+1 as well, after the changes to Mandrill recently, was looking for a new provider and can also recommend Mailgun (at least, for ease and configurability in set up and testing so far, not yet in production).
Yes, Mandrill should have kept the free quota after DKIM and SPF verification. Now, I will be trying out the competitors (Sendgrid and Mailgun) and if I find them at par with Mandrill then for paid projects, I might use them rather than Mandrill.
For our clients, the appeal of Mandrill is the Mailchimp Template Editor. I think this is where their focus is going and so if you don't need that, then definitely check out competitors.
Out of around 18 projects, in which we have used Mandrill, only in 1 we have used the template editor. (I think only about half went for paid accounts when the project went live.) Most of our need was simple and quick transactional messages (Registration, Forgot Password, etc.). The main reason we chose Mandrill was ease of set up over Amazon SES. (Even though we had AWS accounts for all projects.)
Anyways, it's up to Mandrill to choose who they want to serve. I really liked the service though. Best of Luck.
