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Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill) vs. SMTP Email Relay Solutions

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)

    Score7.9 out of 10
    N/AMailchimp Transactional Email (formerly Mandrill) is designed to allow users to deliver fast, personalized transactional emails using API or SMTP.

    $0

    per month

    SMTP Email Relay Solutions

    Score9 out of 10
    N/ASMTP Email Relay Solutions is a transactional email service formerly from SharpSpring and now a J2 Global company.

    $25

    per month

    Pricing
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)SMTP Email Relay Solutions
    Editions & Modules
    Free
    $0
    per month
    Essentials
    $13
    per month
    Standard
    $20
    per month
    Premium
    $350
    per month
    ESSENTIAL
    $25
    per month
    STARTER
    $80
    per month
    GROWTH
    $300
    per month
    BUSINESS
    $500
    per month
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)SMTP Email Relay Solutions
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Best Alternatives
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)SMTP Email Relay Solutions
    Small Businesses
    Postmark
    Score5.1 out of 10
    Postmark
    Score5.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Postmark
    Score5.1 out of 10
    Postmark
    Score5.1 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)SMTP Email Relay Solutions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (16 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.7
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)SMTP Email Relay Solutions
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Intuit
    Any system that requires transactional email message functionality as an external service. The benefits of a well managed and vetted server to maintain reputation as well as being reliability is well worth the effort needed to integrate towards the API specs
    Incentivized
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    Ziff Davis Inc
    SMTP Email Relay Solutions is a great service if you are in a field where sending out bulk information, such as monthly statements to clients, invoices, or any back-to-back emails that would normally get flagged for "spam" is required.
    Read full review
    Pros
    Intuit
    • Mandrill is extremely reliable. We switched from using a platform that was very hit-or-miss, but we never had a single deliverability issue with Mandrill's transactional API. Every email was sent reliably and quickly.
    • Mandrill's reporting and debugging features made it easy to ensure that all our messages were getting delivered to the right place in a timely manner. In fact, Mandrill's tools were so robust that we used it as an end-around way of debugging another failing service we were using.
    • Mandrill is a very affordable add-on to an existing MailChimp account. Adding an extra layer of reliability was a no-brainer, and made the cost essentially negligible to our organization.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ziff Davis Inc
    • It allows us to send email through the secure email gateway.
    • We are able to track and scan all email communications
    • It provides a way for legacy and current applications to send out notification and mass email communications.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Intuit
    • The rate-limit system can be troubling. If you are switching providers and already have a large e-mail volume, you're going to want to transition slowly. The per-hour send limits are initially very low, and if you have any deliverability or complaint hiccups, they will plummet quickly. The Mandrill support staff is very helpful in this area - they will not (and claim that they can not) manipulate send limits for any account at any time for any reason.
    • Billing is combined in with a paid MailChimp subscription, which didn't used to be the case.
    • No free tier.
    Incentivized
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    Ziff Davis Inc
    • As with any technology on a server, we sometimes see issues with downtime related to network changes or firewall updates.
    • It can be a challenge to work with some of our older applications when the TLS feature is used.
    • I wish there was a more direct way to reliably use SMTP for mass email sends without the fear of being blacklisted.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Intuit
    It did the job for us and we were happy with the delivery rates of the email, analytics and customisation available while integrating it within our platform.
    Incentivized
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    Ziff Davis Inc
    I have yet to encounter any hiccups with their services. I send a large volume of emails monthly and have yet to experience any delay in my work.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Intuit
    I haven't personally reached out to their support team, but the feedback I've heard from our tech support and engineering teams have been that their response to questions has often been they either are unsure or that Mandrill is what it is. For example, when our customers weren't able to see opens and clicks for all emails sent, and we reached out to their support, the response was it is what it is, and they'll send a notification to our app if they can.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Ziff Davis Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Intuit
    So we actually work with clients across all of the platforms listed above, but Mandrill has a huge ease of use bonus in its favor, especially when working with clients who are setting up a Cart Recovery style marketing campaign for the first time or are looking for a bit of a fire-and-forget setup. With more sophisticated clients (on the scale of global ecommerce companies), who have a larger subscriber/customer base and in-house design teams, we find that Mandrill usually isn't enough
    Incentivized
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    Ziff Davis Inc
    Office 365 does use secure non-standard ports for SMTP connectivity causing a problem with older programs. SMTP Email Delivery from Exchange solves this problem by giving the network admin full control over ports and specific program connections. While we do use both Office 365 and the SMTP Email Delivery we find that a mix is needed in order to meet all expectations for our end users. The majority of our SMTP communications, for users, go through Office 365 while the majority of our applications and servers do go through the SMTP Email Delivery service.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Intuit
    • It helped us to grow our customer database substantially in the last quarter.
    • Last week we reached 62% customer engagement in our campaign. This is very good customer engagement for our projects.
    • In the last quarter we achieved our target by 135%.
    Incentivized
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    Ziff Davis Inc
    • It's the easiest way to send mail out. No worries about complex configurations.
    • It can be finicky when used in a hybrid Office 365 environment to get the proper pathways secured and working.
    • I wish there were a better way to send out mass emails, on-site, without our domain or server IP being blacklisted.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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