From Mandrill to MailChimp, in just two months
So MailChimp lured you into its ecosystem with Mandrill, and then ditched you with its ill-advised move to consolidate its two services? A little backstory: on February 25th, Mandrill users got a two-months notice that the service would have merged in MailChimp itself as an add-on. In those two months, customers and developers were allowed to try out a new system for their transactional emails, but let’s face it: find the right one is a tough task, in just eight weeks.
To be honest, we think that from a product point of view their move is perfectly fine. What we didn’t like was the two-months notice: searching, finding and testing new services is not easy. Three, or maybe four months would have been better – even without matching Facebook extremely long Parse sunsetting – as a sign of respect for their customers.
Some alternatives to Mandrill
So if you were a Mandrill user and are on the market for a new transactional email service, we gathered some great options. Let’s see them.
TurboSMTP
TurboSMTP is our SMTP relay of choice. Affordable, reliable, and easy to use. There’s no really much more we can say: you can try it and see for yourself.
Sendgrid
Great for automated tasks, it’s a good mix between a pure SMTP and an email marketing platform. Depending on your needs, it could very well replace MailChimp and Mandrill.
SparkPost
They pledged to match Mandrill prices for users that make the switch, which is a good thing to do. If you know where to put your code, SparkPost is a good choice.
SMTP2Go
SMTP2Go, on the other hand, has a great 60-days money back assurance and delivers on time your relays.
Don’t forget to check our SMTP reviews page, we update it constantly!