Transactional Email and Mandrill Alternatives

Many of us woke up this morning to an email from Mandrill (and hopefully coffee). If you hadn’t caught wind of the changes via MailChimp’s blogpost yesterday, this email broke the news that Mandrill is soon to be transitioning from being a free service available for all to requiring a paid MailChimp account for access.^[1] This transition begins March 16th and will be effective by April 27th.

That leaves a lot of us in a quandary. Mandrill has long been the go-to transactional email solution for the WP Ninjas. It has provided a high quality, free solution both for the internal needs of our company and one that we are confident recommending to our customers. The move from a free to a paid service changes this dynamic somewhat.

Transactional Email and Why an Accessible Solution is Important

Transactional email is essentially any “one-to-one” email exchange, as opposed to bulk emailing or “one-to-many”, that is triggered by a user’s interaction with a website. It’s the email you send or receive confirming payment or shipping, it’s the email to site admins triggered by a form submission, it’s the test email you send to your own account to troubleshoot your website’s settings!

The integral nature of transactional email to any online organization means it’s something that you just can’t go without. For our customers especially, transactional email plays a huge role in the basic function of your business or organization. It’s indispensable, and there should be an accessible, easy to use solution for daily use. So, what free Mandrill alternatives are out there?

Mailgun and Ninja Forms: Ninjas with Guns?!

To that end, and with anticipation of Mandrill’s move, we have tested alternatives and arrived at what we feel is the best of the Mandrill alternatives that include a free option for our users: Mailgun. We’ve had a tutorial posted for getting your WordPress site set up with Mailgun for some time, and we’d like to take this moment to draw your attention to that. We realize there’s a wide diversity of preferences and use cases among our users however, so we won’t stop there. Below you will find a list of additional alternatives. You may find one you like best there, or you may prefer Mailgun. Give it a look!

Free Mandrill Alternatives

Mailgun

• Up to 10k emails a month free
• Volume discount pricing after 10k; $.0005 per email up to 500k emails sent, $.00035 for the next million sent, etc. It gets cheaper as you go.
• No hidden fees, pricing is very transparent
• No contracts, monthly billing
• WordPress.org plugin

Pepipost

• Up to 25k emails a month free
• Over 25k emails, purchase an additional 5k emails for a $1 “email credit”. Only unopened emails are charged against this credit, meaning your cost is tied to your open rate. Opened emails are free!
• Built-in analytics feature
• 24/7 support

SparkPost

• Up to 100k emails a month free (No that’s not a typo, that’s one hundred thousand free emails a month!)
• Tiered pricing after that, ranging from up to 40k emails for $10/month upward
• Feature rich
• Flexible growth options through the tiers as your business expands
• WordPress.org plugin

Mailjet

• Up to 200 emails per day free
• Up to 30k emails a month for $7.49 or 60k for $21.95
• Built-in analytics and tracking
• Premium suite offers room for growth
• WordPress.org plugin

SendinBlue

• Up to 9k emails a month free
• Tiered pricing from 40k for $7.37 to 120k for $66
• Variety of options for SMS
• Contact management made easy
• WordPress.org plugin

SendGrid

• Up to 12k emails a month free
• Tiered pricing options from 40k for $9.95/month up
• Built-in analytics
• Easy to use webhooks
• WordPress.org plugin

Maildocker

• Up to 10k emails per month free
• Tiered options include automation and extended logging and event features
• Developer oriented
• Highly customizable

Amazon SES

• 12 month trial of free tier with all the features of the paid service
• No fixed fee. Pricing is 100% based on usage
• It’s Amazon!
• WordPress.org plugin

Transactional email plays a huge role in basic function of any organization. Discover your options!Click To TweetWe hope this list helps you arrive at a free solution that works for you and gives you room to expand as your organization grows. We are dedicated to providing the best WordPress experience for our users that we can offer, and part of that mission is helping you find all the tools you need for your WordPress experience above and beyond a state of the art form builder.

I’m sure we haven’t covered all of the free Mandrill alternatives out there. Chances are there are some great ones out there we haven’t included. If you have any recommendations of your own, please feel free to tell us about them in the comments below. We’ll take a look and may just put them on the list. Happy emailing!

1. http://blog.mailchimp.com/important-changes-to-mandrill/