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  1. Stackups
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  3. Email Services
  4. Transactional Email
  5. Mandrill vs Nodemailer

Mandrill vs Nodemailer

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Mandrill
Mandrill
Stacks4.4K
Followers1.6K
Votes926
Nodemailer
Nodemailer
Stacks483
Followers178
Votes0
GitHub Stars17.3K
Forks1.4K

Mandrill vs Nodemailer: What are the differences?

Introduction

Here, we will discuss the key differences between Mandrill and Nodemailer - two popular email delivery services.

  1. Pricing and Usage: One major difference between Mandrill and Nodemailer is their pricing structure and usage. Mandrill is a paid email delivery service, where users are charged based on the number of emails sent. In contrast, Nodemailer is an open-source library that allows users to send emails directly from their own server without any additional charges.

  2. Ease of Use: Mandrill provides a user-friendly interface and a straightforward setup process, making it suitable for users who are not familiar with programming or server management. On the other hand, Nodemailer requires some programming knowledge and server configuration, making it more suitable for developers and advanced users.

  3. Customization and Flexibility: Nodemailer offers more customization and flexibility compared to Mandrill. With Nodemailer, users have full control over the email content and can easily integrate with other libraries or frameworks. Mandrill, on the other hand, has a limited set of predefined templates and features, limiting the level of customization.

  4. Deliverability and Reputation: Mandrill has built a strong reputation over the years for delivering emails to the inbox and maintaining good sender reputation. They have strict anti-spam policies and provide deliverability analytics to help users monitor their email performance. Nodemailer's deliverability depends on the user's server configuration and IP reputation, making it more challenging to maintain a high inbox placement rate.

  5. Integration and Ecosystem: Nodemailer integrates seamlessly with popular frameworks and libraries, such as Node.js, Express, and popular email services like Gmail and Outlook. It has a wide range of plugins and modules available to enhance its functionality. Mandrill, on the other hand, has its own API and integrations specific to its service, limiting the range of platforms it can easily integrate with.

  6. Support and Documentation: Mandrill provides dedicated support and a comprehensive documentation to help users troubleshoot issues and answer queries. They offer assistance in case of any delivery problems. While Nodemailer has an active community and documentation, the level of support may vary as it relies more on community contributions and online resources.

In summary, Mandrill is a paid email delivery service with easy setup, limited customization, and excellent deliverability reputation, while Nodemailer is an open-source library that offers more customization and flexibility, but relies on the user's server configuration for deliverability and lacks dedicated support.

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Advice on Mandrill, Nodemailer

Klaus
Klaus

Jan 22, 2020

Needs advice

For transactional emails, notifications, reminders, etc, I want to make it so writers/designers can set up the emails and maintain them, and then dynamically insert fields, that I then replace when actually sending the mail from code.

I think the ability to use a basic layout template across individual email templates would make things a lot easier (think header, footer, standard typography, etc).

What is best for this? Why would you prefer Mailgun, SendGrid, Mandrill or something else?

101k views101k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Mandrill
Mandrill
Nodemailer
Nodemailer

Mandrill is a new way for apps to send transactional email. It runs on the delivery infrastructure that powers MailChimp.

It is a single module with zero dependencies – code is easily auditable. The email delivery is Secure using TLS/STARTTLS. You can use HTML content, as well as plain text alternative.

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.;Advanced Tagging and Reports- Generate custom reports based on the stats that matter to you. Add campaign tags like “confirmation email” and “mailing list,” and combine them with data Mandrill automatically tracks. Tagging allows you to graph sets of data like “bounce rate for confirmation emails to Gmail addresses.”;Meaningful Metrics- Observe trends and monitor delivery to see if you’re on track or if you need to make adjustments. Search by recipient or domain, sort sent email by bounces or rejections, and track opens and clicks.;Status Updates- Troubleshoot from wherever you are, and send status messages to recipients from Mandrill;Mobile Access- Your transactional email is generated at all hours. Mandrill is the only service with a mobile app, so you can monitor your performance even when you’re away from your desk.
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Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
17.3K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.4K
Stacks
4.4K
Stacks
483
Followers
1.6K
Followers
178
Votes
926
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 189
    Simple installation
  • 141
    Great api
  • 123
    Generous free allowance to get you started
  • 114
    Cheap and simple
  • 99
    Trackable
Cons
  • 1
    Really hard to pull analytics out via api
No community feedback yet
Integrations
Parse
Parse
sendwithus
sendwithus
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Mandrill, Nodemailer?

Twilio SendGrid

Twilio SendGrid

Twilio SendGrid's cloud-based email infrastructure relieves businesses of the cost and complexity of maintaining custom email systems. Twilio SendGrid provides reliable delivery, scalability & real-time analytics along with flexible API's.

Mailgun

Mailgun

Mailgun is a set of powerful APIs that allow you to send, receive, track and store email effortlessly.

Amazon SES

Amazon SES

Amazon SES eliminates the complexity and expense of building an in-house email solution or licensing, installing, and operating a third-party email service. The service integrates with other AWS services, making it easy to send emails from applications being hosted on services such as Amazon EC2.

sendwithus

sendwithus

Send email from your app with a simple API call, Sendwithus manages the rest. Templates, testing, data management, segments, and analytics are all accessible through a friendly dashboard.

Postmark

Postmark

Postmark removes the headaches of delivering and parsing email for webapps with minimal setup time and zero maintenance.

Mailjet

Mailjet

Mailjet is a real-time Cloud Emailing platform: scalable, agile and flexible. Our unique algorithm boosts your deliverability and our platform provides in-depth insight so you can optimize more than ever.

SparkPost

SparkPost

SparkPost is the world’s #1 email delivery provider. We empower companies with actionable, real-time data to send relevant email to their customers which increases engagement and both top and bottom line revenue.

Mailtrap

Mailtrap

We offer one platform that covers all email-related needs in one place: testing, sending, and in-depth tracking to control how email infrastructure works and performs.

Apostle.io

Apostle.io

Transactional emails are the forgotten step child of internet marketers. Apostle.io empowers marketers to manage transactional emails themselves, as they would their list based campaigns. Preview, Update, Analyse and Test your transactional email all in one place.

Resend

Resend

It is a modern email sending platform focused on providing the best developer experience. Build, test, and deliver transactional emails at scale.

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