Is Mandrill Dead?
The Cost of "Zombie" SaaS
It's not dead. It's worse. It is "Undead." You are paying a premium tax for a product frozen in 2016.
Mandrill was once the king of transactional email. Since the Mailchimp acquisition, it has suffered from 'Feature Stasis' and a forced bundling model that makes it arguably the most expensive option on the market.
- You must pay for a Mailchimp Marketing Plan ($20/mo+) just to access Mandrill.
- No major feature releases in 5+ years. The API is stagnant.
- Users report degraded support times as priority shifts to Mailchimp's core marketing product.
- Transmit offers the same 'Transactional API' experience but with modern internals and pay-as-you-go pricing.
The Mailchimp Tax
In 2016, Mailchimp made a controversial decision: they forced all Mandrill users to buy a standard Mailchimp subscription.
This is the "Double Billing" model.
Compare this to Transmit + SES. For 10,000 emails:
SES Cost: $1.00
Transmit Cost: $0.00 (Free Tier)
You are overpaying by 4000%.
Feature Stasis
When was the last time you saw a "New from Mandrill" announcement?
The dashboard looks exactly as it did in 2015. The documentation is aging. While the world moved to React Email, detailed webhooks, and granular IAM security, Mandrill stayed still.
Using "Zombie Software" is an operational risk. Security patches become slower. Integration libraries get deprecated. You are building your house on a foundation that is slowly sinking.
The Jailbreak: Exporting Your Templates
The hardest part of leaving is the templates. Use this API call to download them all to JSON before you cancel account.
03. Dead vs. Alive
Zombie (Mandrill)
- Required Mailchimp Subscription ($$$)
- Zero Feature Updates
- Legacy API Design
Alive (Transmit)
- Pay-as-you-go (Free Tier)
- Modern React Email Support
- Active Development
Escaping the Zombie Stack
Cutting the "Mailchimp Tax" is only the first step. Once you've migrated your templates, ensure your new infrastructure is sovereign and your logic is automated.