Two transactional email providers, compared on price, features and ratings, so you can pick fast.
Updated November 2026
THE VERDICT
AWS SES wins on price and deliverability. Mandrill wins on developer experience and sending APIs.
AWS SES starts at $0.10 versus Mandrill's $20. Pick based on volume and team, and the scorecard below breaks down where each one leads.
Winner cells are tinted, green where AWS SES leads, violet where Mandrill does.
FAQ
AWS SES starts at $0.10 versus Mandrill's $20. Because pricing models differ by tier, the cheaper option depends on your monthly volume, so compare the pricing rows in the scorecard above.
Amazon SES is pay-as-you-go with no fixed monthly plan. Outbound email through shared sending costs $0.10 per 1,000 emails, or $0.0001 per message, and is billed per recipient rather than per message. Additional charges apply for outgoing attachment data, dedicated IP addresses, and inbound email processing.
Mailchimp publishes official Transactional API client libraries for Node.js, PHP, Ruby, and Python. The API is also accessible over plain HTTP/REST and via SMTP relay, so it can be used from any language even without an official SDK.
Yes. Many teams route different message types through different providers or fail over between them. Courier lets you send through both behind a single API and switch providers without changing your code.
Why not both?
Use both behind one API.
Route AWS SES, Mandrill, or both, and switch providers without changing your code. Courier sits in front of every channel.
Pricing, plans and feature availability as of November 2026 and may change. Ratings are aggregated from public review platforms. Mandrill is Mailchimp Transactional.