Mandrill is Mailchimp Transactional — an add-on for sending application email, available only alongside a paid Mailchimp Standard or Premium marketing plan.
Mandrill cannot be bought alone — you first need Mailchimp Standard or Premium, then $20 per 25,000-email block on top. SendPing is standalone: free tier, then one plan that includes both transactional and marketing.
A modest 50,000 transactional emails costs two blocks ($40) plus the underlying Mailchimp plan. SendPing covers 50,000 emails on its entry plan for a fraction of that combined bill.
Mailchimp and Mandrill are two products with separate APIs, separate docs, and separate mental models bolted together. SendPing’s API, campaigns, audiences, automations, and webhooks were built as one system — one API key, one audience store, one event stream.
Typed SDKs in 8 languages plus a CLI, signed webhooks, batch sends, idempotency keys, and scheduling with natural-language times. Mandrill’s API predates most of that.
If your organization already lives in Mailchimp — audiences, journeys, templates, reporting — adding Mandrill blocks keeps transactional email inside a system your marketing team already operates, and that integration is its entire point.
The free tier (3,000 emails/month, 100/day) needs no card — enough to verify the whole migration end to end before paying anything.
Add your sending domain and follow the guided DKIM, SPF, and DMARC setup. One-click flows exist for Cloudflare, GoDaddy, and Namecheap; verification usually completes in minutes.
Replace your current send with one HTTPS request or a typed SDK in 8 languages. Batch endpoints, idempotency keys, and scheduling are built in.
Subscribe a webhook to delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, complained, and unsubscribed events — every request is signed so you can verify the source.
Bring audiences over via CSV or the contacts API; templates port as plain HTML or rebuild in the block editor.
The send call, after the switch
curl -X POST https://www.sendping.co/api/emails \
-H "Authorization: Bearer mb_xxxxxxxx" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"from": "Acme <hello@acme.com>",
"to": ["delivered@test.sendping.co"],
"subject": "Welcome to Acme",
"html": "<p>You are in.</p>"
}'The sending domain is taken from the address in from — there is no domain field on this endpoint. delivered@test.sendping.co is the test recipient that reports a delivered outcome without sending real mail.
| Feature | SendPing | Mandrill |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 3,000 emails/month (100/day), unlimited contacts, 1 domain — no card required | ✗ |
| Entry paid plan | $14/mo — 50,000 emails, unlimited contacts, 10 domains | $20 per 25,000-email block + paid Mailchimp plan |
| 100k emails/month | $24/mo (Pro 100k) · $63/mo (Scale, 1000 domains) | 4 blocks ($80) + Mailchimp plan cost |
| Extra volume | $0.90 per 1,000 emails — credits never expire | Buy more blocks |
| Transactional + marketing in one | API sends, campaigns, automations, and audiences in every plan | Two products stitched together (Mailchimp + Mandrill) |
| Contacts & audiences | Unlimited stored contacts on every plan | In Mailchimp (priced by contact count) |
| Automations | Included — visual automations, 10,000 runs/month | In Mailchimp (plan-gated) |
| A/B testing | ✓ | In Mailchimp (plan-gated) |
| Inbound receiving | ✓ | ✓ |
| Event webhooks | Signed webhooks: delivered, opened, clicked, bounced, complained, unsubscribed | ✓ |
| Official SDKs | 8 languages + CLI | Official SDKs (dated) |
| Log retention | 30 days on every plan | 30 days content on paid add-on |
| Dedicated IP | Add-on on Scale — Custom quote | Available as add-on |
| INR billing for India | ✓ | ✗ |
Mandrill pricing and features summarized from public pricing pages, last checked 2026-08-02. SendPing figures come from the live plan catalog.
Want the row-by-row breakdown? See the full SendPing vs Mandrill comparison.
No — Mailchimp Transactional is an add-on for Standard and Premium marketing plans only. SendPing is standalone with a free tier, so transactional email never requires a marketing-suite subscription.
Two 25k blocks ($40) plus your Mailchimp Standard/Premium subscription — the true monthly total is well above SendPing’s entry plan, which includes 50,000 emails and the marketing layer.
For most product teams, yes: REST API + SDKs for transactional, campaigns/audiences/segments/automations/A-B for marketing, one audience store and one event stream. Mailchimp’s deep marketing suite (advanced journeys, multivariate, integrations catalog) still goes further for marketing-led orgs.
SendPing plans include unlimited stored contacts on every plan — pricing is based on email volume, without a separate per-contact bill.
Export templates (Handlebars ports to SendPing merge tags), verify your domain, swap sends to POST /emails or an SDK, and re-point webhooks. If you also leave Mailchimp, import audiences via CSV or the contacts API.
Free tier with 3,000 emails a month — API, campaigns, automations, and webhooks included. No card required.