Free to 1,000 subscribed contacts and 4,000 sends in 30 days, with branding
- Standout
- Unlimited sends on a contact price, with transactional included
6. Best for EU data storage with landing pages and forms: MailerLite
MailerLite
Every feature on every paid plan, data stored in the EU, and $49 at 5,000 subscribers on Comfort or $69 on Power with unlimited emails.
MailerLite keeps the EU and swaps the meter for a subscriber count. The free plan covers 250 subscribers, 2,500 emails a month, 3 automations and 2 seats. On monthly billing, Comfort is $12 a month at 500 subscribers, $33 at 2,500, $49 at 5,000 and $89 at 10,000, with emails capped at ten times the subscriber count, 50 automations and 3 seats; Power is $25 at 500, $49 at 2,500, $69 at 5,000 and $129 at 10,000, with unlimited emails, seats and automations and multiple automation triggers. Yearly billing takes 10 percent off, and there is a 14-day trial of the paid features.
Beyond email it has unlimited websites and landing pages on Power, forms and popups, digital products, bookings and paid newsletters, plus an MCP integration for Claude and ChatGPT listed on the free plan. Transactional email is a separate product, MailerSend. The pricing page's FAQ states that data is stored in the European Union and that the company is ISO 27001 certified.
Who MailerLite suits, and who it does not
MailerLite suits the founder or creator whose SaaS has a content side and who wants EU storage in a product a marketer can run. Power at $69 for 5,000 subscribers with unlimited sends is a strong price for a busy sender.
It does not suit a developer who chose Plunk for the API and the builder; MailerLite's automation is general-purpose and transactional is a second product. And it is closed source.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
The meter, while keeping the EU. Plunk's EU hosting is one of the few things on this page MailerLite also offers, and Power's unlimited emails end the per-send arithmetic.
The single-purpose tool: landing pages, forms and paid newsletters come with the email.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Import subscribers by CSV or API, with groups standing in for tags, and suppress unsubscribes first. Transactional sends need a home; MailerSend is a second account.
Rebuild automations in the builder, using Power's multiple triggers so a Plunk automation with several entry events becomes one MailerLite automation.
- Starting price
- $12/mo (Comfort, 500 subscribers); Power from $25/mo
- Billed on
- Subscribers; Comfort caps emails at ten times the count, Power is unlimited
- Free plan or trial
- Free plan to 250 subscribers; 14-day trial of paid features
- Standout
- Landing pages, forms and paid newsletters beside the email, with EU data storage
7. Best for the cheapest EU-hosted newsletter tool with a big free plan: EmailOctopus
EmailOctopus
Free to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, then €26 a month billed yearly at 5,000 subscribers, hosted on AWS in the EU.
EmailOctopus is the low-cost campaign tool of this list, and for a Plunk user whose email is mostly a newsletter it may be the whole answer. The Starter plan is free for 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with EmailOctopus branding, 30-day reports, one landing page, one form and one user. Pro, in the EUR the site serves in Europe, is €9 a month billed yearly at 500 subscribers, €16 at 2,500, €26 at 5,000, €36 at 10,000 and €78 at 25,000, with ten times the subscriber count in emails, full design control, reports kept forever, unlimited landing pages and forms and unlimited users; monthly billing is about 10 percent more. There is no trial, by design: the free plan is the trial and has no time limit.
It is a UK company, and its GDPR page says the application and the data are hosted by Amazon Web Services in the EU region, with the sending servers in the EU too. Automation exists but it is a newsletter tool first, and there is no transactional API in the main product.
Who EmailOctopus suits, and who it does not
EmailOctopus suits the small list that mails a newsletter and wants the lowest possible bill with EU hosting. Free to 2,500 subscribers is the most generous contact-based free plan on this page.
It does not suit a SaaS whose email is event-driven lifecycle logic or transactional, which is most of what Plunk is used for. Compare it against your campaigns, not your automations.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
The meter on newsletters, with a free plan that covers a real audience: 2,500 subscribers mailing weekly is 10,000 emails a month, free here and $10 a month on Plunk's paid plan.
