I took the time to test out Mailchimp Transactional Email alternatives so I’ll give you a detailed guide through the top contenders and what to look for when migrating from Mandrill.
The main focus is on email delivery services that can provide reliable inbox placement. But as a lot of contenders evolved into platforms, I’ll detail other features you could find useful without burning a hole in your pocket.
Disclaimer: The reviews include feature descriptions, software catalog ratings, and references to pricing. These were valid at the time of writing but could be subject to change.
Mailchimp Transactional Email alternatives: snapshot
- Mailtrap is an email delivery platform great for dev and QA teams to test, send, and control their emails in one place.
- SendGrid is a cloud-based service that provides email delivery and marketing solutions, including sending transactional and marketing emails.
- Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is a developer-centric email service designed to help devs send marketing and transactional emails.
- Mailgun is an email service aimed at providing developers with tools to send, receive, and track transactional emails through an API and SMTP.
- Mailjet is a cloud-based email service that offers solutions for sending and managing transactional and marketing emails.
Criteria for choosing the best Mailchimp Transactional Email alternatives
I identified four key criteria based on the critical parameters such as deliverability and potential desire to scale beyond just sending transactional emails. Here’s what they are:
- Email deliverability
The core function of a transactional email service is to ensure your emails get sent and also successfully land in your recipients’ inboxes, avoiding the spam folder.
Note: Keep in mind that email deliverability also depends on your domain and sender reputation.
- Ease of integration and service flexibility
Your chosen email service should seamlessly integrate with your current systems, whether it’s your WordPress website, CRM, e-commerce platform, or custom-built applications.
- Pricing structure and scalability
An ideal Mandrill alternative will offer a pricing plan that’s competitive and also scales with your business.
It means the service should provide transparent pricing, without hidden upsales. Plus, the price needs to correlate with the sending volume (the more you send the incrementally higher the price).
Tip: Check the number of emails per plan 🙂 Compare the cost per thousand emails sent across different providers to understand which offers the best value for your specific email volumes.
- Customer support
The availability and quality of customer support can make a significant difference. Ideally, you’d get 24/7 access to support to resolve urgent issues. Or, at least, something close to the ability to get a response at any time.
Best alternative: Mailtrap Email Sending
Free plan: Available
Pricing from: $10
G2: 4.8 Capterra: 4.9
What is Mailtrap?
Mailtrap is an Email Delivery Platform designed for both businesses and individuals. It is an all-in-one solution to seamlessly Test, Send, and Control your email infrastructure.
Here, I’ll mainly focus on Mailtrap Email Sending as it’s the closest comparison to Mandrill. But, I’ll also briefly cover Mailtrap Email Testing as a key pre-production solution to ensure your emails land in recipients’ inboxes, not the spam folder.
Mailtrap Email Sending is designed to provide developers with a robust infrastructure, boasting high deliverability rates by default and design.
Plus, Mailrap Email Sending offers two sending streams – Transactional and Bulk. It allows you to send bulk emails (newsletters, product offers, marketing emails) at the price of transactional. And both streams have a dedicated SMTP server and API.