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Mandrill

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Mandrill vs Plivo: What are the differences?

Developers describe Mandrill 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. On the other hand, Plivo is detailed as "API platform to build Voice & SMS Applications". Plivo provides basic building block APIs in the form of Plivo XML and HTTP API, to create telephony apps, so developers can completely do away with learning the nitty-gritty of the telephony plumbing.

Mandrill can be classified as a tool in the "Transactional Email" category, while Plivo is grouped under "Voice and SMS".

Some of the features offered by Mandrill are:

  • 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.

On the other hand, Plivo provides the following key features:

  • Phone- Global
  • Phone- Local and Tollfree Numbers
  • Phone- Call routing, call forwarding, caller ID, call waiting, 3-way calling, redial, speed dial, mute, hold, etc

"Simple installation" is the primary reason why developers consider Mandrill over the competitors, whereas "SMS gateway" was stated as the key factor in picking Plivo.

Stripe, Soundcloud, and Hootsuite are some of the popular companies that use Mandrill, whereas Plivo is used by Close, Crowdkeep, and Shiftmates. Mandrill has a broader approval, being mentioned in 2313 company stacks & 208 developers stacks; compared to Plivo, which is listed in 11 company stacks and 8 developer stacks.

Advice on Mandrill and Plivo
Dainis Duļbinskis
Marketing project manager at Colortime · | 2 upvotes · 123.4K views
Needs advice
on
PlivoPlivo
and
TwilioTwilio

Hello! We need to integrate an SMS gateway into our app for user phone verification. As we are just starting, we are searching for the most affordable/best price/performance option for SMS gateway to verify client phone numbers with the code, maybe you can suggest something between those two or maybe something else. We are planning to do business in Europe

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Replies (4)
Recommends
on
NexmoNexmo

Twilio is the leader. Strong API, excellent documentation and reliable service. I suggest Nexmo since their API has smaller learning curve, offering better prices and also reliable solution. Also Nexmo offers more call per sec. 3 vs 2 and 2, out of the box. Good luck

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Recommends
on
TwilioTwilio
at

Twilio documentation is very good and as a platform it just works. It's robust and reliable. We road-tested plivo and it wasn't anywhere near in terms of docs or support. In fact their support was terrible at replying to us. 48 hours to answer basic questions.

That's said, were also using sendgrid by twilio and that's not been pleasant . Their email builder appears to be react based but written by a team who don't understand react very well. That's a nightmare as yet

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Recommends
on
TwilioTwilio

Twilio might be not cheapest, but they have awesome documentation (a lot of examples), easy to use API and libraries. I think it's a very good product to start. If the bill will become too heavy, you can shop around for economical options.

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Andrew Voirol
Founder at The Social Diner · | 1 upvotes · 122.9K views
Recommends
on
PlivoPlivo

stackshare doesn't seem to have this in the stack list yet, but in my experience Twillio is attractive. It's good for basics, their acquisition of SendGrid gives them a bit more market share.. They are stronger at marketing to those that benefit them. That said from my understanding SendGrid leases the networks, channels, and lines. While their interface is friendly, their pricing suited for lower volume, you want to look at what they are using via an API, a contract, etc. Is it a more friend UI to a combination of others. What redunancies do to they have, try their support. It's not that Twillio is bad, it's about the volume, the use case, the liabiitlies you might have to your end-users if Twillio isn't the right choice. Another option is Bandwidth. You ask for affordable, Twillio is an option, but front end costs v/s the costs of support you'll need to consider. Bandwidth has more reliability but requires more engineering and more skillset. Another option that is worth considering, not the most affordable, but https://www.zipwhip.com/ have perhaps options that might be higher and the cost is relative. Wight costs, of support costs of integration, cost of scale, costs of a volume..

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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?

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Replies (4)
Mika Henriksson
Coder at mhenrixon Consulting · | 4 upvotes · 96K views
Recommends
on
PostmarkPostmark

The only transactional email service that I've been able to stomach is Postmark! It is by far the easiest (and quickest to get feedback from) service that I have come across. While drowning in attempts to debug Mandril, Mailgun and others I get quick feedback from Postmark in what I need to do.

Postmark for the win!

