MailChimp Email Blueprints vs Mandrill: What are the differences?
Developers describe MailChimp Email Blueprints as "HTML Email Layouts by MailChimp". Email Blueprints is a collection of HTML email templates that can serve as a solid foundation and starting point for the design of emails. They include template language elements that make them customizable when imported into a MailChimp account, as well as merge tags that will generate dynamic content when sent through MailChimp. Not a MailChimp user? You can sign up free or simply strip out merge tags and use these templates to send through any system. On the other hand, Mandrill is detailed as "Send transactional, triggered, and personalized email, then track results". Mandrill is a new way for apps to send transactional email. It runs on the delivery infrastructure that powers MailChimp.
MailChimp Email Blueprints and Mandrill are primarily classified as "Open Source Email Templates" and "Transactional Email" tools respectively.
Some of the features offered by MailChimp Email Blueprints are:
- /modular-template-patterns contains a single template built out of modular blocks of common design patterns
- /responsive-templates contains a collection of responsive / mobile-friendly email templates with various layouts
- /templates contains a collection of fixed-width email templates with various layouts
On the other hand, Mandrill provides the following key features:
- Inbound Email- Set up inboxes for Mandrill to control. When they receive email, we’ll make an API call to your app with all the relevant information, so you don’t have to worry about what’s happening behind the scenes.
- Webhooks Support- Create custom event notifications, keep track of new signups and unsubscribes in real-time, get a notice of every spam complaint so you can flag them in your database.
- Rules Engine- Modify the content of email coming through Mandrill without having to involve developers. For example, you could tell Mandrill to take any email coming from confirmation@yourdomain.com, give it a new template, and add Google Analytics tracking.
MailChimp Email Blueprints is an open source tool with 6.57K GitHub stars and 2.75K GitHub forks. Here's a link to MailChimp Email Blueprints's open source repository on GitHub.