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  1. Stackups
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  3. Email Services
  4. Transactional Email
  5. Mailgun vs Mandrill

Mailgun vs Mandrill

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Mailgun
Mailgun
Stacks7.8K
Followers4.2K
Votes656
Mandrill
Mandrill
Stacks4.4K
Followers1.6K
Votes926

Mailgun vs Mandrill: What are the differences?

Introduction

Mailgun and Mandrill are both transactional email services that offer reliable email delivery for businesses. While they have similar functionalities, there are key differences between Mailgun and Mandrill that set them apart. In this comparison, we will highlight these differences to help you choose the right email service provider for your needs.

  1. Pricing Structure: One of the main differences between Mailgun and Mandrill is their pricing structure. Mailgun offers a flexible pricing plan based on the number of emails sent, allowing you to start with a free plan and then scale up as your business grows. On the other hand, Mandrill has a tiered pricing structure based on the number of emails sent per month, with no free plan available. This makes Mailgun a more cost-effective option for businesses with varying email sending volumes.

  2. Email Sending Limits: Another difference between Mailgun and Mandrill is their email sending limits. Mailgun has a higher daily email sending limit, allowing you to send a larger number of emails per day. Mandrill, on the other hand, has lower daily email sending limits compared to Mailgun. If you have high email sending needs, Mailgun is a better choice as it provides more flexibility in terms of volume.

  3. Email Deliverability: When it comes to email deliverability, both Mailgun and Mandrill have strong reputations. However, Mailgun has a slightly better reputation for delivering emails to the inbox. With Mailgun, you can expect higher deliverability rates and fewer emails ending up in spam folders. If email deliverability is a top priority for your business, Mailgun is the preferred option.

  4. Ease of Integration: Both Mailgun and Mandrill offer easy integration with popular programming languages and frameworks. However, Mailgun provides more comprehensive documentation and libraries for different programming languages, making it easier to integrate with your existing software stack. If you require seamless integration with your current systems, Mailgun is the recommended choice.

  5. Advanced Email Deliverability Features: Mailgun offers advanced email deliverability features such as dedicated IP addresses, domain reputation management, and bounce handling. These features allow you to have more control over your email deliverability and manage any issues that may arise. Mandrill, on the other hand, offers limited deliverability features compared to Mailgun. If you require advanced email deliverability management, Mailgun is the ideal choice.

  6. Customer Support: Lastly, customer support is an important consideration when choosing an email service provider. Both Mailgun and Mandrill offer customer support, but Mailgun has a reputation for providing faster response times and more personalized support. If prompt and reliable customer support is crucial for your business, Mailgun is the recommended option.

In summary, Mailgun and Mandrill differ in their pricing structure, email sending limits, email deliverability, ease of integration, advanced email deliverability features, and customer support. Mailgun offers a flexible pricing plan, higher email sending limits, better email deliverability, easier integration, advanced deliverability features, and more reliable customer support compared to Mandrill. Choose Mailgun if you prioritize cost-effectiveness, scalability, email deliverability, integration, advanced features, and customer support.

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Advice on Mailgun, Mandrill

Kevin
Kevin

Jun 29, 2021

Decided

We chose Postmark as our transactional email service for several reasons:

  • Laser-focus (at the time) on transactional email - their success/speed/reliability with delivering transactional email is amazing. Note, they have now branched out and offer marketing/broadcast email services too.

  • Developer-friendly - Awesome docs and resources. Their Rail gem integrates directly with ActionMailer so nearly all of our code worked without changes.

  • Servers - You can set up "Servers" for different mail streams/workflows to keep things separate and easy to review.

  • Bootstrapped - Wildbit (who makes Postmark) is bootstrapped just like the Friendliest.app and they offer a service credit to other bootstrapped startups.

48.3k views48.3k
Comments
Slawomir
Slawomir

Head of Product at Coresender

Oct 15, 2020

Decided

Of course we chose Coresender to send our own transactional emails :) So I thought I'll let you know how we use it.

  • We set up separate sending accounts for all company needs, eg. transactional emails, monitoring alerts, time to inbox. We even configured our office printers to send emails through Coresender.

  • We have a real-time and extremely usable view into what emails go through each account, so each time anybody reports an email not arriving we're able to assist them in a few seconds

  • We utilize our message timeline feature, so we can learn eg. if people are clicking on password reset links

  • We always know how many of our onboarding emails are being opened which helps us improve them

  • Finally, we have full controll over our suppressions lists, so we can add (and remove!) from them whenever necessary.

To sum up, at Coresender we're eating our own dogfood and it helps us stay connected to the product and understand our customers better.

88.5k views88.5k
Comments
Imelda
Imelda

Engineer at pounce3 Project Management

Dec 9, 2020

Decided

We did a quick test on the reliability of these three common email services, sending a few emails an hour at random intervals.

Unfortunately, none of them had 100% availability over the 30 day test. I don't understand why this is so hard?

Mailgun performed the best with the most reliability and fastest response times. Mandrill was notably bad.

30.9k views30.9k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Mailgun
Mailgun
Mandrill
Mandrill

Mailgun is a set of powerful APIs that allow you to send, receive, track and store email effortlessly.

