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Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

blog.mandrill.com

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Re: Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

#171

Post by Adams472 »

etjossem wrote: post #54
buf wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you talk about why SendGrid over MailGun?

SendGrid is competitively priced - as @jamestanderson mentioned, $20 goes twice as far. Mailgun doesn't offer a marketing product at all, and I am not sure if they provide the 24/7 support we do. At the 40k+ volume levels, you're also going to get a complimentary dedicated IP, which means better deliverability. You can get that at Mailgun too, but it's a $59 surcharge every month. Finally, the InboxTrail comparison p…

As others have mentioned, dedicated IPs are anything but a panacea for deliverability. There is an incredible amount of care and planning that must be taken when using a dedicated IP. Shared IPs that are well managed (ie no spammers) are often better for low-volume senders because they don't require warm-ups, constant deliverability monitoring, etc.

Re: Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

#172

Post by stephenhamilton »

spronkey wrote: post #3

Wow MailChimp. SES as a replacement for Mandrill? What are they smoking. Maybe they don't even understand their own product...

I haven't used SES, but I'm guessing it is complex, and "bare bones".

I got the vibe Mandrill didn't want to send any business to their _actual_ competitors.

The time period to make this change sucks. I accept they want to change, and they can do that. But I have paid them money for a service, and the rug is being pulled from under my feet with such a short period of time to work out what to do, and do it.

Re: Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

#173

Post by spronkey »

stephenhamilton wrote: post #172
spronkey wrote: post #3

Wow MailChimp. SES as a replacement for Mandrill? What are they smoking. Maybe they don't even understand their own product...

I haven't used SES, but I'm guessing it is complex, and "bare bones". I got the vibe Mandrill didn't want to send any business to their _actual_ competitors. The time period to make this change sucks. I accept they want to change, and they can do that. But I have paid them money for a service, and the rug is being pulled from under my feet with such a short period of time to work out what to do, and do it.

SES is pretty bare bones, and has had recurring issues with IP reputation management. It's well suited for integration but there are no straightforward simple APIs or dashboards as with Mandrill/SendGrid etc.

Re: Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

#174

Post by verelo »

stotro wrote: post #143
losvedir wrote: post #89

Wait, so is there more detailed pricing information somewhere? I'm trying to figure out how this will affect us. What does a "a paid monthly MailChimp account" mean? The cheapest such plan seems to be +$20/mo, so that's not so bad. Effectively just a small price bump. However, the MailChimp plans are confusing. Does every transactional recipient need to be a "subscriber"? If that's the case, then we're looking at mor…

I just contacted the mailchimp service twice and they confirmed it to me. you have to take the monthly plan that matches your mandrill users. So if you are using mandrill to send mails to 90.000 users, you have to buy a monthly plan of 90.000 users AND the mandrill package prices, which means 450$/month for mailchimp and 4*20$ for mandrill.

This cant be right (but if it is, they're morons). In this scenario, we'll need a package for millions of members. With the rough math I just did, this would make our monthly Mailchimp bill a larger cost for us than our AWS accounts monthly cost. That would be insane...

Mailchimp, PLEASE CLEAR THIS UP ASAP. YOU'RE FUCKING WITH MY LIFE AND I DON'T LIKE IT OR NEED IT!

Re: Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

#175

Post by verelo »

danieltillett wrote: post #132

As a non-user of Mandrill or MailChimp I look on this whole episode as a classic example of how not to make product changes. I suspect YC17 will be studying this as how not to go. One thing I don't understand if this is all about the Benjamins while not just increase the price and leave the functionality unchanged. This way you would only lose the customers who are price sensitive and not those that now have to chang…

This! Exactly! If money is an issue, then deal with that. What they're doing here is just messing with everyone at a level that is way too deep.

Re: Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

#177

Post by verelo »

ac3522 wrote: post #77
etjossem wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another price comparison. $20 w/Postmark: 13,000 mails $20 w/SendGrid: 100,000 mails Postmark also doesn't offer the option to upgrade to a dedicated IP later on, which many larger companies find is better for deliverability. Full disclosure: I'm a SendGrid engineer.

