Best offer on record: Free Developer plan (permanent free tier, auto-assigned on signup). 4 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Free Developer plan (permanent free tier, auto-assigned on signup) high confidence
Every new Postmark account starts on a free 'Developer' plan: 100 emails/month, $0/mo, no overages allowed on this plan, never expires, no credit card required. Full API/SMTP access, transactional + broadcast message streams, webhooks, analytics. Paid plans start at Basic $15/mo for 10,000 emails (overages $1.80/1k); Pro $16.50/mo ($1.30/1k) and Platform $18/mo ($1.20/1k) for more streams/domains/inbound. Verified directly on the live pricing page today.
Eligibility
Anyone; automatic at signup at account.postmarkapp.com. No .edu, no startup status, no card. Sender signature or domain verification (DNS DKIM) required before sending. No published region limits.
How to claim
Sign up at account.postmarkapp.com → confirm email → verify a sender signature or domain → you are on the free Developer plan automatically; 100 emails/month usable indefinitely.
Expiry
No expiry; the plan is permanent. Upgrading requires entering a credit card; downgrading back to free is allowed at end of billing cycle.
Gotchas
No overages on the free plan — hitting 100 emails stops sending (unlike paid plans where overages are billed). 100 emails/mo is test-only (~3/day), not viable for production. Postmark is transactional-first: marketing/bulk mail must go through Broadcast streams and mixing marketing content into transactional streams gets accounts suspended. Default data retention 45 days on all plans; custom retention is a paid add-on from $5/mo.
Bootstrapper credit — $75 one-time account credit for bootstrapped startups high confidence
One-time $75 account credit. Official eligibility: product fully launched, actively charging for it, and no outside investment/funding taken (i.e., strictly bootstrapped — VC/angel-funded startups do NOT qualify). Support FAQ notes the $75 'typically covers your next five payments of $15 each'. Applied to account after support verifies eligibility.
Eligibility
Bootstrapped, fully launched, revenue-generating product. No .edu. No funding cap other than 'no outside funding' at all. No age limit published. No region limit published.
How to claim
1) Sign up for Postmark (lands on free Developer plan). 2) Message Postmark Support stating you are applying for the Bootstrapper credit. 3) Include a link to your live pricing page as proof you charge customers. 4) Support confirms eligibility and applies the $75 credit.
Expiry
Rolling, evergreen offer (page live as of 2026-10-22; support article published 2025-11-04 and last updated 2026-10-19). No published expiry date on the credit itself; one-time only. No renewal.
Gotchas
No self-serve form — manual via support, vendor discretion on approval. Funded or pre-launch/stealth products are ineligible. ~$75 is only ~5 months of the $15/mo Basic plan. Postmark does not offer annual plans or invoices/PayPal — credit sits against monthly card billing.
Friend & Family referral — both accounts get one month free medium confidence
Any paying Postmark customer can refer another paying customer; when verified, each account receives one month of Postmark usage for free. Claimed by messaging support with the referred (or referring) account's email address. Both accounts must be active paying customers and the referral must be genuine (no duplicate/fake accounts).
Eligibility
Both parties must be paying Postmark customers; no .edu or startup-age requirements.
How to claim
Existing paying customer messages Postmark Support including the email address of the referred account (or the account they were referred by); support applies the free month to both accounts after verification.
Expiry
Rolling; no deadline published. One free month per verified referral.
Gotchas
Requires paying accounts on both sides — not a free on-ramp for new users. No published cap on how many referrals one user can make.
Legacy free signup credits (25,000 credits) and old time-boxed trial server — retired high confidence
Historically new signups received 25,000 free credits on the credit-based plan, and Postmark previously ran a time-boxed free trial server (the 'known' ~100,000-emails trial). Both are gone: credit-based plans were retired effective July 5, 2023, and no time-boxed trial appears on the current pricing/docs — the FAQ now describes the 'trial with no expiration date' as the free Developer plan (100 emails/mo).
Eligibility
n/a — no longer claimable.
How to claim
n/a.
Expiry
Credit-based plans retired 2023-07-05; legacy customers were migrated to monthly plans. Current model (as of 2026-10-22) = permanent 100-email/mo Developer plan + $75 Bootstrapper credit.
Gotchas
Old third-party pages comparing Postmark to competitors may still quote 100k-email trials or 25k signup credits — ignore those; they predate the current pricing model. Also note postmark.com now 301-redirects to postmarkapp.com (domain/branding change post-ActiveCampaign acquisition).
No student/education offer exists: no .edu discount, education license, or student plan anywhere on postmarkapp.com; /for/education returns 404. No SMS, Push, or Chat API front: Postmark's current product is email delivery only (SMTP + REST, transactional and broadcast streams, inbound email) — the pricing page and docs list no SMS/Push/Chat products, so no free offers on those fronts. Sunset/change notes for 2025-2026: (1) The legacy free 25,000 signup credits (credit-based plans) were retired 2023-07-05 — still a 'legacy' footnote in docs but no longer offered. (2) The time-boxed trial-server model previously known (~100k emails, no card) is no longer published; it has been replaced by the permanent free Developer plan (100 emails/month, no expiry, no card) — the exact old duration/limits of the trial server (3 months vs the ~6 months in our notes) could not be confirmed on current official pages. (3) Bootstrapper $75 credit is unchanged through the 2025-11-04 support-article publication and 2026-10-19 update. (4) Domain rebrand: postmark.com 301-redirects to postmarkapp.com. Caveats: web-search budget was exhausted mid-task, so absence-of-education-offer and absence-of-SMS/Push/Chat rest on the official pricing page, 404 check, and the home page's explicit 'email delivery via SMTP and REST' positioning rather than exhaustive site crawl; the Friend & Family finding was read from an official support FAQ snapshot, not fetched directly today.