Key Differences Between Mailchimp and Mailtrap

1. Depending on the pricing plan, Mailtrap stores emails in the Email Logs for up to 30 days.  Email content and hard data is stored and accessible between 3 and 7 days without any additional fees.
2. Mailtrap offers Email Testing. This is a separate product to inspect HTML/CSS, spam scores, etc. and debug emails in staging, dev, and QA environments before sending them to recipients. 
3. Mailtrap offers Bulk Stream which allows you to send emails to many recipients at once (newsletters, product updates, marketing promotions, etc.).
4. Mailtrap supports and requires automatic validation of DMARC (together with SPF and DKIM).
5. Mailtrap APIs accept and return JSON only. API requests do not accept HTTP POST parameters. Mailtrap doesn’t return API responses in XML and YAML formats.
6. Mailtrap doesn’t support scheduled email sending.
7. Mailtrap does not allow to automatically generate HTML content from Text email parts and vice versa. The content type has to be specified at the time of sending an email or creating a template.

Terminology comparison

General step-by-step migration flow

Getting started

To start sending emails with Mailtrap, you only need to create an account, then register, and verify your domain. Domain setup and verification is done from the Sending Domains menu.

Domain verification

• After you create an account and add your sending domain, it will take up to two business days to go through the security check.
• Make sure not to make any add-ons, fixes, and other alterations during the domain verification time since it could be seen as suspicious behavior.
• Until the domain is verified, the throughput of sending is limited to 50 emails per hour to prevent abusing the system with spam activities. Learn more about it in our Sending Limits article.
• The sending limits could be lifted by contacting the Mailtrap support team. In this case, you will have to provide answers to a number of questions to prove the trustworthiness and authority of your sending domain.

Sending with Mailtrap SMTP

SMTP Endpoints

	Mailchimp Transactional Email
live.smtp.mailtrap.io bulk.smtp.mailtrap.io	smtp.mandrillapp.com

SMTP Ports

Port	Function	Mailtrap support	Mailchimp support
587	recommended for encrypted TLS SMTP connection
25	May be problematic due to blocking by some mailbox providers to avoid abuse
2525	For unencrypted/TLS

SMTP Configuration

After signing up and verifying your sending domain, select that domain and go to the SMTP/API Settings tab under Sending Domains. Then, choose Transactional or Bulk Stream depending on the type of emails you’d like to send.

Copy and paste the SMTP credentials (for the stream you chose) into your app.

Note: Turning TLS on is mandatory as mentioned in the credentials.

Sending with Mailtrap API

Mailtrap API tokens

When you create a domain, a token is automatically created and named based on the following formula: [domain name] + [token] + [token ID]. Add or remove token permissions by clicking on the corresponding boxes in the Token menu.

Learn more on how to manage API tokens in our guide.

API Mapping

API type	Mailtrap	Mailchimp Transactional Email
Email sending	Send email	Messages
User management	User management	Users
Email Testing	Email Testing API

API Libraries

At the moment there are five libraries available at Mailtrap.

Programming Language	Mailtrap	Mailchimp Transactional Email
NodeJS	NodeJS SDK	NodeJS
Ruby	Ruby SDK	Ruby
PHP	PHP SDK	PHP
Python	Python SDK	Python
Elixir	Elixir SDK	Not supported

API Authentication

Mailtrap uses Bearer authentication. So, you need to pass the API token under Authorization header of your email. 

Permissions/User management

You can add users to your account and manage their permissions if you are signed up for the Business plan or higher. To add users, and assign and edit their permissions, click on the User Management menu under Settings, then the three dots on the right.

Note that a user needs Admin permissions to get authenticated and send emails via API.

Read more about managing users permissions

ActionMailer Balancer for smooth migration

For Ruby on Rails applications, Mailtrap offers ActionMailer Balancer that makes the migration smooth.

ActionMailer extension allows proportionally distributing the email sending load between two different sending services and mitigating the sending risks.

After you install the Balancer to your application, and do some minor configurations, it will extend the sending method of ActionMailer.

For more detailed info on the boilerplate and use in development, read the Mailtrap ActionMailer Balancer Github page.