7 ms·

Hey - I'm Chad, the project lead for Mandrill. I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys might have.

brittohalloran 14y ago
So how does this compare to something like SendGrid? More or less a direct competitor? I noticed you can only send mail via the API (no SMTP relay). Any other notable differences?
- suking 14y ago
  Why would you use Sendgrid over Amazon SES - SES is like 1/10th the price.
- brittohalloran 14y ago
  Cancel that -- you CAN do a simple SMTP relay. Looks like a solid service. I'll consider switching. Your free plan is about twice what SendGrid offers.
  - snowmanco 14y ago
    One thing to not is that mandrill has a limit of 25/day.
- cmorrisrsg 14y ago
  We're trying to make Mandrill a stable email platform for all uses, so in that way we're similar to SendGrid. Where we're really trying to focus isn't so much in just the delivery of the email, though we do have a ton of experience doing that well. Mandrill is a product that is trying to make your application-driven emails as easily tracked, tested, and understood as the bulk email you'd send using MailChimp. It's still early days for the product and we're still iterating rapidly, but that's where we're trying to get. We're also integrated with MailChimp itself. We've got a big discount for paid MailChimp users that want to use Mandrill, and you can share templates between Mandrill and MailChimp easily. We'll be integrating more deeply in the future - really trying to make a one-stop shop for email-related needs for businesses.
  - ericingram 14y ago
    I think deep integration with MailChimp is a huge reason to use Mandrill. I'm not and have never been a paid MailChimp customer, but this might get me there. I currently use MailGun for transactional e-mail, and CampaignMonitor for marketing e-mail. MailGun's UI is really rough, so Mandrill is pulling me in for that reason alone, and CampaignMonitor pretty great but I haven't use it lately any way. Have you considered discounts for developers deploying individual accounts for clients?
    - cmorrisrsg 14y ago
      We've considered it, but we're still working on our reseller/integrator story.
megaman821 14y ago
For auditing purposes I need to record individual email bounces. Do you have an api or reporting feature that does that?
- bittersweet 14y ago
  Seems you can set up webhooks to do just that! [1] These are the events: send, hard_bounce, soft_bounce, open, click, spam, unsub, reject [1] http://mandrillapp.com/api/docs/webhooks.html#method=add http://mandrillapp.com/api/docs/webhooks.html#method=add
  - megaman821 14y ago
    The API doc does not make it clear if I am getting the recipient, subject line, and bounce type back.
    - cmorrisrsg 14y ago
      You do get all the information we have on the message and the bounce. Recipient, sender, subject line, bounce info, tags, etc.
dlib 14y ago
First of all congratulations! I was hoping you would be developing such a product after I saw last year's announcement on STS. One question, is there a ruby gem to work with the API coming up, or is it left up to the internet to develop that? edit: Missed it, seems it is being worked on: http://help.mandrill.com/customer/portal/articles/464808-api-wrappers http://help.mandrill.com/customer/portal/articles/464808-api...
ErikGelderblom 14y ago
Hi Chad, Just gave it a quick spin here and we got the SMTP relay working and tracking e-mails within 2 minutes. Very impressive. We'll play around with the API soon, it looks promising :)
tszming 14y ago
For DKIM Customization, I assume we can use FREE + a $29.95 dedicated IP plan?
- cmorrisrsg 14y ago
  You can customize DKIM without a dedicated IP. You do need to have a paid plan to get the dedicated IP, but that's really because you need at least a few hundred thousand emails per month of volume before getting a dedicated IP. With lower volumes (like anything that can fit in the free plan), the sending reputation of one of our shared IP addresses is certainly better than a dedicated IP with no reputation.
programminggeek 14y ago
Both MailChimp and Mandrill look great, but I have a pricing question. Is it possible to use Mandrill to send out newsletters since your Mandrill pricing is WAY cheaper than your pay as you go newsletter pricing? I've been looking for a newsletter service that charges me reasonable rates for pay as you go sending of a monthly/semi-monthly email newsletter, using the pay as you go product, it would cost me $30 per 1,000 emails, whereas Mandrill's per email rates start around $0.90 per 1,000. You say that both are using the same infrastructure, so why is sending email newsletters with MailChimp 33x more expensive?
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  I can't speak for MailChimp, but bulk e-mail requires a lot more managing - particularly for spam - than transactional.
- cmorrisrsg 14y ago
  Yes - you can use Mandrill for newsletters if you want to code your own subscription logic and store your own list of emails. MailChimp is quite a bit more expensive than Mandrill, but it does a lot more too. MailChimp stores more analytics than Mandrill does and stores it longer. It handles scheduling, batch testing, social integrations and content management in ways that Mandrill really doesn't. MailChimp also has analytics and profiles for list subscribers that Mandrill doesn't have. If Mandrill does everything you need it to do and you can do the rest on your own, you should use Mandrill. It is, as you note, much cheaper.
smcguinness 14y ago
How are unsubscribes handled? I see in the activity there is a filter for unsubscribes but do not see any reference in the docs of how to handle.
- cmorrisrsg 14y ago
  It's really simple right now. We add a List-Unsubscribe header to each email which in supporting email clients (like gmail) adds an unsubscribe button to the report spam button that's always there. If the recipient unsubscribes in that way, we treat it as an unsubscribe. The more traditional subscription model isn't supported by Mandrill at this time. You'd need to build your own or use MailChimp for that. I recommend MailChimp, it's pretty good at handling subscription-based email like that ;)
  - smcguinness 14y ago
    It seems as if there are two sides of the fence with supporting unsubscribes from transaction emails. Do you have any input regarding this?
    - cmorrisrsg 14y ago
      Well, supporting unsubscribes in transactional emails can sometimes make sense, like with notification or confirmation emails where the user might want the option to not receive them. With others, like receipts or signup confirmations it makes less sense. For now, we presume that you're going to do the right thing and implement unsubscribes if it makes sense for the emails you're sending. We've got a feature coming to make that process easier, but it's still going to be a decision that the sender is going to need to make.
rberdeen 14y ago
Is the inbound email support documented at all? http://help.mandrill.com/customer/portal/articles/search?q=inbound http://help.mandrill.com/customer/portal/articles/search?q=i... doesn't look very promising.
sandstrom 14y ago
I've tried to sign up but you wouldn't take my password ("the input must contain at least one number or symbol"). Although a minimum length make sense, requiring a symbol doesn't. Would be great if you could remove it! See this for discussions on the subject: http://tech.dropbox.com/?p=165 http://tech.dropbox.com/?p=165 http://xkcd.com/936/ http://xkcd.com/936/
- Ecio78 14y ago
  I've not tried to signup but according to the error you're reporting, you must either have a number OR a symbol, so you're not required to put a symbol. Having said that, have you ever tried to fulfil the requirements for a strong Active Directory password? :)
listic 14y ago
What is "transactional email" ?
- Ecio78 14y ago
  I suppose something that carries some operational information and/or that is worth to be tracked, like "you've subscribed to our service", "your order is ready for shipping", "this is your password reset link", "your credit card has been charged.." etc opposed to mails like "hi Deb, how was the party last night?" that are merely informative / casual conversation (of course nothing stops you from sending this kind of mails with "transactional mail providers" and keepin track of relative metrics :))
- cschmidt 14y ago
  Another distinction is that you typically send transaction email to a single person, because some transaction has happened. Bulk email you send a (perhaps customized) email to an entire list of recipients in one go.

