Mandrill, the beloved-by-many transactional email service, recently announced that it will switch to a paid-only model under the MailChimp umbrella. This came as a surprise to many developers who used them for sending emails for free from various servers and backends. This post provides a round-up of some of the more popular Mandrill alternatives.

Free Transactional Email Providers

This section covers a number of popular transactional email providers with a free tier.

Mailgun

• http://www.mailgun.com/pricing
• First 10,000 emails per month free, then starting at $5 per 5k mails
• Used by: GitHub, Stripe, Heroku
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP API
• Features: Delivery statistics, Recipient Variables (first name, order value, …), Open, click & unsubscribe tracking, Dedicated IP, Inbound Email

Amazon SES (Simple Email Service)

• http://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing
• 62k emails per month free, then $0.10 per 1,000. $0.12 per GB of attachments sent
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP API
• Features: Analytics for last 24 hours only (delivery attempts, bounces, complaints, rejects), Only Basic Interface, Inbound Email

SparkPost

• https://www.sparkpost.com/pricing
• First 100k emails per month free, then ~$0.2 per thousand ($24.99 per 100k)
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP REST API
• Features: Email Open and Click Tracking, Analytics, Templating (incl. conditionals, loops), Open Source Libraries, Dedicated IP, Inbound Email
• Position themselves as Mandrill replacement, including a migration guide and low prices for life for new customers

Mailjet

• https://www.mailjet.com/pricing_v3
• Free for 6k emails / month, paid plans starting at $7.50 for 30k mails
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP API
• Features: Tracking, Analytics, Personalization, Templates, Dedicated IP, Inbound Email

Elastic Email

• http://elasticemail.com/pricing
• First 25k emails per month free, then $0.19 per thousand
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP API
• Features: Email Open and Click Tracking, Templates, Dedicated IP, Inbound Email API

SendinBlue

• https://www.sendinblue.com/pricing
• 9k emails per month free (limited to 300 per day)
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP API
• Features: Delivery statistics, Templates, Template Editor, SMS Marketing, Dedicated IP

smtp.google.com

• Gmail allows sending 2000 emails per day with SMTP via any standard user account
• How To Use Google’s SMTP Server

Postage App

• https://secure.postageapp.com/register
• 1k emails per month free (max 100/day), $9 for 10k emails/month, $29 for 40k emails/month, $79 for 100k emails/month
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP API
• Features: Analytics, Templates, Personalization, Dedicated IP

Paid-Only Transactional Email Providers

This incomplete section covers a number of paid-only transactional email providers.

Mandrill

• http://www.mandrill.com/pricing
• by Mailchimp, paid starting March 16
• Starting at $20 for 25k emails, then about $.8/k.
• Features: Fine grained API, Open Source Libraries, Dedicated IP, Templates, Inbound Email

Postmark App

• https://postmarkapp.com/pricing
• $1.50 per 1k emails
• First 25k emails free
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP API
• Features: Analytics, Open tracking, Dedicated IP, Templates, Inbound Email, Full content for every mail of past 45 days

SMTP.com

• https://www.smtp.com/plans-pricing
• 10k emails/month $15, 50k emails/month $70, 100k emails/month $160
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP API

Sendgrid

• https://sendgrid.com/pricing
• Free plan for 12k emails / month. Paid plans starting at $10 for 40k emails, or $0.10 for 1k emails
• 30 day trial with 40k emails
• Sending via SMTP, HTTP API
• Features: Analytics (open, click, bounce, etc.), Templates, Mobile apps, Fine grained API permissions, Dedicated IP, Inbound Email

Summary

Finally a quick overview in tabular form:

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Update 2017-01-11: Updated SendGrid prices (no longer has a free tier)
Update 2016-03-22: Updated Mailchimp prices, Added dedicated IPs to Postmark