Mailgun is a transactional email API service which was owned and supported by Rackspace (acquired in 2012) and then spun off in 2017 as an independent and standalone entity. It is now supported by Sinch since that company's acquisition of Mailgun and Mailjet, through acquiring Pathwire.
$15
per month
Zendesk Chat
Score8 out of 10
N/A
Zendesk Chat (formerly Zopim) is a live chat tool developed by the Singaporean company also called Zopim, acquired by Zendesk in April 2014.
$11.20
per month
Pricing
Sinch Mailgun
Zendesk Chat
Editions & Modules
Basic
$15
10,000 emails/mo included
Foundation
$35
50,000 emails/mo included
Scale
$90
100,000 emails/mo included
Free
Free
100 emails/day included
Lite
$0
per user
Basic
$14
per user
Advanced
$25
per user
Premium
$55
per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Sinch Mailgun
Zendesk Chat
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
—
The pricing above is price per user per month. You will get a discount when you opt for annual payment.
Mailgun's pay-as-you-go pricing structure is fantastic, especially if you don't need to send that much email. The pricing, including the free tier, is much more generous than what you can get with some pricier providers, like SendGrid. I mainly just use Mailgun as an SMTP server for web services, and the service has been set-up-and-forget, which is great because I never even have to log onto the Mailgun website and do any work. Mailing list support also looks great for rolling-your-own and not relying on more expensive mailing list services.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Zendesk Chat is suited for all the support teams that provide real-time assistance. Like if someone wants to block the debit/credit card, it is a high-priority case that needs real-time assistance. Whereas issues like close my account, and invoice request doesn't need real-time assistance, where Zendesk tickets support will be perfect.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
No built-in templating features (This was a bit sad after coming from Mandrill which excelled at this)
Dashboard UI (although easy to use) is a bit dated in appearance
Logs are cumbersome compared to Mandrill
Setting up TLD (top level domain) names (things like .online or .church) that are not common require an email to tech support (this is annoying)
Sometimes can be slow in delivery
Shared IP addresses can be SPAM filtered or delayed (requires an email to support to have a new one assigned - Note: this can be mitigated by buying a dedicated one for a monthly fee)
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. TR verified that a representative sample of customers was invited. More Info
Due to staffing issues, we have temporarily stopped offering chat as an available channel. We're also interested in the best ways to integrate chat with our FAQs and AI to provide quick responses, either during off-hours or prior to speaking with a live agent. I've also found that reporting is rather limited where some of the interesting and useful data made available and visible during the chat cannot be pulled post-chat; it would be great to pull a high-level report so we can analyze this data.
The time for the initial setup is very quick, since you can start sending (thus developing) from their sandbox in no time. The actual configuration involves, as usual, some DNS changes that may require time but are well explained and documented. Once everything is set up, there are a lot of monitoring tools that you can use to optimize your lists.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
As mentioned previously, it's a clunky product that lacks user-friendliness. It feels old and behind the times compared to other products we have used. The inability to have a wrap-up time before a new chat comes in is also a big issue for our team.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
There have been a few minor outages through the years, but nothing more than a few minutes. These small outages are to be expected in any kind of a SaaS product, but Mailgun handles them very well. We designed our software to just retry sending after a while if there is an outage. As far as I know, we have never had to do more than a few retry cycles. This is all automated on our end, so we rarely even notice. Our customers have never noticed any mail sending outages.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The API and the deliverability of emails is excellent. Their API is very responsive and performs perfectly fine. I have no complaints there. Their management interface though (accessed through the web) is pretty slow though. Searching through lists of emails when I'm tracking down a problem for a customer can take 10+ seconds which is annoyingly high for a modern web app.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
You can't seem to get ANY support until you shell out hundreds of dollars per month. I even did this when we could not deliver mail with Mailgun, and the response was slow and inadequate. Nor would they refund my money. I'll never be a customer of Mailgun again.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Getting assistance and/or troubleshooting anything with Zendesk can be quite frustrating. In my years of experience with Zednesk, I have almost never found the answer to my question without going through multiple articles, ultimately getting frustrated and reaching out to our contact for more assistance. So for a consumer, the support is not as relieving as Zendesk Chat is to our customers in getting the questions answered by us.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
To be honest, the tools are quite similar and again I dont recommend using them as a standalone products, but they power the work we do via CRMs and our marketing campaigns. Mailgun integrates slightly better which it is why it is the preferred choice for our agency, as it integrations options seem to be better
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Zendesk Chat is far more user friendly than some of the other competitors on the market. It has a very all the features that you require to ensure your customers are contacted in 'real time'. Its main tools include a live chat interface for quick communication, customisable chat widgets to fit your brand, mobile responsiveness for all devices, and canned responses for common questions. The platform can also start chats based on visitor actions, like time on a page or exit intent. A real must for any leading company
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Over the past six years, Mailgun has scaled with our growth very easily. We haven't had to make any code changes to handle our larger volume today, and their pricing has scaled naturally with our growth. As far as I know, there is nothing we will need to do in order to grow 10-fold. Mailgun just handles the load really well.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
By not investing in our mail server, we have saved huge amount of money and time. For configuration and installation of an email server on Linux-based server, we would have to hire a network administrator.
If email delivery is an issue in a hosting provider, another solution is to switch the hosting. Fortunately with Mailgun, we didn't need to try different hosts and experiment which one works best for emails. We can stick to our existing web hosting provider and would not need to change it just for the sake of improving email deliverability.
The pricing of Mailgun is very cheap and straightforward. First 10K emails are free every month and that's a big advantage for our organization because our volume of emails is rarely more than 10K per month.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Positive impact - Compared to our old system, this newly updated system provides features and functionality that has increased our agent productivity and provided customer insight like we've never had before. This has resulted in fewer hold times and higher customer satisfaction.
Negative impact - Our reporting team still struggles with obtaining the right information from time to time with the chats. This leads to loss of productivity and more resources dedicated to reporting.
Positive impact - Due to Zopim's embed, we are able to more successfully place them on the appropriate self-service portals and pages, reaching a larger audience, and being more readily available to answer our client's questions. This has resulted in an increase in our self-service portal usage, driving down the phone and email support channels, which in turn reduces support costs.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