What you give up is the automation depth, the transactional API and the source.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Import subscribers by CSV, suppress unsubscribes first, and rebuild your campaigns in the editor. Leave transactional sends on Plunk or move them to a transactional API; EmailOctopus is not that product.
Watch the subscriber bands: the price steps at 2,500, 5,000 and 10,000, so clean the list before the first invoice.
- Starting price
- €9/mo billed yearly (Pro, 500 subscribers); free to 2,500 subscribers
- Billed on
- Subscribers, with an email allowance of ten times the count
- Free plan or trial
- Free plan to 2,500 subscribers and 10,000 emails a month, with branding
- Standout
- The most generous contact-based free plan on this page, hosted on AWS in the EU
8. Best for volume pricing with SMS and WhatsApp on the same bill: Brevo
Brevo
A multichannel suite priced on emails sent like Plunk, free to start, €7 a month from 5,000 emails, with automation from the €15 Standard plan.
Brevo, the French company formerly Sendinblue, prices on email volume the way Plunk does, in steps rather than per email, and wraps a much larger suite around it: email, SMS, WhatsApp, web and mobile push, live chat, a chatbot, a sales CRM and a loyalty programme. On monthly billing: a free plan with no card; Starter from €7 a month at 5,000 emails and €35 at 30,000, with a contact cap on the low steps (500 contacts at 5,000 emails) and no automation; Standard from €15 a month at 5,000 emails with marketing automation, A/B testing, send-time optimisation and one landing page; and Professional at €499 a month from 150,000 emails. Yearly billing saves 10 percent.
The slider has no 25,000-email step, so the reference scenario lands on 30,000 at €35 on Starter, against Plunk's $25 for 25,000. Automation is a Standard feature, so the lifecycle logic starts at €15. Transactional email over SMTP and API is included; SMS credits are sold separately. The company is in Paris and the pricing page does not name a hosting region.
Who Brevo suits, and who it does not
Brevo suits a business that wants SMS or WhatsApp in the same journeys as email at a small-business price, and that likes volume pricing but wants a mature, marketer-friendly suite around it.
It does not suit a developer who chose Plunk for the API-first workflow; Brevo is built for marketers first. And Starter is not a lifecycle tool, so compare Standard.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
The single channel and the small product, while keeping volume pricing. A weekly newsletter plus SMS reminders from one automation is something Plunk cannot do at any price.
What you give up is the source and the EU hosting statement; Brevo's pricing page does not name a region.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Export contacts from Plunk into Brevo lists by CSV or API, with attributes standing in for properties. Rebuild automations as Standard-plan automations and wire transactional sends to the SMTP relay or API.
Trial Standard, not Starter, for the automation side; Starter has none.
- Starting price
- €7/mo (Starter, 5,000 emails); automation from €15/mo on Standard
- Billed on
- Emails per month in volume steps, with a contact cap per step on Starter
- Free plan or trial
- Free plan, no card
- Standout
- Email, SMS, WhatsApp, push and chat from one suite, priced on volume
9. Best for teams that have outgrown email-only and need every channel: Customer.io
Customer.io
The platform end of the spectrum: email, push, in-app, SMS and WhatsApp from one workflow, a US or EU data center on every plan, from $100 a month.
Customer.io is on this page as the ceiling, for the Plunk user whose product has grown into a mobile app, a support function and a data model with objects in it. Essentials starts at $100 a month, billed monthly, for 5,000 profiles and includes 1 million emails a month, unlimited push and in-app messages, WhatsApp and LINE, a visual workflow builder, an AI agent, unlimited API calls and an MCP server. Extra profiles are $0.009 each and extra emails $0.12 per 1,000; Premium starts at $1,000 a month billed yearly. There is no free plan, but a startup program gives companies that have raised under $10M a full year free.
The row that matters most here is the data center: US or EU, chosen at signup, on every plan. It is one of two tools on this page other than Plunk itself with a stated EU option (SendHeron and MailerLite state EU storage; Customer.io offers a choice). It is also four times Plunk's price at the reference scenario and a product sized for a team.
Who Customer.io suits, and who it does not
Customer.io suits the company with a growth team, a mobile app that needs push, and support that will use in-app messaging. At that size the $100 floor is a rounding error.
