# Amazon SES

> AWS email sending and receiving, paid per 1,000 emails

Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) is Amazon Web Services' email service for sending transactional, marketing and newsletter email from an application through an API, SMTP or an AWS SDK, and for receiving and routing incoming mail. You pay for the email you send and receive, with optional plans that bundle dedicated IPs, address validation and deliverability tools for a fixed monthly fee.

- **Category:** Email Sending Services
- **Made by:** Amazon Web Services, Inc.
- **Website:** https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
- **Runs on:** Web
- **Facts last checked:** Oct 18, 2026

## Pricing

Amazon SES is a paid product with a free trial.

- **Pricing model:** Free trial
- **Free plan:** None.
- **Free trial:** New AWS customers get up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable on SES.

| Plan | Price | What you get |
| --- | --- | --- |
| À la carte | $0 | No plan or minimum fee: $0.10 per 1,000 emails sent or received, plus $0.12 per GB of attachments; features such as dedicated IPs are bought separately. |
| Essentials | $0 | No fixed fee: $0.16 per 1,000 emails up to 10 million a month, then less. Deliverability insights included; new accounts start on it from July 21, 2026. |
| Pro | $105 per month, plus $0.22 per 1,000 emails | Per account and region. Adds managed dedicated IPs, 2,500 address validations a month, deliverability tracking beyond SES and Trend Micro scanning. |
| Enterprise | $500 per month, plus $0.23 per 1,000 emails | Per account and region. Adds global endpoints across two regions, tenants, an open inbound endpoint, 5,000 validations and Spamhaus scanning. |

Read from https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/ on Oct 18, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Amazon SES before buying.

## Key features

- **API, SMTP and AWS SDKs:** Send transactional and marketing email from any application through the SES API, an SMTP interface or an AWS SDK, after verifying your domain or address.
- **Virtual Deliverability Manager:** Delivery and engagement insights with recommendations for reputation problems; the paid plans extend it to inbox placement tests and blocklist monitoring.
- **Dedicated, shared or your own IPs:** Send from shared IPs, standard dedicated IPs at $24.95 a month each, managed dedicated IPs that SES warms up for you, or IP ranges you bring.
- **Mail Manager for incoming email:** Receive email and route, allow or block it with rule sets, add security scanning from approved vendors, and archive sent and received mail.
- **Email validation:** Checks recipient addresses before sending, at $0.01 per address checked through the API, or included up to a monthly allowance on Pro and Enterprise.
- **Tenants and global endpoints:** Tenants keep each sender's reputation separate inside one account, and global endpoints spread sending across two AWS regions.

## Good for

- Developers already running their apps on AWS
- High-volume senders looking for a low price per email
- Teams comfortable setting up email through code and the AWS console

## Worth knowing

- Every email is billed: $0.10 per 1,000 on à la carte pricing or $0.16 per 1,000 on Essentials, with no free monthly allowance.
- New accounts start in a sandbox that only sends to verified addresses, with daily limits, until AWS approves a limit increase.
- Pro and Enterprise fees are charged per account per region, so sending from two regions doubles the fixed fee.
- Other AWS services used alongside it, such as S3 storage, SNS notifications or CloudWatch dashboards, are billed separately.

## ToolGPA grades

**GPA: 2.8 out of 4**, graded Oct 18, 2026. Amazon SES is by far the cheapest way here to send in bulk: 50,000 emails a month works out at $8 on the Essentials plan new accounts start on, or $5 at the à la carte rate. You get sending, receiving, validation and dedicated IPs. The price is paid in setup: new accounts sit in a sandbox until AWS lets them email real people, and it all runs through AWS.

- **Value for money: A.** Graded on 50,000 emails a month, worked out from the listed rates: $0.16 per 1,000 on Essentials is $8 a month, and $0.10 per 1,000 à la carte is $5. That's far under anything else in this category. Attachments, dedicated IPs and other AWS services cost extra.
- **Free plan and trial: C.** There's no free allowance: every email is billed from the first one. New AWS customers do get up to $200 in Free Tier credits that work on SES, which goes a long way at these rates.
- **Features: B.** API, SMTP and AWS SDKs, receiving and routing with Mail Manager, address validation, shared, dedicated or your own IPs, deliverability insights, tenants and two-region sending. It covers the whole job, though alerts and dashboards lean on other AWS services.
- **Ease of use: C.** Judged on how fast a developer sends a first email: verify a domain in AWS, then you're in a sandbox that only sends to verified addresses until AWS approves a limit increase. No rating on record. It's the slowest start in this category.
- **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web, with an API, SMTP and AWS SDKs, and it plugs into Amazon S3, SNS, CloudWatch and EC2. Outside AWS you're wiring it up yourself. No desktop or phone app, so B is the top.

These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Amazon Web Services's own pages on 18 October 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews.

## Where it stands among email sending services

- Amazon SES's GPA of 2.8 is higher than 11 of the 11 other email sending services we grade.
- It stands best on value for money (A, above 11 of 11) and worst on ease of use (C, above 0).

The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/email-sending

## Keep it, or make your own?

**Keep it.** To replace Amazon SES you would be making mail servers with a good name among inbox providers. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. It is one of the better ones too: its GPA of 2.8 is higher than 11 of the 11 other email sending services we grade.

- You could not: Mail servers with a good name among inbox providers.
- You could not: Checking that an address exists without writing to it.
- You could not: It plugs into other products, Amazon S3, Amazon SNS and Amazon CloudWatch among them, and has an API.
- You could not: The depth: we grade its features B, which means it covers the whole job.

A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it.

## Works with

Amazon S3, Amazon SNS, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon EC2

**Tags:** Transactional email, Public API, Email verification

## Alternatives

- [Twilio SendGrid](https://toolgpa.com/tools/sendgrid): Twilio's email API and SMTP service, priced by monthly email volume. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/amazon-ses-vs-sendgrid)
- [Mailgun](https://toolgpa.com/tools/mailgun): Email API and SMTP relay for developers, with list validation. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/amazon-ses-vs-mailgun)
- [Postmark](https://toolgpa.com/tools/postmark): Transactional email API and SMTP, with broadcasts on a separate stream. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/amazon-ses-vs-postmark)
- [Bird Email](https://toolgpa.com/tools/sparkpost): SparkPost's successor: Bird's email API, paid from a prepaid balance. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/amazon-ses-vs-sparkpost)
- [Resend](https://toolgpa.com/tools/resend): Developer email API with React Email templates and a free tier. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/amazon-ses-vs-resend)

## Sources

The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Oct 18, 2026:

- https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/
- https://aws.amazon.com/ses/
- https://aws.amazon.com/ses/faqs/

Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/amazon-ses
Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).