Lumail vs Plunk
Lumail
Plunk
Open-source transactional, marketing, and workflow email platform
Lumail and Plunk pricing and feature comparison
Free emails / month
Lumail
3,000
Plunk
1,000
Unlimited subscribers · $0
Unlimited subscribers · $0
Paid entry
$20/month, 40,000 included, then $0.60/1,000
$0.001 per email (no monthly base fee)
Pricing basis
Unlimited subscribers; pricing follows email volume
Hosted usage: one credit per recipient/send (transactional, campaign, workflow) and per inbound email; emails with attachments cost 2…
Automation
Graph workflows with triggers, branches, goals, exits, and A/B paths
Graph workflows on every hosted plan: EVENT, MANUAL, or SCHEDULE triggers; steps include SEND_EMAIL, DELAY, WAIT_FOR_EVENT, CONDITION,…
AI and developer access
ChatGPT OAuth, MCP, skills, CLI, SDK, REST API, and visual editor
No official MCP, ChatGPT plugin, or agent catalog on Plunk docs. REST API plus official Node helper @plunk/node (track + send). Homepage…
Transactional email
Included through API, SMTP, SDK, CLI, and agent tools
Yes: POST /v1/send (templates or inline HTML), hosted SMTP (ports 587 TLS / 465 SSL; host from dashboard), plus optional self-hosted SMTP…
Publishing surface
Capture pages and custom web domains; not a general website builder
Dashboard campaigns/broadcasts with scheduling, drag-and-drop or Markdown editor, reusable templates (Liquid), dynamic/static segments. No…
Choose Lumail if…
- You want first-party MCP (89 org-scoped tools), ChatGPT OAuth, CLI, TypeScript SDK, and REST on one organization
- You prefer included volume (3,000 free; Premium $20/40,000 then $0.60/1k; Business $200/400,000 then $0.40/1k) over $1 per 1,000 after Plunk’s 1,000 free emails
- You need capture pages and a newsletter operating surface, not a self-hosted SES stack
Choose Plunk if…
- You want to self-host AGPL software and pay only your own infrastructure plus AWS SES
- You send modest volume above 1,000/month and prefer $0.001 pay-as-you-go with no $20 base fee
- You need inbound email, SMTP relay, and graph workflows in one open-source developer platform
Where Plunk is strong
A real alternative, not a straw man.
Plunk is an AGPL-3.0 email platform that combines transactional sending, campaigns, and graph workflows, billed at $0.001 per email on hosted cloud or self-hosted with no Plunk per-email fee. People pick Plunk when they need developers and SaaS teams that want one open-source tool for receipts, newsletters, and automations, with optional self-hosting on AWS SES..
- AGPL-3.0, inspectable, Docker Compose self-host; hosted cloud is EU-hosted and described as GDPR compliant
- Simple hosted pricing: $0.001/email, no contact tiers, no feature tiers, monthly spend caps
- Transactional API + SMTP, campaigns, inbound email, and graph workflows in one contact record
Don't trust the table. Run one journey.
Checklists lie by flattening the work. Build one real path: a trigger, a wait, a branch, a goal, an exit. Then open one subscriber and see what actually happened. That tells you more than any feature row.
- 1. Import a small, consented sample. Not the whole list.
- 2. Recreate one campaign and the audience it actually hits.
- 3. Publish one automation with a goal you can measure.
- 4. Fire a test and read every event on one person.
- 5. Compare the weekly work, not the setup afternoon.
Try it on a real send
Keep the whole list. Pay when you send.
3,000 emails free, no card. Rebuild one campaign, one workflow, and one transactional message before you move anyone. If it feels worse than Plunk, stay.
The questions people actually ask
Is Lumail cheaper than Plunk?
Sometimes. Lumail is $0 for 3,000 emails, then $20 for 40,000. Plunk's number only makes sense after you know what they cap: contacts, seats, a daily send limit, or a feature they hide behind a paid plan. Read the honest take above, then price a normal month and a launch month on both pages.
What is the main difference between Lumail and Plunk?
Choose Plunk when you want an open-source, self-hostable stack that unifies transactional email, broadcasts, and graph workflows at $0.001 per email with unlimited contacts. Choose Lumail when you want agents operating the whole organization via MCP, ChatGPT OAuth, CLI, and SDK, plus capture pages and included volume buckets instead of pure pay-as-you-go.
Can I migrate from Plunk to Lumail?
Yes. Don't move the whole list on day one. Export a small consented sample, rebuild one campaign and one automation, authenticate your domain, then watch one subscriber go through the run. If that feels right, move the rest.