Mandrill is a new way for apps to send transactional email. It runs on the delivery infrastructure that powers MailChimp.

Optimized Queue;Scheduled Delivery;MIME Assembly;Test Mode;ESP Feedback Handling;Unsubscribe Handling;Spam Complaint Handling;Bounce Handling;HTTP POST to your App;Routing w RegEx Filters;Parsing to UTF-8;Signature Separation;Quoted Reply Separation;Wildcard Domains;Spam Filtering;Live Logs;Message Tagging;Event Webhooks;Open/Click Tracking;Unsubscribe Tracking;Complaint Tracking;Bounce Tracking;Mailing Lists;Template Variables;A/B Testing;Link Performance;Geo Performance;Recipient Level Data;SMTP or HTTP API;Clean IP Addresses;SPF Authentication;DKIM Authentication;SSL/TLS;Scales on Demand
Inbound Email- Set up inboxes for Mandrill to control. When they receive email, we’ll make an API call to your app with all the relevant information, so you don’t have to worry about what’s happening behind the scenes.;Webhooks Support- Create custom event notifications, keep track of new signups and unsubscribes in real-time, get a notice of every spam complaint so you can flag them in your database.;Rules Engine- Modify the content of email coming through Mandrill without having to involve developers. For example, you could tell Mandrill to take any email coming from confirmation@yourdomain.com, give it a new template, and add Google Analytics tracking.;Advanced Tagging and Reports- Generate custom reports based on the stats that matter to you. Add campaign tags like “confirmation email” and “mailing list,” and combine them with data Mandrill automatically tracks. Tagging allows you to graph sets of data like “bounce rate for confirmation emails to Gmail addresses.”;Meaningful Metrics- Observe trends and monitor delivery to see if you’re on track or if you need to make adjustments. Search by recipient or domain, sort sent email by bounces or rejections, and track opens and clicks.;Status Updates- Troubleshoot from wherever you are, and send status messages to recipients from Mandrill;Mobile Access- Your transactional email is generated at all hours. Mandrill is the only service with a mobile app, so you can monitor your performance even when you’re away from your desk.
Statistics
Stacks
7.8K
Stacks
4.4K
Followers
4.2K
Followers
1.6K
Votes
656
Votes
926
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 178
    Quick email integration
  • 148
    Free plan
  • 91
    Easy setup
  • 67
    Ridiculously reliable
  • 53
    Extensive apis
Cons
  • 2
    No HTTPS tracking links supported
  • 2
    Cost
  • 1
    Emails go to spam due to blacklisted IP's of mailgun
  • 1
    Cannot create multiple api keys
Pros
  • 189
    Simple installation
  • 141
    Great api
  • 123
    Generous free allowance to get you started
  • 114
    Cheap and simple
  • 99
    Trackable
Cons
  • 1
    Really hard to pull analytics out via api
Integrations
AppFog
AppFog
Magento
Magento
Ghost
Ghost
Heroku
Heroku
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Rackspace Cloud Servers
Sendicate
Sendicate
WordPress
WordPress
cloudControl
cloudControl
Parse
Parse
sendwithus
sendwithus
Parse
Parse
sendwithus
sendwithus

What are some alternatives to Mailgun, Mandrill?

Twilio SendGrid

Twilio SendGrid

Twilio SendGrid's cloud-based email infrastructure relieves businesses of the cost and complexity of maintaining custom email systems. Twilio SendGrid provides reliable delivery, scalability & real-time analytics along with flexible API's.

Amazon SES

Amazon SES

Amazon SES eliminates the complexity and expense of building an in-house email solution or licensing, installing, and operating a third-party email service. The service integrates with other AWS services, making it easy to send emails from applications being hosted on services such as Amazon EC2.

sendwithus

sendwithus

Send email from your app with a simple API call, Sendwithus manages the rest. Templates, testing, data management, segments, and analytics are all accessible through a friendly dashboard.

Postmark

Postmark

Postmark removes the headaches of delivering and parsing email for webapps with minimal setup time and zero maintenance.

Mailjet

Mailjet

Mailjet is a real-time Cloud Emailing platform: scalable, agile and flexible. Our unique algorithm boosts your deliverability and our platform provides in-depth insight so you can optimize more than ever.

SparkPost

SparkPost

SparkPost is the world’s #1 email delivery provider. We empower companies with actionable, real-time data to send relevant email to their customers which increases engagement and both top and bottom line revenue.

Mailtrap

Mailtrap

We offer one platform that covers all email-related needs in one place: testing, sending, and in-depth tracking to control how email infrastructure works and performs.

Apostle.io

Apostle.io

Transactional emails are the forgotten step child of internet marketers. Apostle.io empowers marketers to manage transactional emails themselves, as they would their list based campaigns. Preview, Update, Analyse and Test your transactional email all in one place.

Nodemailer

Nodemailer

It is a single module with zero dependencies – code is easily auditable. The email delivery is Secure using TLS/STARTTLS. You can use HTML content, as well as plain text alternative.

Resend

Resend

It is a modern email sending platform focused on providing the best developer experience. Build, test, and deliver transactional emails at scale.

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