What is Amazon SES used for?

Amazon SES is Amazon Web Services' email sending service for transactional and bulk mail with per-message pricing, built for developers and high-volume senders. It is a good fit for application email on AWS and high-volume email at low per-message cost.

How much does Amazon SES cost?

Paid plans for Amazon SES start at $105 per month, and there is no free plan. A free trial is available.

Is Amazon SES open source?

No. Amazon SES is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Amazon SES include Postal and Plunk.

What are some alternatives to Amazon SES?

Amazon SES competes with Postmark, Mailjet and Resend. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Amazon SES alternatives.

Amazon SES: features, pricing and alternatives

About Amazon SES

Amazon Simple Email Service, or SES, is a cloud email sending service from Amazon Web Services. Developers use it to send transactional and marketing email from applications through an API or SMTP interface, without running their own mail servers.

Pricing is based on usage, which makes it a common low-cost choice for high-volume senders, and it integrates with other AWS services for monitoring and storage. SES focuses on delivery rather than design, so many teams pair it with separate tools for templates and campaign management, and several email marketing products send through it. It is an AWS-hosted commercial service.

Key features

Email sending through API or SMTP
Transactional and bulk email support
Per-message usage-based pricing
Integration with other AWS services
Sending reputation and bounce handling

Good fit for

→Application email on AWS
→High-volume email at low per-message cost

Tags: email-api; transactional-email; aws; smtp; bulk-email; email-delivery; developer-tools

Amazon SES: questions and answers

What is Amazon SES used for?: Amazon SES is Amazon Web Services' email sending service for transactional and bulk mail with per-message pricing, built for developers and high-volume senders. It is a good fit for application email on AWS and high-volume email at low per-message cost.
How much does Amazon SES cost?: Paid plans for Amazon SES start at $105 per month, and there is no free plan. A free trial is available.
Is Amazon SES open source?: No. Amazon SES is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Amazon SES include Postal and Plunk.
What are some alternatives to Amazon SES?: Amazon SES competes with Postmark, Mailjet and Resend. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Amazon SES alternatives.