Two transactional email providers, compared on price, features and ratings, so you can pick fast.
Updated November 2026
THE VERDICT
Mandrill wins on reviews. SendGrid wins on price and deliverability.
Mandrill starts at $20 versus SendGrid's $14.95. Mandrill rates higher with developers (4.2 vs 4.0 on G2). Pick based on volume and team, and the scorecard below breaks down where each one leads.
Winner cells are tinted, green where Mandrill leads, violet where SendGrid does.
FAQ
Mandrill starts at $20 versus SendGrid's $14.95. Because pricing models differ by tier, the cheaper option depends on your monthly volume, so compare the pricing rows in the scorecard above.
Pricing is block based, where each block is 25,000 emails. Blocks cost $20 each for the first 20 blocks (up to 500,000 emails), then drop to $18, $16, $14, $12, and $10 per block at higher volumes. These charges are on top of a required Mailchimp Standard or Premium marketing plan, and dedicated IP addresses cost an additional $29.95 per month.
SendGrid publishes official client libraries for Python, PHP, Node.js, C#/.NET, Ruby, Java, and Go. It also exposes a standard REST Email API and SMTP relay, so it can be integrated from virtually any language or platform.
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 Mandrill, SendGrid, 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; SendGrid is a Twilio product.