Transactional API Quick Start

This guide will give you everything you need to start using the Mailchimp Transactional API to send fast, personalized transactional emails. We’ll cover creating a Mailchimp Transactional account, generating your API key, installing the client library for your preferred language, and making your first call to the Transactional API. 

Keep in mind that Mailchimp Transactional is formerly known—and is sometimes still referred to—as “Mandrill,” and you’ll see this throughout the app.

If you don't have a Mailchimp Transactional account, you’ll need to create one in order to get started using the API. If you have a Mailchimp Standard plan or higher, you can enable Mailchimp Transactional from the Monthly plans or credits page of your account.

You authenticate a request to the Transactional API using an API key. 

To generate one: 

1. Navigate to the Settings of your Mailchimp Transactional account and look for the API Keys section

2. If you already have an API key listed and you’d like to use it for your application, you can simply copy it. 

3. Otherwise, click New API Key and give it a description.

You can make calls to the Transactional API with whichever method you usually use to make HTTP requests, but Mailchimp offers client libraries that make interacting with the API even simpler. 

To install the client library for your preferred language:

# No client installation necessary; just using curl

To test that you have everything set up correctly, we'll make a simple request to the /users/ping endpoint. Hitting this endpoint acts as a health check on the Mailchimp Transactional API service, and will not affect your account in any way.

curl -sS -X POST "https://mandrillapp.com/api/1.0/users/ping" \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data-raw '{ "key": "YOUR_API_KEY" }'

If the call was successful, the response you receive will be a string reading PONG!. 

Now that you’re successfully making authenticated requests to the API with your API key and client library of choice, you’re ready to dive into the Transactional API. 

We recommend starting with the Send Your First Transactional Email guide, which will walk you through, well, sending your first transactional email. You can also review the Mailchimp Transactional docs—details on authentication, reports, templates, and more—or browse the extensive API Reference documentation.