Amazon SES
Pay-as-you-go transactional email infrastructure from AWS: the cheapest at volume, but the most technically demanding to set up.
Amazon Simple Email Service is the raw sending infrastructure AWS itself uses. It has no real feature ceiling on volume or price (flat $0.10/1,000 emails with no shared/marketing tooling bundled in), which makes it the default choice for engineering-led teams sending very high volumes. The tradeoff is that everything beyond "send an email" (identity verification, IAM permissions, SMTP credential generation, bounce/complaint handling via SNS, moving out of the sandbox) is DIY, using AWS's general-purpose console and IAM model rather than a purpose-built email dashboard.
Pros
- +Lowest per-email cost at scale by a wide margin, no minimum spend
- +No hard ceiling: scales to very high volume without a "call sales" tier
- +Deep integration if you’re already on AWS (IAM, CloudWatch, SNS, Lambda)
Cons
- −New accounts start in sandbox mode: 200 emails/day, verified recipients only, until production access is granted
- −Setup requires IAM users, separate SMTP credentials, identity verification, and manual SNS wiring, steep for teams without AWS ops experience
- −No built-in deliverability coaching: Virtual Deliverability Manager is a paid add-on
Pricing
Pay-as-you-go
$0.10/mo · annual commitment
Month-to-month: not published
- ✓Per 1,000 emails
Dedicated IP (standard)
$24.95/mo · annual commitment
Month-to-month: not published
- ✓Per IP address
Specifications
| Rating | 3.8 |
| Features | |
|---|---|
| Inbox rate (3rd-party) | 77.1% |
| Automation Builder | No |
| Dedicated IP | ✓ |
| A/B Testing | No |
| Source IP allow/deny* | ✓ |
*Source IP allow/deny listing: whether you can restrict which IP addresses may use your sending credentials (SMTP/API), checked against each vendor’s official documentation, 2026-09-01. SendGrid, Mailgun, SMTP2GO and SparkPost offer a native allowlist (no denylist); Amazon SES has no native switch but achieves both allow and deny shapes through IAM policy conditions. Postmark, Resend and Mailjet document no such control.
Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. How we use AI
Work at Amazon SES? Something not look right? Register in the vendor portal to see what we publish and send corrections.