So how does this compare to something like SendGrid? More or less a direct competitor? I noticed you can only send mail via the API (no SMTP relay). Any other notable differences?

suking 14y ago
Why would you use Sendgrid over Amazon SES - SES is like 1/10th the price.
brittohalloran 14y ago
Cancel that -- you CAN do a simple SMTP relay. Looks like a solid service. I'll consider switching. Your free plan is about twice what SendGrid offers.
- snowmanco 14y ago
  One thing to not is that mandrill has a limit of 25/day.
cmorrisrsg 14y ago
We're trying to make Mandrill a stable email platform for all uses, so in that way we're similar to SendGrid. Where we're really trying to focus isn't so much in just the delivery of the email, though we do have a ton of experience doing that well. Mandrill is a product that is trying to make your application-driven emails as easily tracked, tested, and understood as the bulk email you'd send using MailChimp. It's still early days for the product and we're still iterating rapidly, but that's where we're trying to get. We're also integrated with MailChimp itself. We've got a big discount for paid MailChimp users that want to use Mandrill, and you can share templates between Mandrill and MailChimp easily. We'll be integrating more deeply in the future - really trying to make a one-stop shop for email-related needs for businesses.
- ericingram 14y ago
  I think deep integration with MailChimp is a huge reason to use Mandrill. I'm not and have never been a paid MailChimp customer, but this might get me there. I currently use MailGun for transactional e-mail, and CampaignMonitor for marketing e-mail. MailGun's UI is really rough, so Mandrill is pulling me in for that reason alone, and CampaignMonitor pretty great but I haven't use it lately any way. Have you considered discounts for developers deploying individual accounts for clients?
  - cmorrisrsg 14y ago
    We've considered it, but we're still working on our reseller/integrator story.

megaman821 14y ago

For auditing purposes I need to record individual email bounces. Do you have an api or reporting feature that does that?

bittersweet 14y ago
Seems you can set up webhooks to do just that! [1] These are the events: send, hard_bounce, soft_bounce, open, click, spam, unsub, reject [1] http://mandrillapp.com/api/docs/webhooks.html#method=add http://mandrillapp.com/api/docs/webhooks.html#method=add
- megaman821 14y ago
  The API doc does not make it clear if I am getting the recipient, subject line, and bounce type back.
  - cmorrisrsg 14y ago
    You do get all the information we have on the message and the bounce. Recipient, sender, subject line, bounce info, tags, etc.

dlib 14y ago

First of all congratulations! I was hoping you would be developing such a product after I saw last year's announcement on STS. One question, is there a ruby gem to work with the API coming up, or is it left up to the internet to develop that? edit: Missed it, seems it is being worked on: http://help.mandrill.com/customer/portal/articles/464808-api-wrappers http://help.mandrill.com/customer/portal/articles/464808-api...

