[paulbennett]

> They’re merging it into MailChimp, but updated the TOS and AUP with immediate effect in ways that essentially banned what was the service’s raison d’être: sending bulk mail programmatically.

I thought the idea behind Mandrill was to send transactional emails, i.e. not bulk emails. In fact bulk emails are specifically what Mailchimp is designed for. Sounds like people were using Mandrill in an attempt to get around some of Mailchimp's pricing structure, and now that has come to an end.

That said, I will agree that the change has come rather abruptly.

[michaelbuckbee]

Mailchimp doesn't exactly do "bulk emails", they do newsletters.

There are lots of things that fall in between say a weekly email to 5k people (typical newsletter email) and a password reset (typical transactional email) that people used Mandrill for and now are rightly pissed.

I have a friend with a service that sends out 10k-ish customized mealplans each week to their paying customers (each email is fairly unique given where they are at in the customer cycle, preferences, tracking, etc.)

It's deeply tied into the rest of their infrastructure and Mandrill worked great for them, but Mailchimp definitely does not as it's not a newsletter.

Or imagine something like a system that alerts people when X band announces a concert date in Y town. Lots of people subscribe to get an email notification about that so it's 1 email to 500 people in Duluth. Not exactly a newsletter, not exactly transactional.

[fweespeech]

> Or imagine something like a system that alerts people when X band announces a concert date in Y town. Lots of people subscribe to get an email notification about that so it's 1 email to 500 people in Duluth. Not exactly a newsletter, not exactly transactional.

That is bulk email, fyi.

> I have a friend with a service that sends out 10k-ish customized mealplans each week to their paying customers (each email is fairly unique given where they are at in the customer cycle, preferences, tracking, etc.)

This was still a bulk email based on when I talked to Mandrill about it when I initially set it up.

> Thanks for getting in touch! It's primarily designed to support transactional emails, you can send any legal, non-spam message through Mandrill as long as it maps 1:1 with a human interaction and/or alert from an automated event.

That is a literal quote I had from the support ticket when I created my Mandrill account. Both you and the OP didn't follow what I [or the Mandrill/Mailchimp employee I talked to] interpreted the ToS as.

Similarly the OP seems to be the same usecase:

> They’re merging it into MailChimp, but updated the TOS and AUP with immediate effect in ways that essentially banned what was the service’s raison d’être: sending bulk mail programmatically.

They told you it was for transactional email. I'm not sure how you concluded that meant "bulk mail" was okay.

[ceejayoz]

> They told you it was for transactional email. I'm not sure how you concluded that meant "bulk mail" was okay.

It's explicitly stated to be OK in their own FAQ:

https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206251597-Wha...

> you can send any legal, non-spam email through Mandrill, too

and on http://mandrill.com/about/

> Use Mandrill to send automated one-to-one email like password resets and welcome messages, as well as marketing emails and customized newsletters.

[fweespeech]

It must have changed from when I first signed up. The original ToS, etc. didn't state that.

It also doesn't appear to state that presently.

For instance:

https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206251597-Wha...

> Mandrill is an email infrastructure service designed to help applications or websites that need to send transactional email like password resets, order confirmations, and welcome messages.

> Any bulk email should be sent through MailChimp, rather than Mandrill.

[ceejayoz]

Yes, they changed it after it was tweeted at them.

https://twitter.com/mandrillapp/status/704770382750941184

[dangrossman]

MailChimp is designed for sending newsletters to predefined lists, not bulk mail in general. They're not the same thing.

If you've built a monitoring tool that needs to notify 5 employees that their server has just gone down, you needed Mandrill, not MailChimp. These mails are "transactional" the same way a password reset is: they're programmatic responses to some event. They're also bulk, and if all 5 employees get the same message, now prohibited.

Mandrill was always for programmatic mail of any kind, not just one-to-one. Bulk mail was all over their sales material and knowledgebase. The context that separated Mandrill from MailChimp was that the mail is programmatic or automatic, rather than a newsletter you pre-write for a pre-made list. Their raison d’être was to provide reliable e-mail delivery for developers, regardless of what you were sending, up until last week.

[vram22]

Good explanation of the difference, thanks.

[ceejayoz]

> I thought the idea behind Mandrill was to send transactional emails, i.e. not bulk emails.

https://www.mandrill.com/about/

"Use Mandrill to send automated one-to-one email like password resets and welcome messages, as well as marketing emails and customized newsletters."

So, their About page is currently explicitly condoning violating their own Terms of Service.

[scosman]

Oh, and the pricing page that's live right now is a bald faced lie. I wouldn't trust much/anything from these guys.

[zwerdlds]

Not sure if that's really true. Non-bulk marketing and newsletter emails are a thing.

[ceejayoz]

https://mandrill.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/206251597-Wha...

> What types of email can I send with Mandrill?

> But you can send any legal, non-spam email through Mandrill, too.

[zwerdlds]

Additionally, > View our Terms of Use for extra details.

It seems like this change is to avoid being on the hook for those non-{legal, non-spam} emails.

[fweespeech]

That is largely correct.

It was intended as a purely transaction / alerting / etc. mail platform and not for bulk/marketing emails.

However, I never went over the free limits with that sort of mail which I suspect was the problem. My guess is 90% of the revenue was people using it for bulk email and so they figure forcing them to MailChimp isn't a major loss.

[kidcoach]

This has to be the goal of the change. Move people who into paying mailchimp customers who are taking advantage of mandrill. The issue is they alienate all the people who's problem set doesn't fall into mailchimp's offering. Who knows what that percentage is but my guess is over 80%, so they understand they are screwing over the majority to make a profit off the minority. This is from Ben at mandrill:

> "I can say today that–believe it or not–there is a subset of Mandrill customers who want combined functionality and pricing, so it’s not as illogical as it seems on the surface (also, we’ve lost many more potential customers like these by having two separate products and brands). There’s another subset who want a utlitarian service provider, and who would understandably find the new pricing unsuitable."

[fweespeech]

Yeah but when I originally signed up I was told that was the purpose back in 2013.

[spronkey]

They explicitly allowed customers to use Mandrill for any type of email, transactional or "bulk".

They even used to note that you could build products that compete with MailChimp using Mandrill.