Postmark (Email API)
Created by: Wildbit team (acquired by ActiveCampaign in 2022)

Postmark prices on send volume with a conservative free tier. The pricing matches the brand promise: deliverability-first, no surprises.

TL;DR: Postmark's pricing structure is volume-tiered subscription scaled by emails sent per month. The free tier is conservative (100 emails/month) compared to Resend's 3K — the structural decision favors paid customers who care about deliverability enough to commit. The lesson for indie founders: when your brand promise is operational reliability, your pricing structure should attract committed buyers rather than maximize free signups.

What they sell: A developer-friendly transactional email API with separate streams for transactional and broadcast sends, optimized for deliverability.
Who it's for: Developers and SaaS teams sending transactional email (password resets, receipts, notifications) who prioritize inbox placement above all else.
Pricing model: Volume-tiered subscription scaled by monthly email sends; conservative free tier
Payment frequency: Monthly subscription tied to volume tier; auto-upgrade as volume grows
Free trial behavior: Free tier IS the trial; 100 emails/month is enough for development testing but not for production.
Number of tiers: 3

Anchor pattern: Brand-promise anchor
Postmark's pricing page does not lead with an aggressive free tier or an obvious anchor tier. The implicit anchor is the brand promise itself: deliverability over a decade. Buyers who land on the pricing page have already been pre-sold on the promise via marketing; the pricing decision is the binary 'commit at this volume' decision. The simplicity matches the brand voice.

Upgrade trigger: Volume threshold plus deliverability-critical use case
Two triggers fire together: the 100/month free cap forces any production use to upgrade immediately; the deliverability-critical nature of transactional email (password resets, receipts) means buyers who reach this volume have already decided they need Postmark-grade reliability. The conservative free tier filters out experimenters and converts only buyers who commit to the brand promise.

What's working:
Conservative free tier (100/month) filters for committed buyers and reduces free-tier infrastructure costs.|Volume tiering aligns the bill with both customer value (send volume) and platform cost (infrastructure to deliver reliably).|Separate transactional and broadcast streams as architectural pricing differentiator — same feature on all tiers, never removed for cost.|Dedicated IP option on higher tiers gives marketing-email senders a meaningful deliverability lever as they scale.|Brand-promise marketing pre-sells the pricing decision — buyers arrive at the pricing page already pre-decided on the value.|ActiveCampaign acquisition (2022) keeps the platform operationally stable while preserving the deliverability-first brand.

What to adapt:
Conservative free tiers filter for committed buyers — sometimes the right move is to attract fewer signups who convert at higher rates rather than more signups who burn infrastructure.|Pricing structure should match brand voice: deliverability-first products price like infrastructure (volume-based, no surprises); aggressive growth products price like consumer SaaS (generous free tiers, viral mechanics).|Architectural decisions (like separated streams) can be the structural pricing differentiator instead of feature-gating tiers.

What to avoid:
Do not adopt conservative free tiers if your brand promise is growth or viral acquisition. The pricing model must match the brand promise.|Do not skip dedicated IPs or advanced deliverability features at higher tiers if you serve marketing-email senders. The structural needs at high volume justify the price gap.

Brunson lens:
Stack: Three-rung stack: free, volume-tiered paid, enterprise custom. No add-on layer, no feature gates within tiers.
Value ladder: Three-rung Value Ladder with conservative free filter at the front and custom enterprise back-end.
Decoy/anchor: Brand-promise anchor — the pricing decision is pre-sold by the deliverability marketing.
Payment mechanics: Monthly volume-tiered subscription; no per-seat scaling; auto-upgrade as send volume grows.

Pricing last verified: 2026-05-17