Mandrill vs Twilio

Overview

Mandrill

Stacks4.4K

Followers1.6K

Votes926

Twilio

Stacks11.5K

Followers8.8K

Votes521

Mandrill vs Twilio: 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, Twilio is detailed as "Bring voice and messaging to your web and mobile applications". Twilio offers developers a powerful API for phone services to make and receive phone calls, and send and receive text messages. Their product allows programmers to more easily integrate various communication methods into their software and programs.

Mandrill and Twilio are primarily classified as "Transactional Email" and "Voice and SMS" tools respectively.

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, Twilio provides the following key features:

Phone- Phone Numbers API
Phone- Convert Text to Speech and Play Audio
Phone- Record Calls and Store Them

"Simple installation", "Great api" and "Generous free allowance to get you started" are the key factors why developers consider Mandrill; whereas "Powerful, simple, and well documented api", "RESTful API" and "Clear pricing" are the primary reasons why Twilio is favored.

Stripe, Nubank, and Bukalapak are some of the popular companies that use Mandrill, whereas Twilio is used by Airbnb, Uber Technologies, and reddit. Mandrill has a broader approval, being mentioned in 2313 company stacks & 208 developers stacks; compared to Twilio, which is listed in 691 company stacks and 305 developer stacks.

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Advice on Mandrill, Twilio

Finch

Ops at SLS

Jul 23, 2020

Needs adviceon

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Salesforce

Hey! We need an omnichannel inbox that's housed within Salesforce Sales Cloud that makes it super easy for our reps to respond to inbound communication (needs: clean inbox, provides historical context, etc.). We're a high-volume call center, and we get a ton of incoming SMS and email every day. We'd love a solution that lets us view all of that in one place — ideally Salesforce, as that's where our reps work, and we want to avoid needing them to switch between windows. Thanks!

189k views189k

Comments

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

Dainis

Marketing project manager at Colortime

Jan 31, 2020

Needs advice

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

135k views135k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Mandrill	Twilio
Mandrill is a new way for apps to send transactional email. It runs on the delivery infrastructure that powers MailChimp.	Twilio offers developers a powerful API for phone services to make and receive phone calls, and send and receive text messages. Their product allows programmers to more easily integrate various communication methods into their software and programs.
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.	Phone- Phone Numbers API;Phone- Convert Text to Speech and Play Audio;Phone- Record Calls and Store Them;Phone- Create Conferences;Phone- API Queueing;Phone- Call Queues;Phone- Convert Speech to Text;Phone- Usage API;Phone- Status Callbacks and Logs;Phone- Global Reach;SMS- Supports Unicode;SMS- Message Queueing;SMS- Realtime API;SMS- Global Reach;SMS- Status Callbacks and Logs;SMS- Usage metering & API triggers;SMS- Voice Enabled Numbers;SMS- Short Codes;Two-factor authentication;Call tracking;Voice broadcasting;Cloud IVR;Mobile app distribution
Statistics
Stacks 4.4K	Stacks 11.5K
Followers 1.6K	Followers 8.8K
Votes 926	Votes 521
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	Pros 148 Powerful, simple, and well documented api 88 RESTful API 66 Clear pricing 61 Great sms services 58 Low cost of entry Cons 4 Predictable pricing 2 Expensive
Integrations
Parse sendwithus	Google App Engine Bugsnag Zendesk Twilio SendGrid Parse

What are some alternatives to Mandrill, Twilio?

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

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

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.

Nexmo

Nexmo connects your apps directly to carriers around the world. Integrate SMS and Voice messages using one simple API. Use Nexmo Verity to register users, verify transactions, and implement two factor authentication.

Postmark

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

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.

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 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.

Agora

Agora.io provides building blocks for you to add real-time voice and video communications through a simple and powerful SDK. You can integrate the Agora SDK to enable real-time communications in your own application quickly.

Related Comparisons

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, Twilio provides the following key features:

Phone- Phone Numbers API
Phone- Convert Text to Speech and Play Audio
Phone- Record Calls and Store Them

Mandrill vs Twilio