Mandrill is Mailchimp Transactional — an add-on for sending application email, available only alongside a paid Mailchimp Standard or Premium marketing plan.
| 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.
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.
Free: 3,000 emails/month (100/day), unlimited contacts, 1 domain — no card. Paid from $14/month for 50,000 emails; 100,000 emails from $24/month; Scale at $63/month adds 1,000 domains, priority support, and the dedicated-IP add-on (Custom quote/30 days). Extra volume via credits at $0.90 per 1,000 — they never expire.
Sold in blocks of 25,000 emails at $20/block (volume discounts down to ~$10/block above ~4M/month) — and only as an add-on to a paid Mailchimp Standard or Premium plan. No standalone purchase, no free transactional tier.
Last checked 2026-08-02 against Mandrill's public pricing.
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.
Thinking about moving? Read the step-by-step Mandrill alternative guide.
Free tier with 3,000 emails a month — API, campaigns, automations, and webhooks included. No card required.