Like many of you, I’m sure, I found an email from Mandrill App in my inbox today that explains them merging their service with the parent company MailChimp. I’d be fine with the merge in itself, I love MailChimp, but what I don’t like about this move is this section:
Our billing and pricing model is also changing. MailChimp will generate one consolidated bill that covers your MailChimp and Mandrill charges. Mandrill credits will be sold in blocks of 25,000 emails. Blocks will start at $20 per month. This goes into effect once your accounts are merged.
We’re using Mandrill App for transactional emails on a bunch of WordPress sites to make sure delivery is pretty much guaranteed and we have insights in what actually goes out. Now, I don’t mind paying for a service at all, but some of our accounts are for relatively low traffic websites which would make the switch to Mandrill’s new pricing strategy a costly one. Luckily though, there are alternatives.
I’ve done nothing more than copy and paste their marketing copy, but these are Mandrill app alternatives I found:
MailGun
We don’t just send your email, we deliver it. Our software automatically manages the delivery process to give your emails the best chance of landing in the inbox. And if something happens that keep your messages from being delivered, we’ll tell you.
Through our API or control panel, you’ll always know exactly what has happened to every one of your emails.
Powerful APIs that enable you to send, receive and track email effortlessly. 10,000 emails free every month. No credit card required. Check out MailGun.
Amazon SES
Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) is a cost-effective email service built on the reliable and scalable infrastructure that Amazon.com developed to serve its own customer base. With Amazon SES, you can send transactional email, marketing messages, or any other type of high-quality content to your customers.
AWS Free Tier offers 62,000 messages per month to any recipient when you call Amazon SES from an Amazon EC2 instance. Check out Amazon SES.
Postmark App
Unmatched email delivery & troubleshooting. Since we send transactional only, ISPs love us. Our infrastructure combined with proper content and delivery practices means higher response rates from your customers.
View 45 days of searchable sending history including full content, bounces, and spam complaints.
First 25,000 emails are free. Check out Postmark App.
SendGrid
Transactional email delivery that is scalable, reliable, and easy to implement. Whether you’re developing apps for the web or mobile environments, you need an effective way to communicate with your customers.
Email remains the most powerful form of customer communication, but building and maintaining your own email infrastructure can be resource-intensive and costly. SendGrid eliminates the cost and complexity of maintaining your own infrastructure, allowing you to focus on developing the next great app!
Send up to 12,000 emails a month on their Free SendGrid Account. Check out SendGrid.
Mailjet
Emails sent after a transaction – order confirmation, password reset, delivery notification – are anxiously awaited by customers and have the highest open and click rates. Mailjet helps you create a consistent experience, enabling you to design and update transactional emails in drag and drop while ensuring a tight IT integration.
Mailjet allows you to send up to 6 000 emails a month, 200 emails / day. Check out Mailjet.
SendinBlue
SendinBlue empowers businesses to build and grow relationships through marketing campaigns, transactional messaging and marketing automation. Our platform combines a robust suite of email and SMS messaging services within a single, user-friendly solution. Reliable Delivery. Ensure your welcome messages, order confirmations, shipping notifications, app alerts, and other important emails reach the inbox.
Get up-to-the-minute analytics on your message deliverability and engagement metrics. Create custom, dynamic messages with our powerful API.
SendinBlue allows you to With the free account you can send up to 9 000 emails/month, 300 emails/day. The free account has no time limits. Check out SendinBlue.
Conclusion
I’m sure there are more out there, but these are the first ones I came across. Some of these services do a lot more than send out transactional emails and you should definitely do a comparison for your particular scenario, but this list should give you a good starting point. Hope this helps in your search.