ErikGelderblom 14y ago

Hi Chad, Just gave it a quick spin here and we got the SMTP relay working and tracking e-mails within 2 minutes. Very impressive. We'll play around with the API soon, it looks promising :)

tszming 14y ago

For DKIM Customization, I assume we can use FREE + a $29.95 dedicated IP plan?

cmorrisrsg 14y ago
You can customize DKIM without a dedicated IP. You do need to have a paid plan to get the dedicated IP, but that's really because you need at least a few hundred thousand emails per month of volume before getting a dedicated IP. With lower volumes (like anything that can fit in the free plan), the sending reputation of one of our shared IP addresses is certainly better than a dedicated IP with no reputation.

programminggeek 14y ago

Both MailChimp and Mandrill look great, but I have a pricing question. Is it possible to use Mandrill to send out newsletters since your Mandrill pricing is WAY cheaper than your pay as you go newsletter pricing? I've been looking for a newsletter service that charges me reasonable rates for pay as you go sending of a monthly/semi-monthly email newsletter, using the pay as you go product, it would cost me $30 per 1,000 emails, whereas Mandrill's per email rates start around $0.90 per 1,000. You say that both are using the same infrastructure, so why is sending email newsletters with MailChimp 33x more expensive?

ceejayoz 14y ago
I can't speak for MailChimp, but bulk e-mail requires a lot more managing - particularly for spam - than transactional.
cmorrisrsg 14y ago
Yes - you can use Mandrill for newsletters if you want to code your own subscription logic and store your own list of emails. MailChimp is quite a bit more expensive than Mandrill, but it does a lot more too. MailChimp stores more analytics than Mandrill does and stores it longer. It handles scheduling, batch testing, social integrations and content management in ways that Mandrill really doesn't. MailChimp also has analytics and profiles for list subscribers that Mandrill doesn't have. If Mandrill does everything you need it to do and you can do the rest on your own, you should use Mandrill. It is, as you note, much cheaper.

smcguinness 14y ago

How are unsubscribes handled? I see in the activity there is a filter for unsubscribes but do not see any reference in the docs of how to handle.

cmorrisrsg 14y ago
It's really simple right now. We add a List-Unsubscribe header to each email which in supporting email clients (like gmail) adds an unsubscribe button to the report spam button that's always there. If the recipient unsubscribes in that way, we treat it as an unsubscribe. The more traditional subscription model isn't supported by Mandrill at this time. You'd need to build your own or use MailChimp for that. I recommend MailChimp, it's pretty good at handling subscription-based email like that ;)
- smcguinness 14y ago
  It seems as if there are two sides of the fence with supporting unsubscribes from transaction emails. Do you have any input regarding this?
  - cmorrisrsg 14y ago
    Well, supporting unsubscribes in transactional emails can sometimes make sense, like with notification or confirmation emails where the user might want the option to not receive them. With others, like receipts or signup confirmations it makes less sense. For now, we presume that you're going to do the right thing and implement unsubscribes if it makes sense for the emails you're sending. We've got a feature coming to make that process easier, but it's still going to be a decision that the sender is going to need to make.

rberdeen 14y ago

Is the inbound email support documented at all? http://help.mandrill.com/customer/portal/articles/search?q=inbound http://help.mandrill.com/customer/portal/articles/search?q=i... doesn't look very promising.

sandstrom 14y ago

I've tried to sign up but you wouldn't take my password ("the input must contain at least one number or symbol"). Although a minimum length make sense, requiring a symbol doesn't. Would be great if you could remove it! See this for discussions on the subject: http://tech.dropbox.com/?p=165 http://tech.dropbox.com/?p=165 http://xkcd.com/936/ http://xkcd.com/936/

Ecio78 14y ago
I've not tried to signup but according to the error you're reporting, you must either have a number OR a symbol, so you're not required to put a symbol. Having said that, have you ever tried to fulfil the requirements for a strong Active Directory password? :)

listic 14y ago

What is "transactional email" ?

Ecio78 14y ago
I suppose something that carries some operational information and/or that is worth to be tracked, like "you've subscribed to our service", "your order is ready for shipping", "this is your password reset link", "your credit card has been charged.." etc opposed to mails like "hi Deb, how was the party last night?" that are merely informative / casual conversation (of course nothing stops you from sending this kind of mails with "transactional mail providers" and keepin track of relative metrics :))
cschmidt 14y ago
Another distinction is that you typically send transaction email to a single person, because some transaction has happened. Bulk email you send a (perhaps customized) email to an entire list of recipients in one go.