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Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill) vs. Twilio

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)

    Score7.3 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

    Twilio

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/ATwilio offers a CPaaS and CCaaS solution, with the combination of its programmable Voice, Video, and Messaging APIs, as well as the Twilio Flex cloud contact center. Additional capabilities include Twilio's Elastic SIP Trunking, as well as API for WhatsApp.

    $0

    per min per participant

    Pricing
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)Twilio
    Editions & Modules
    Free
    $0
    per month
    Essentials
    $13
    per month
    Standard
    $20
    per month
    Premium
    $350
    per month
    Programmable Video
    $0.0015
    per min per participant
    WhatsApp Business API
    $0.0042
    Per WhatsApp Template message sent
    WhatsApp Business API
    $0.005
    Per WhatsApp session message
    Elastic SIP Trunking
    $0.007
    Per min for termination
    Programmable Messaging
    $0.0075
    per message sent or received
    Programmable Voice
    $0.0085
    per minute to receive a call
    Programmable Voice
    $0.013
    per min to make a call
    Elastic SIP Trunking
    $0.045
    Per min for origination
    Twilio Conversations
    $0.05
    per active user per month
    Twilio Authy
    $0.09
    per authentication
    Programmable Wireless
    $0.1
    per MB
    Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
    $1
    per active user hour (5000 hours free)
    Programmable Wireless
    $2.00
    per SIM card
    Twilio SendGrid Email API
    $14.95
    per month up to 100k emails. (Up to 40k emails free for 30 days)
    Twilio SendGrid Marketing Campaigns
    $15
    per month for 5,000 contacts and 15,000 emails. Your first 2,000 contacts are free
    Twilio Flex (Contact Center)
    $150
    per named user per month (5000 hours free)
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)Twilio
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details—1. Pay-as-you-go pricing: Simple usage-based pricing without contracts. 2. Volume discounts: Discounts trigger as usage grows. 3. Free trial credit that includes full API access.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)Twilio
    Considered Both Products
    Intuit
    Chose Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)
    We were already using Mailchimp email marketing product and then while exploring different solutions, we went ahead with Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill) only considering our requirements which has mix of reliability and pricing. Few things that stand out with Mailchimp …
    Incentivized
    Twilio
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    5 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    66 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    58 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    5 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    68 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    88%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    45 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    89%
    Implementation went as expected
    56 Answers
    Best Alternatives
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)Twilio
    Small Businesses
    Postmark
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Telegram
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Postmark
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Telegram
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Telegram
    Score8.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)Twilio
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (16 ratings)
    8.1
    (94 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.5
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.5
    (10 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (38 ratings)
    Support Rating
    6.7
    (2 ratings)
    5.7
    (16 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.5
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Mailchimp Transactional Email (Mandrill)Twilio
    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
    Read full review
    Twilio
    I have tried other competitors. But I always end up going back to Twilio because I feel like it is dependable, easy to use, and, has competitive pricing. The only time I wouldn't recommend Twilio to someone as if they are completely inexperienced about using webhooks or APIs. Because you can't really just sign up and start using Twilio without connecting it to another platform first.
    Incentivized
    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
    Twilio
    • Easy to see my team in one place, when they log in and out and what call status they are in.
    • Twilio is a simple, user friendly way to log in and out of work activities.
    • Excellent services and support.
    • The omnichannel feature which allows agents to get request from all channels.
    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
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • Control panel. Often, navigating through lists is challenging. I want endless scrolling, not pagination.
    • Conversational intelligence service require a Language. I would like it to detect it.
    • We would like to have some credit on clients that chose to use their own Twilio account.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Intuit
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    Unless we can get this handled quickly -- less than 1 week -- we will likely switch to another provider who, in my opinion, we'll have to spend close to $3,000 in development time to build a new integration for texting. Our clients need texting and I feel Twilio has failed us miserably.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Twilio
    Twilio has well documented APIs and examples. There are several tutorials, videos and Q&As regarding their services. So, usability is very good. I must say that advanced knowledge of telephony, API/Programming and error-handling is essential to make good use of Twilio. It's not just plug-and-play unless you are integrated with a system that has all of the programming built for it.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Intuit
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    Twilio executes what it is designed to do: send SMS messages at scale while providing very good deliverability. I believe that Twilio is very good at what we use for adding SMS messages to our comms strategy. We can see those messages get opened and replied to, which is exactly what we are looking to achieve.
    Incentivized
    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
    Twilio
    I have not had to communicate with Twilio support in the last 3 years but my past experience with them has been very positive. They replied to my previous requests promptly and kept me well informed to resolve my inquiries. With their documentation that's available, I hardly imagine why anyone would need to contact support since it's all there in a concise and easy to understand format. It would probably take you longer to type out a support ticket than to just open their doc websites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Intuit
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    The developer APIs and SDKs are super easy to follow.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Twilio
    We evaluated many fundraising-based text-to-give programs and found the subscriptions prohibitively expensive for our small scale and uncertain first few years of development. While we may be willing to invest that kind of money after discovering how things work, we're happy with Twilio now and have no desire to start over.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Intuit
    No answers on this topic
    Twilio
    Being in South Africa, direct local currency support would be nice
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Read full review
    Twilio
    • We found that associates who had the opportunity to respond to a survey about their assigned job were 37% more likely to return to a job site
    • We were able to reduce the number of resources required to manually respond to associates using Twilio Studio, so those resources could have more time to complete other tasks
    • We were able to scale the number of associates who received survey messages at least by a factor of 8 without increasing our resource demand
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Twilio Screenshots

    Screenshot of the “Explore Products” section, which is where to build products.Screenshot of the optional drag-and-drop visual editor and code editor.Screenshot of Flex, which is a programmable Contact Center that puts you in control.