We looked down this path, but ultimately just didn't want to be responsible for SMTP servers.
Now we're with Sparkpost, the rate was actually a touch cheaper (by maybe a few hundred a month on a several thousand dollar bill). There are plenty of features they don't have (or don't have working correctly when we tried):
* Css inlining, we opted for doing this ourselves after trying theirs.
* Account sending limits. With mandrill this was managed based on our usage, with Sparkpost, it needs to be manually adjusted through support (hint: you also need to monitor this, they won't warn you if you near limits).
* Tagging of emails is different, less searchable but generally its better in some ways and worse in others.