Comparison
HonkIO vs Mailgun for email in Canada
Mailgun sells monthly plans in US dollars and lets you pick a US or EU region for each domain. HonkIO's email API stores your mail in Canada, checks CASL consent on commercial email and charges per recipient in Canadian dollars.

In short
- Mailgun's plans start at $15 USD a month for 10,000 emails. HonkIO charges $0.0025 CAD per recipient ($2.50 per 1,000), in CAD, with no monthly fee.
- Mailgun's regions are the US and the EU, chosen per domain, and some account data is global. HonkIO stores your email in Canada (Montréal).
- Mailgun's free plan sends 100 emails a day, with one inbound route. HonkIO's test keys deliver nothing and charge nothing.
- Both add unsubscribe headers. HonkIO also refuses a commercial email without CASL consent on file.
Side by side
HonkIO and Mailgun, from Mailgun's public pages as of October 2026.
| Compared | HonkIO | Mailgun |
|---|---|---|
How you pay | Per recipient, prepaid | Monthly plan |
Entry price Basic from $15 (10,000 emails, overage from $1.80 per 1,000), Foundation $35 (50,000) and Scale $90 (100,000). | $0.0025 CAD per recipient | From $15 USD a month |
Currency | CAD | USD |
Free use With one inbound route and one day of logs. | Test mode | 100 emails a day |
Receiving email Free has 1 route, Basic 5, and Foundation and up full access. Mailgun forwards parsed JSON or raw MIME and retries for up to 8 hours. | $0.0025 CAD per message | Routes |
Regions | Canada | US or EU |
What stays in your region Mailgun keeps account details, billing, API keys and domain names global. HonkIO stores its data in Canada; card payments go through Stripe, in the US. | All data HonkIO stores | Messages, logs, suppressions |
Log retention Free and Basic 1 day, Foundation 5 days, Scale 30 days. | Bodies kept 90 days | 1 to 30 days |
Unsubscribe tools | Footer and one-click header | Links, headers, suppression list |
CASL consent check | Yes | Not described |
Dedicated IP One on Foundation 100k, Growth and Scale; more at $59 an IP a month. | Shared sending | Included on some plans |
The Mailgun column comes from Mailgun's public pages, checked in October 2026; each one is listed under Sources. Prices are as listed, before taxes. HonkIO prices are in Canadian dollars.
What it costs
List prices, as each provider publishes them.
Mailgun sells monthly plans in US dollars: Basic from $15 a month for 10,000 emails (overage from $1.80 per 1,000), Foundation at $35 for 50,000 (from $1.30) and Scale at $90 for 100,000 (from $1.10). Foundation and Scale are free for the first month, and a free plan sends 100 emails a day.
Mailgun Foundation's 50,000 emails for $35 USD work out to $0.70 USD per 1,000, against $2.50 CAD per 1,000 at HonkIO. At a steady volume a plan costs less; HonkIO has no monthly fee for a quiet month.
HonkIO charges $0.0025 CAD per accepted recipient ($2.50 per 1,000) from a prepaid balance shared with SMS, with no monthly fee, before taxes. The first 2 MB of attachments per recipient are included, and each started MB above that is charged. Received email costs $0.0025 CAD per message for its first MB. Test emails are free.
Where your data is stored
Where data is kept at rest, and what is processed elsewhere.
HonkIO stores sent and received email, attachments, consent records and logs in Canada, in AWS ca-central-1 (Montréal), where email is also sent and received. API requests are processed on US-hosted infrastructure before they are stored, as the privacy policy says, and an email on its way to a recipient goes wherever their mail server is. Message bodies are deleted after 90 days, and received attachments and raw messages after 40 days.
Mailgun has two regions, US and EU, and you choose one for each domain; no Canadian region is listed. Messages, event logs, suppressions, tags, stats, routes and IPs stay in that region, while account information, user accounts, billing, API keys and domain names are global.
Consent and unsubscribes
CASL applies to commercial email sent to people in Canada, whichever provider sends it.
Email is transactional by default. Mark one commercial and HonkIO requires CASL consent on file for the recipient, refusing the send (HTTP 451) without it. Commercial email gets an unsubscribe footer and a one-click unsubscribe header (RFC 8058), and an unsubscribe stops commercial email only, so receipts and password resets still arrive. Hard bounces and complaints are suppressed automatically. This is how HonkIO applies CASL, not legal advice.
Mailgun's unsubscribe tracking inserts unsubscribe links through variables such as %unsubscribe_url%, adds List-Unsubscribe and List-Unsubscribe-Post headers, and keeps an unsubscribe suppression list you can manage by API. We found no CASL consent check in its docs.
When Mailgun is the better choice
Where we would point you to Mailgun instead.
- You send a steady, high volume and a monthly plan in USD costs less.
- You need email data kept in the EU.
- You want inbound routing rules that filter mail and forward or store it.
- You want a dedicated IP included with your plan.
When HonkIO fits
HonkIO is built for messaging people in Canada.
- Your recipients are in Canada and you want consent checked before each commercial email.
- You want sent and received email stored in Canada, with the processing outside Canada disclosed.
- You send a modest or uneven volume and would rather pay per recipient, in Canadian dollars, than for a monthly plan.
- You also text people in Canada: SMS and email share one balance, one set of API keys and one webhook feed.
- You want to start in test mode, with simulated bounces and complaints, before you set up a domain.
Moving from Mailgun
There is no Mailgun-specific guide yet. POST /v1/emails takes the fields most email APIs use (from, to, cc, bcc, reply_to, subject, html, text and attachments), so a Mailgun integration mostly changes its request shape, base URL and key. The email docs cover sending, domains, webhooks and receiving.
Questions
- Is HonkIO cheaper than Mailgun?
- At low or uneven volume it can be, since there is no monthly fee. As of October 2026, Mailgun Basic starts at $15 USD a month for 10,000 emails; HonkIO charges $0.0025 CAD per recipient, in Canadian dollars.
- Does Mailgun have a Canadian region?
- No. Its regions are the US and the EU, as of October 2026, and account details, billing, API keys and domain names are global. HonkIO stores sent and received email in Canada (Montréal); API requests are processed on US-hosted infrastructure before they are stored.
Sources
What this page says about other providers comes from their public pages, checked in October 2026. If something has changed, tell us at support@honkio.ca and we will correct it.
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Try it in test mode first
Test keys work right after sign-up, with no card and no charges.