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neuMails vs Mailgun — The India-Hosted Alternative

Mailgun is a well-built developer platform with a strong API and serious deliverability tooling. The question for an Indian sender is whether US and EU sending regions, USD billing and a transactional-first product shape fit a business whose recipients, finance and compliance all sit in India.

Side-by-side comparison

 neuMailsMailgun
Sending regionsIndia (AWS Mumbai)US and EU
Routing to Indian recipientsDomesticVia overseas infrastructure
Billing currencyINRUSD
Supplier for GST purposesIndian entity · domestic GST invoiceForeign supplier · OIDAR self-assessment
Campaign managementIncluded in the platformTransactional focus · separate product
Support timezoneIST business hoursUS and EU led
On-premise deploymentAvailableNot offered
Developer tooling and docsSolidExtensive — a genuine strength

Comparison reflects each provider's published information at the time of writing and is subject to change. Verify current terms directly with any vendor before deciding.

The two-vendor problem

Mailgun's centre of gravity is transactional infrastructure. That focus is why developers rate it — the API is clean, the docs are good, and the deliverability tooling is serious.

It also means teams that run marketing campaigns as well typically add a second product. Within Sinch's portfolio that's usually Mailjet; elsewhere it's a separate vendor entirely. Either way you end up with two contracts, two invoices, and — the part that actually costs you — two suppression lists to keep in sync and two sets of sending reputation to manage.

The suppression problem is the one that bites. If someone unsubscribes from your campaigns on platform A, nothing stops platform B from continuing to mail them unless you have built the reconciliation yourself. Under the DPDP Act, withdrawal of consent is supposed to be as easy as giving it, and "we removed you from one of our two systems" is a weak answer.

neuMails runs transactional and campaign sending from one account with unified suppression and logs, on separate sending domains and IP pools so the reputations stay isolated. One platform, two reputations — which is the combination you actually want.

Sending regions and routing

Mailgun publishes US and EU sending regions. There is no India region, so mail to an Indian recipient routes through Virginia or Frankfurt before the delivery conversation with the recipient's mail server begins.

For a newsletter this is immaterial. For an OTP where the user is watching a countdown on a checkout screen, network distance is one of the few latency factors a sender controls — the rest is reputation, queue position and the receiving provider's own processing.

neuMails runs on AWS Mumbai, so the routing is domestic and transactional traffic is prioritised over bulk in the delivery queue. We would rather you measure that against your own sending than trust a headline number from either vendor.

Currency, GST and residency

Mailgun is supplied by a foreign entity, so its India billing falls under the OIDAR regime — GST self-assessment against your GSTIN, settled in USD. That works, and a GST-registered business can claim input tax credit through it. The practical costs are that your email spend moves with the exchange rate and your finance team handles reverse charge on a foreign supply rather than an ordinary domestic invoice.

On residency: Mailgun's regions are US and EU, so Indian subscriber data sits abroad. Under DPDP that is currently permitted — India operates a negative-list model. It becomes a hard constraint in regulated sectors, where RBI's payment system data localisation applies independently of DPDP and covers email addresses and OTPs among other fields.

See DPDP and data residency for the full position, and on-premise deployment where data must stay inside your own network rather than simply within India.

When Mailgun is the better choice

  • Your recipients are global. The routing and residency arguments largely dissolve if India isn't your concentration
  • You want infrastructure, not a platform. If your team already has campaign tooling it likes and only needs a sending layer, Mailgun's narrower focus is a feature rather than a gap
  • Developer experience is the deciding factor. The API design, documentation and community resources are genuinely strong, and that has real value for a small team shipping quickly
  • You need EU data residency specifically rather than Indian — Mailgun has an EU region and we do not

Migrating from Mailgun

Domains, templates and suppression lists transfer. API integrations need endpoint and payload adjustments rather than a rewrite — typically a day for a straightforward transactional implementation, and SMTP is simply a credentials change.

The time-consuming part is sending reputation, which does not transfer. New IPs start from zero regardless of how well your Mailgun sending performed, and warm-up runs two to four weeks. Plan a staged cutover with a parallel-run period rather than an overnight switch.

Run both sides from one platform

Transactional and campaign sending on one account, hosted in India, billed in INR with GST. Free trial, no credit card required.

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Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between neuMails and Mailgun?

Mailgun is built around transactional sending infrastructure — a well-regarded API and SMTP relay with deliverability tooling — hosted in US and EU regions and billed in USD. neuMails combines transactional API and SMTP with campaign management in one platform, runs on AWS Mumbai, bills in INR from an Indian entity, and can be deployed on-premise.

Does Mailgun have infrastructure in India?

Mailgun offers US and EU sending regions and does not publish an India region, so mail to Indian recipients routes through overseas infrastructure. neuMails processes email on AWS Mumbai (ap-south-1), which keeps both routing and stored data within India.

Do I need a separate platform for marketing email with Mailgun?

Mailgun's focus is transactional infrastructure, and teams that also run campaigns commonly pair it with a separate product — within Sinch's portfolio typically Mailjet, or another vendor entirely. That means two contracts, two suppression lists to reconcile and two sets of reputation to manage. neuMails runs both from one account with unified suppression and logs.

Can I migrate from Mailgun to neuMails?

Yes. Domains, templates and suppression lists transfer, and API integrations need endpoint and payload adjustments rather than a rewrite. Sending reputation doesn't transfer — new IPs need two to four weeks of warm-up, so plan a staged cutover.