It does not suit the two-person SaaS that chose Plunk for its price. You would pay four times as much for channels you do not run.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
The channel ceiling. Plunk is email; Customer.io follows you into the app and the phone. And the data model: objects, segments over nested data, reverse ETL.
What you give up is the price, the source and the simplicity. Take the startup program if you qualify; it removes the first of those for a year.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Contacts come in over Customer.io's API or a CDP; the event schema is the real work, because Customer.io is built around events and attributes, so map Plunk's events before you import anything.
Budget for the team, not the tool. The reason Customer.io migrations take weeks is deciding who owns each campaign.
- Starting price
- $100/mo (Essentials, 5,000 profiles, billed monthly)
- Billed on
- Profiles, people and objects; $0.009 per extra profile, $0.12 per extra 1,000 emails
- Free plan or trial
- No free plan; a year free through the startup program if you have raised under $10M
- Standout
- Email, push, in-app, SMS and WhatsApp from one workflow, with US or EU data centers on every plan
10. Best for newsletter teams that want the biggest catalogue: Mailchimp
Mailchimp
The incumbent: $100 a month on Standard at 5,000 contacts, with sends capped at twelve times the contact count and the whole audience billed, unsubscribes included.
Mailchimp is here because every list has it, and because a Plunk user who wants the opposite of Plunk (the largest template and integration catalogue, the biggest ecosystem of contractors) will end up looking at it. In USD: a free plan under 250 contacts with 500 sends a month; Essentials from $13 a month at 500 contacts and $75 at 5,000, with sends capped at ten times contacts and four steps per flow; Standard from $20 at 500, $100 at 2,501 to 5,000 and $135 at 5,001 to 10,000, with twelve times the contacts in sends and up to 200 flow points; and Premium at $350 for 5,000. There is a 14-day trial of Standard.
The billing unit is the total audience, including contacts who have unsubscribed, which is as far from Plunk's unlimited free contacts as pricing models get. Servers are in the United States and there is no EU hosting option.
Who Mailchimp suits, and who it does not
Mailchimp suits a marketing team whose email is campaigns and newsletters, that values the ecosystem, and that hires people who already know it.
It does not suit anybody who chose Plunk for the price, the API, the EU hosting or the source. It is the opposite choice on every axis, which is sometimes exactly what a growing team wants.
The Plunk limit you are escaping
The small product. Mailchimp has a template for everything and an integration with everything, and a Plunk user who has spent a weekend on HTML email may value that.
Everything else runs the wrong way: contact pricing that counts unsubscribes, send caps, flow-point limits, US-only hosting, and a bill four times Plunk's at 5,000 contacts.
What migrating from Plunk actually involves
Import contacts by CSV into an audience, and archive rather than import your unsubscribes so they are not billed. Rebuild automations as Customer Journeys within Standard's flow-point cap. Transactional sends move to Mailchimp's separate transactional product or stay on Plunk.
Check the contact band before you commit; at 5,001 contacts you cross into the $135 band.
- Starting price
- $13/mo (Essentials, 500 contacts); Standard $100 at 5,000
- Billed on
- Total audience including unsubscribed contacts, in bands, with a send cap per plan
- Free plan or trial
- Free plan under 250 contacts; 14-day trial of Standard
- Standout
- The largest template and integration catalogue in the category
How we evaluated
We compared every tool against Plunk on five things that matter to someone leaving a per-email tool: the bill at 5,000 subscribed contacts sending 25,000 emails a month on monthly billing, what the bill is calculated on, whether there is a free plan or a trial, where the data is hosted, and whether lifecycle automation with real branching is included at that price. Every figure comes from the vendor's own pricing page. Plunk's own volume figures on this page ($25 at 25,000 emails, $100 at 100,000) are its published $0.001 rate multiplied out.
Each entry names where the tool is the wrong choice, including ours. SendHeron's entry says you cannot self-host it, that it is not open source, that its trial is 7 days where Plunk's free plan is permanent, and that below roughly 20,000 emails a month Plunk is cheaper, because a comparison against an open-source tool that hides those things would be an advertisement.