Postmark engineer here! We are at the high end on pricing, but we constantly hear from customers about how great our deliverability and support is. Also if you purchase in bulk, our pricing becomes very competitive very fast. Since it’s a straight pay for what you use model with no monthly plans required, we think it’s a lot simpler to use.

Thats really nice, but when you're me, who sends around 30 million emails / month, that pricing gets insane (as in, more than my AWS bill).

So yeah...i'd love to entertain the idea but its just not possible.

Re: Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

#178

Post by danieltillett »

verelo wrote: post #175
danieltillett wrote: post #132

As a non-user of Mandrill or MailChimp I look on this whole episode as a classic example of how not to make product changes. I suspect YC17 will be studying this as how not to go. One thing I don't understand if this is all about the Benjamins while not just increase the price and leave the functionality unchanged. This way you would only lose the customers who are price sensitive and not those that now have to chang…

This! Exactly! If money is an issue, then deal with that. What they're doing here is just messing with everyone at a level that is way too deep.

Mandrill was a commodity service much like electricity or water which people relied on it just working.

If the service was not making enough money then raise the price to whatever you need to and either grandfather in old customers or give very long lead times so your customers have the time to transition away if they wish.

This is such an obvious way to go that I think there must be something very dysfunctional within the leadership of Mailchimp. Did nobody there foresee what was the likely outcome of this move and advise against it? Did they talk to any of their customers before making this change?

Re: Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

#179

Post by losvedir »

verelo wrote: post #174
stotro wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just contacted the mailchimp service twice and they confirmed it to me. you have to take the monthly plan that matches your mandrill users. So if you are using mandrill to send mails to 90.000 users, you have to buy a monthly plan of 90.000 users AND the mandrill package prices, which means 450$/month for mailchimp and 4*20$ for mandrill.

This cant be right (but if it is, they're morons). In this scenario, we'll need a package for millions of members. With the rough math I just did, this would make our monthly Mailchimp bill a larger cost for us than our AWS accounts monthly cost. That would be insane... Mailchimp, PLEASE CLEAR THIS UP ASAP. YOU'RE FUCKING WITH MY LIFE AND I DON'T LIKE IT OR NEED IT!

I don't think it's right. I contacted Mandrill about it, and they pointed me to this support article[0].

> Is this cost included in my MailChimp plan?

> No. Mandrill is becoming a paid add-on for monthly MailChimp accounts. Any paid monthly MailChimp plan will satisfy the new requirements. Monthly MailChimp plans start at $10/month, and you can find more information on MailChimp’s Pricing Page. Purchasing Mandrill blocks will incur monthly charges in addition to your MailChimp plan.

[0] https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/217467117

Re: Major changes to Mandrill, must be tied to a MailChimp account

#180

Post by techdragon »

stotro wrote: post #143
losvedir wrote: post #89

Wait, so is there more detailed pricing information somewhere? I'm trying to figure out how this will affect us. What does a "a paid monthly MailChimp account" mean? The cheapest such plan seems to be +$20/mo, so that's not so bad. Effectively just a small price bump. However, the MailChimp plans are confusing. Does every transactional recipient need to be a "subscriber"? If that's the case, then we're looking at mor…

I just contacted the mailchimp service twice and they confirmed it to me. you have to take the monthly plan that matches your mandrill users. So if you are using mandrill to send mails to 90.000 users, you have to buy a monthly plan of 90.000 users AND the mandrill package prices, which means 450$/month for mailchimp and 4*20$ for mandrill.

This confirms my worst fears. We just added a large wave of new email addresses to one of our routine emails, taking it from 2k per day to 17k per day.

We currently expect to pay approximately $75 to $100 USD per month with this volume of email.

With the new "MailChimp pricing", this will cost us $150 for a MailChimp account with enough subscribers, then between $270 and $400 USD per month in data packs.

So from about $75 to $100 USD we get forced up to $420-$550

About a 5x price rise.

Nice going MailChimp...

Clearly this is an attempt to squeeze more profit out of Mandrill. Was there a management change at MailChimp or something?

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