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Justini Powell
Lead Developer at Watermark Community Church · | 4 upvotes · 96K views
Recommends
on
Twilio SendGridTwilio SendGrid

If you need your emails to be sent in a time-sensitive manner, I'd recommend SendGrid. We were using Mailgun and the lag because they aren't "transactional" in nature caused issues for us. SendGrid also has the ability to do dynamic templates and bulk send from their API. I don't know that they have the shared layout ability you mentioned, though.

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Vit Ulicny
Recommends
on
MandrillMandrill

We are using more extensively Mandrill.

It is a ok tool, which gives you the power for emailing with nice set of features.

The templates editing and management is a bit tricky, but this is mostly related to email templates in general, which are hard to create and maintain.

I do not think you can share the parts of the templates. You can have your predefined templates with possibility to insert dynamic content.

They provide a limited possibility to preview and test your templates.

The template editor is text only. For the better editors checkout http://topol.io or https://mosaico.io

Unfortunately, I do not have experience with the other tools and possibilities to manage templates.

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Aric Fedida
Founder, CTO at ASK Technologies Inc · | 1 upvotes · 95.4K views
Recommends
on
Twilio SendGridTwilio SendGrid

At this stage, all of the tools you mentioned do email delivery pretty well. They all support email templates as well. Here are some considerations:

  1. Twilio owns SendGrid. If you're an existing Twilio customer, in my opinion that's a good reason to use SendGrid over the other solutions. The APIs are solid, and Twilio has excellent developer tools that allow you to create interesting automations (which is important for scaling).
  2. Mandrill was created by MailChimp, who have massive experience with email delivery and specifically with emailing beautiful email templates.
  3. Mailgun is a tool on its own. Like the other two, it supports mail templates and is built to be controlled almost exclusively via APIs.

SendGrid and Mandrill have pretty nice WYSIWIG template editors as part of their platform. Not so sure about Mailgun.

So for me the considerations would be: 1. How easy is it for you to integrate with their API? How complete is their API in terms of your own specific needs? 2. Prices: Which one works best for my budget? 3. Am I OK with editing the templates elsewhere (or even by hand), and then pasting the code into Mailgun? Or do I want the comfort of Mandrill or Sendgrid with their WYSIWYG editors?

Personally I'd go with Twilio, simply because it's such a massive ecosystem they are less likely to go bankrupt, and their APIs are rock solid.

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Pros of Mandrill
Pros of Plivo
  • 189
    Simple installation
  • 141
    Great api
  • 123
    Generous free allowance to get you started
  • 114
    Cheap and simple
  • 99
    Trackable
  • 59
    Well-documented
  • 54
    Doesn't go to spam
  • 47
    Great for mailchimp users
  • 32
    Webhooks
  • 28
    Client libraries
  • 7
    Heroku Add-on
  • 6
    Easy to use
  • 5
    Meaningful Metrics
  • 5
    Free
  • 3
    Advanced Tagging and Reports
  • 3
    Mobile Access
  • 3
    Status Update
  • 2
    Very chimp-like
  • 2
    Great Documentation
  • 2
    love this service
  • 1
    Free Plan
  • 1
    Webhooks for bounce mail
  • 8
    SMS gateway
  • 6
    Pricing
  • 3
    Voice API service
  • 2
    24/7 Support
  • 2
    Trial account with positive balance

Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

Cons of Mandrill
Cons of Plivo
  • 1
    Really hard to pull analytics out via api
    Be the first to leave a con

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    What is Mandrill?

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

    What is Plivo?

    Plivo provides basic building block APIs in the form of Plivo XML and HTTP API, to create telephony apps, so developers can completely do away with learning the nitty-gritty of the telephony plumbing.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

    What companies use Mandrill?
    What companies use Plivo?
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    What are some alternatives to Mandrill and Plivo?
    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.
    Mailchimp
    MailChimp helps you design email newsletters, share them on social networks, integrate with services you already use, and track your results. It's like your own personal publishing platform.
    Apache Drill
    Apache Drill is a distributed MPP query layer that supports SQL and alternative query languages against NoSQL and Hadoop data storage systems. It was inspired in part by Google's Dremel.
    Mailgun
    Mailgun is a set of powerful APIs that allow you to send, receive, track and store email effortlessly.
    Gmail
    An easy to use email app that saves you time and keeps your messages safe. Get your messages instantly via push notifications, read and respond online & offline, and find any message quickly.
    See all alternatives