TLDR: Mailgun is no longer an option to be used with Ghost

Integrations & API
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Back in 2022 I’ve created this thread on how to use the “pay as you go” Mailgun offer and it seems lots of people resonated with it as it keeps being mentioned in other threads.

This is an update: Mailgun is no longer an option TODAY (the below is the case for all new Mailgun accounts).

Reason: you will receive the confirmation that all is set in Ghost’s dashboards but the reality is that your BULK sending (i.e. the one done via API, the one sending your newsletters out) will fail as soon as you reach 10 recipients.

In other words: Mailgun is no longer a valid option as a newsletter sending partner.

PS: Figuring out if you actually have an issue is complicated. You need to read your server logs and you will find “…not allowed to send large batches yet”. No error will be seen in the Ghost dashboard Mailgun integration area. When sending out a newsletter to more than 10 recipients, if you keep checking the deliverability of the post in the dashboard you will eventually see an error with a resend button (which again will fail since the issue is with Mailgun)

PS2: Opening a ticket with Mailgun will NOT solve the situation. Mailgun requests logs of “normal business operations with 3-5 days of consistent sending” but without being able to send newsletters to more than 10 recipients makes “normal business operations” impossible as no business runs a business with 10 recipients.

PS3: Using transactional email logs or “Preview post” email sending logs (even though the logs are all in Mailgun) have proven not enough for Mailgun to lift the limitation. Mailgun’s response is once again: “After reviewing the account in detail, we have determined that the sending limitation will remain in effect temporarily due to the lack of sufficient sending history on the account.”

TLDR: Mailgun is no longer an option to be used with Ghost.

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Replied here:

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It was cumbersome, but thank goodness I found this reply by Kevin. Just before I stumbled upon this thread, I already tried reaching out to Mailgun support and got the following message:

After further review, your account was automatically placed on an evaluation period [1], which enforces the following limits on the account: a maximum of 100 messages per hour, a maximum of 9 recipients per message, and disabled usage of email validations. To help protect our customers against spam, we have automated systems in place to flag accounts that appear suspicious. On most occasions, this process works very well; however, sometimes we get it wrong and flag a genuine account. There are a number of factors that contribute to the flagging of the account for business verification, but they are not necessarily directly related to you.

They lowered the number of recipients to 9 recipients, which means it won’t work by just adding the 10 as proposed by Kevin. Mailgun has definitely gotten worse since they were acquired by Sinch, but I configured my blog to use a batch size of 5 and everything seems to work for me again.