Pros & Cons of Mandrill vs Amazon SES for email sending

[Mr Lucky]

I'm currently on a trial with mandril, and am getting huge delays for email receipt times (up to six hours). mandrill support tell me this is due to the hourly maximum of 25 emails so they get queued. This it seems applies to the trial only, so I'm hoping people can give me an idea if this kind of problem is not a issue when you upgrade to paid. Seems pointless to not make the trial work properly, but there you go...

Or any other useful/experiences info about about mandrill wit xenforo (good or bad) before I sign up.

 

[Kintaro]

once you get reputation they will increase that 25 emails limit (this happen in my case some years ago)

 

[Mr Lucky]

once you get reputation they will increase that 25 emails limit (this happen in my case some years ago)

Yes, support told me this, but they won't say what they will increase it to. Meanwhile it has been causing problems for everyone.

 

[Kintaro]

in my case the increase was fast... maybe they changed their policies. have you set DKIM and SPF here?

 

[Mr Lucky]

in my case the increase was fast... maybe they changed their policies. have you set DKIM and SPF here?

Yes those are set. I just upgraded to paid and the delays due to queuing have stopped.

It just seems weird that they offer a trial, and then nobble it so it doesn't work properly.

 

[Kintaro]

I think that they changed their free tier policy.
When I signed up I got 12000 free mails per month, and I still have them.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/mandrill-still-recommended/33788

 

[MattW]

I think that they changed their free tier policy.
When I signed up I got 12000 free mails per month, and I still have them.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/mandrill-still-recommended/33788

I also had the 12,000 monthly plan for free, and was quite surprised when they changed their tier structure. That's why I switched to Amazon SES, as it would cost me a minimum of $9 a month with Mandrill, but only costs me 35p a month to use Amazon SES.

 

[Robust]

Why use Mandrill when you can use Amazon SES. It's much better.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Why use Mandrill when you can use Amazon SES. It's much better.

I had a look at Amazon but I was unable to figure it out.

 

[Kintaro]

I also had the 12,000 monthly plan for free, and was quite surprised when they changed their tier structure. That's why I switched to Amazon SES, as it would cost me a minimum of $9 a month with Mandrill, but only costs me 35p a month to use Amazon SES.

35p are 3500 emails right?

Right now my websites send not too many emails every month (8k5) but I don't send any weekly/monthly newsletter right now. With the newsletters the usage will increase to something like: 35k. So with Amazon SES will costs me 3,5$/month.

But maybe for this kind of little traffic and if the email lists are clean it can be a good solution send directly from the local server.

 

[Mr Lucky]

Why use Mandrill when you can use Amazon SES. It's much better.

What is it that's better about Amazon? I went for Mandrill partly because it was a bit easier to work out how to configure it, and partly I don't like Amazon's UK tax avoidance. But if it ends up being better (and cheaper) then I suppose that may trump my ethical views.

 

[beanfan78]

I have been using Amazon SES for about 5 months now. I wish I had known about it a long time ago. Super cheap, medium to hard to setup, great speed in delivering and it's a very trusted source. Hopefully my lists continue to stay clean and I can keep my relationship solid with Amazon. I haven't used Mandrill, but I have used Mailchimp. Now that I have Sendy, Nobita's Sendy addon and Amazon setup, my forum is doing better than any past forum I have tried building with a newsletter.