SendGrid, Mailgun and Postmark Alternatives: Transactional Email by Company and EU Processing

SendGrid, Mailgun and Postmark are the usual answers when an app sends transactional email: password resets, receipts, notifications. SendGrid and Postmark are run by US companies, and Mailgun belongs to the Sinch group. If you want the mail and its data on servers in the EU, or a contract with an EU company, the providers differ more than their feature lists suggest. This comparison looks at the company behind each service and at where mail and data are processed. Besides the three classics, it covers Resend, Amazon SES and Nodion. As of November 2026.

Region or company

What an EU region covers is up to each provider: with some, sending and stored data stay in the EU, with others only sending does, and account or billing data is often stored globally. The company matters too: US providers can be required under US law, such as the CLOUD Act, to hand over data they control, even when it is stored in the EU. So check the contracting entity, the parent company and the data processing agreement, not only the region. More in Why EU hosting matters for SaaS and AI teams.

At a glance

Provider	Company	Processing in the EU
Nodion	Nodion GmbH, Stuttgart, Germany	Mail servers in Germany (EU Central)
SendGrid	Twilio Inc., USA; EEA customers contract with Twilio Ireland	EU data residency with a dedicated EU IP and an EU subuser; on a shared IP only from Pro or Premier
Mailgun	Sinch Email (Sinch group); contracting entity per service order, such as Mailgun Technologies, Inc., USA, or Mailjet SAS, France	EU region in Belgium in the same account; account data stored globally
Postmark	AC PM, LLC, Chicago, USA (ActiveCampaign)	No EU hosting; primary data near Chicago and on AWS
Resend	Plus Five Five, Inc., San Francisco, USA	Can send from Ireland, stored data in the US
Amazon SES	Amazon Web Services; EMEA customers contract with AWS EMEA SARL, Luxembourg	EU regions including Frankfurt, Ireland and Paris

1. Nodion

Nodion is a cloud platform by Nodion GmbH, based in Stuttgart. You send transactional email through an Email Zone: it has its own SMTP credentials and runs on mail servers in the EU Central region in Germany. You prove your sending domain with a TXT record, then Nodion signs every message with a 2048-bit DKIM key, and a Return-Path CNAME aligns SPF. Hard bounces go onto the project's suppression list automatically.

Sending works over SMTP, on the host and port the zone shows, so with any app, framework or mail client that speaks SMTP. If your app also runs on Nodion, attach the zone to it and the SMTP settings arrive as environment variables on the next deploy. You pay per delivered message: 0.00025 EUR net, so 0.25 EUR per 1,000 messages, with no monthly fee; each recipient in To, Cc and Bcc counts on its own. Messages that are rejected or bounce before delivery cost nothing. You conclude the DPA in the dashboard.

Sources: Email docs, Transactional emails, Pricing.

2. SendGrid

SendGrid belongs to Twilio Inc. in San Francisco; customers in the EEA contract with Twilio Ireland Limited in Dublin. For data in the EU there is "Data Residency for Email": it needs an EU subuser, a dedicated EU IP and the api.eu.sendgrid.com endpoint. According to SendGrid, customers on a shared IP have to move to a Pro or Premier package for it. Twilio names cases in which data can leave the EU, such as engineering troubleshooting and deletion requests. Plans start at Essentials from $19.95 per month.

Sources, checked November 2026: SendGrid data residency FAQ, EU locations, Twilio terms, pricing.

3. Mailgun

Mailgun belongs to Sinch Email, a Sinch group company. Who you contract with is set in your service order: according to Mailgun's terms, for example Mailgun Technologies, Inc. under Texas law or Mailjet SAS under French law. An EU region is available in the same account, with the API endpoint api.eu.mailgun.net; according to Mailgun, message data stays in the region where it is processed. Account information, users, billing details, API keys and domain names are stored globally. The EU region runs on Google Cloud in Belgium. Plans start at Basic from $15 per month for 10,000 messages.

Sources: Mailgun API overview (regions), terms, Sinch sub-processors, pricing.

4. Postmark

Postmark is run by AC PM, LLC in Chicago and is part of ActiveCampaign. According to Postmark, its primary data and servers are hosted at Deft's data center near Chicago and on Amazon Web Services, and it currently has no plans to add servers in the EU. Plans start at Basic from $15 per month for 10,000 messages; a free Developer plan covers 100 messages per month.

Sources: Postmark EU privacy, terms, pricing.

5. Resend

Resend is a product of Plus Five Five, Inc. in San Francisco. You can pick a sending region per domain, including Ireland. According to Resend, the region only controls where mail is sent from: customer data, including message content and logs, is stored in the United States, and there is currently no setting that moves stored data to the EU. The free plan covers 3,000 messages per month, Pro costs $20 per month for 50,000.

Sources: Resend regions, Resend GDPR, DPA, pricing.

6. Amazon SES

Amazon SES is a regional service of Amazon Web Services. Customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa contract with AWS EMEA SARL in Luxembourg; otherwise the default contracting party is Amazon Web Services, Inc. in Seattle. SES is available in several EU regions, including Frankfurt, Ireland, Paris and Stockholm, and you choose the region your content is stored in. It is billed per message; since July 2026 new accounts start on the Essentials plan.

Sources: SES endpoints and regions, AWS data privacy FAQ, AWS contracting party, pricing.

Moving from SendGrid, Mailgun or Postmark to Nodion

• Create an Email Zone: in the dashboard under Email Zones, region EU Central.
• Verify your domain: a TXT record proves ownership, then add the DKIM and Return-Path CNAME records the dashboard shows; your SPF record stays as it is. Keep an existing DMARC record, and use the suggested one only if you have none. Without DKIM the domain does not activate.
• Set the SMTP settings: the zone's host, port, user and password in your app. If you use a provider's HTTP API today, switch to your framework's SMTP mailer, such as Nodemailer, Django or Laravel mail, Action Mailer or Spring Mail.
• App on Nodion: attach the zone to the app and the SMTP settings arrive as environment variables on the next deploy.

These steps cover sending. Email Zones have no HTTP send API, no event webhooks and no inbound mail processing; if you use those with your current provider, plan a replacement for them.

What to look for

• A contract with an EU company, mail servers in Germany: Nodion, with a DPA you conclude in the dashboard.
• Pay only for delivered mail, no monthly plan: Nodion charges 0.25 EUR per 1,000 delivered messages, with no monthly fee.
• App, database and mail with one provider: on Nodion you attach the Email Zone to your app and the platform sets the SMTP settings.