# Courier review (2026): is the free plan enough? > Notification and messaging API across email, SMS, push and chat Checked Nov 13, 2026 ยท graded Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA. Courier is a customer messaging platform that routes notifications and multi-step journeys across email, SMS, push, chat and in-app channels. It sends through your own providers, such as Amazon SES or Twilio, adding templates, routing and fallback. It includes a visual designer and an in-app notification inbox. - **Category:** Email Sending Services - **Made by:** Courier - **Website:** https://www.courier.com - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Skip it if you want Courier to deliver email itself, since it routes through your own provider. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 13, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 13, 2026, Courier has a free plan. - **Pricing model:** Free plan - **Free plan:** Developer plan: 10,000 sends a month, with journeys, broadcasts, MCP server, CLI and SDKs. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Developer | $0 | 10,000 sends a month, journeys and broadcasts, MCP server, CLI and SDKs, SSO via Google and GitHub, email and chat support. | | Enterprise | Custom | Everything in Business plus volume pricing, a dedicated Slack channel, observability integrations, role-based access control and an enterprise SLA. | Read from https://www.courier.com/pricing on Nov 13, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Courier before buying. ## Key features - **Omnichannel routing:** One send can go to email, SMS, push, chat or in-app, with fallback between providers. - **Journeys:** Multi-step messaging triggered and personalized from your data. - **Design Studio:** A no-code visual editor with multi-channel preview. - **In-app Inbox:** An embeddable notification center that syncs across devices. - **AI agent step:** Run a language model as a step in a workflow to score users or generate content. - **Provider connections:** Bring your own email, SMS, push and chat providers. ## Good for - Product teams sending notifications over several channels - Developers who want to keep their existing email provider ## Worth knowing - The Business plan has no monthly fee and charges $0.005 per send, with AI Translations, the AI node and EU data residency. - The Developer plan stops at 10,000 sends a month. - The Device Preview add-on is from $20 a month. - Courier routes through your own email provider rather than delivering the mail itself. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.4 out of 4**, graded Nov 13, 2026. Courier is a notification API that routes messages across email, SMS, push and chat through providers you connect. Free covers 10,000 sends a month, and after that Business is $0.005 per send, which is $50 per 10,000. - **Value for money: C.** The Developer plan is free and Business is $0.005 per send with no per-seat fees, so 10,000 sends cost $50, in the ordinary range for email tools at low volume and above it at high volume. - **Free plan and trial: B.** Developer is free for 10,000 sends a month with journeys, broadcasts, CLI and SDKs, which one person can live on. - **Features: C.** Routing across channels, journeys, design studio, inbox and an AI step. It routes through your own email provider rather than delivering mail, and add-ons like Device Preview start at $20 a month. - **Ease of use: C.** No rating on record. You connect providers, build templates and journeys, and wire in SDKs. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web service with SDKs, a CLI, an MCP server and connections to SES, Mailgun, Postmark, SendGrid, Twilio, Slack, Teams and FCM. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Courier's own pages on 13 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among email sending services - Courier's GPA of 2.4 is higher than 25 of the 50 other email sending services we grade, and level with 8. - It stands best on free plan and trial (B, above 35 of 50) and worst on features (C, above 0). The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/email-sending ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace Courier you would be making mail servers with a good name among inbox providers. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. - You could not: Mail servers with a good name among inbox providers. - You could not: Connections to other products, each kept working as those products change. - You could not: A chatbot builder hooked into the messaging apps. - You could not: AI features, unless you pay a model provider for each request yourself. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with Amazon SES, Mailgun, Postmark, SendGrid, Twilio, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Firebase FCM **Tags:** Transactional email, Workflow automation, Chatbots, Public API, AI features ## Alternatives - [Knock](https://toolgpa.com/tools/knock): Cross-channel notification and messaging workflows for products. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/courier-vs-knock) - [Novu](https://toolgpa.com/tools/novu): Open-source notification infrastructure for apps and agents. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/courier-vs-novu) - [Twilio SendGrid](https://toolgpa.com/tools/sendgrid): Twilio's email API and SMTP service, priced by monthly email volume. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/courier-vs-sendgrid) - [Mailgun](https://toolgpa.com/tools/mailgun): Email API and SMTP relay for developers, with list validation. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/courier-vs-mailgun) - [Resend](https://toolgpa.com/tools/resend): Developer email API with React Email templates and a free tier. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/courier-vs-resend) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 13, 2026: - https://www.courier.com/pricing - https://www.courier.com - https://www.courier.com/integrations Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/courier Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).