How to choose the right alternative
Start with whether you self-host. If you do, or you might, nothing on this page replaces Plunk: every alternative here is closed source and hosted, and the honest advice is to stay on Plunk and pay attention to the meter as you grow. This page is for the other readers.
If the meter is the problem, decide what shape your sending is. A busy small list wants unlimited or pooled sends on a contact price: Loops at $49 for 5,000 with unlimited sends, MailerLite Power at $69 with unlimited emails, Bento at $29 with unlimited marketing sends, or SendHeron at €19 with 50,000 emails inside the tier. A large quiet list wants to stay on volume pricing, and Sequenzy ($29 at 30,000 emails, free to 2,500) is Plunk's model with a bigger free plan and more product; Brevo (€35 at 30,000) adds SMS and WhatsApp.
If keeping data in the EU is why you chose Plunk, the shortlist is SendHeron (EU company, data in Germany), MailerLite (EU storage), EmailOctopus (AWS EU region) and Customer.io (US or EU data center, chosen at signup). Loops, Resend and Mailchimp keep data in the United States; Bento, Brevo and Sequenzy do not state a region.
If the blank builder is the problem, SendHeron is the only tool here that drafts the lifecycle suite from your website and has a person approve it; Sequenzy drafts individual sequences with AI. If you need a second channel, Brevo has SMS and WhatsApp at a small-business price and Customer.io has all of them at a platform price.
The pricing page sets SendHeron against other lifecycle platforms and transactional APIs in one table at the same scenario, and SendHeron vs Loops and SendHeron vs Customer.io go feature by feature.
Moving over is the easy part
Contacts move in one file. Export your list from Plunk and upload it in the dashboard, where it is read as a spreadsheet: you choose the email column and the name and tag columns, and every subscribed address is checked on the way in, with a report of anything refused and why. For a sync job that keeps your own database in step, upsert each contact with PUT /contacts instead, which the Node SDK wraps.
Unsubscribes come across as suppressions, so nobody who opted out of Plunk's mail hears from you by accident: leave them out of the file and load each address with POST /suppressions, and any send to it is refused with a stable reason you can read back.
Templates are portable if they are HTML. Paste them in and keep editing them as HTML, or rebuild them in the block builder, and a block template converts back to HTML whenever you want it to. Sequences have to be rebuilt, because no two tools model branching the same way. That is the part the AI setup is for: paste your website URL and it drafts a lifecycle suite, tag schema included, as drafts you edit and activate one at a time. We help you map Plunk's flows onto it during onboarding.
Frequently asked questions
Further reading
- The REST API, scopes and rate limits
- Transactional and marketing email on one account, and what happens to a bounce
- Templates: blocks or HTML, compiled on the server
- The Node SDK
- GDPR, data residency and the sub-processor list
- Free DMARC record generator
- Loops vs Customer.io for SaaS
- SendHeron pricing, with the competitor comparison
- How the visual sequence builder works
- Tags and segments
- EU data residency, and what we can and cannot prove
Compare other platforms
The same figures, from another vendor's side.
- AlternativesLoops alternatives10 tools compared at 5,000 contacts.
- AlternativesCustomer.io alternatives10 tools compared at 5,000 contacts.
- AlternativesSequenzy alternatives10 tools compared at 5,000 contacts.
- Head to headSendHeron vs LoopsSendHeron vs Loops at 5,000 and 10,000 contacts: €19 a month on SendHeron Starter against $49 and $99 on Loops, with feature tables and where each one wins.
- Head to headSendHeron vs Customer.ioSendHeron vs Customer.io at 5,000 and 10,000 contacts: €19 a month on SendHeron Starter against $100 and about $145 on Customer.io Essentials, with feature tables and where each one wins.
- Head to headSendHeron vs PlunkSendHeron vs Plunk: €19 a month with 50,000 emails included on SendHeron Starter against $0.001 an email with unlimited contacts on Plunk, with feature tables and where each one wins.
- BlogLoops vs Customer.io for SaaSA longer read from the SendHeron blog.
- Every comparison, in one place/alternatives
Vendor names and logos are trademarks of their owners, shown to identify the products compared. Live pricing drifts, so confirm on each vendor's site before you commit.