Amazon SES is powerful delivery infrastructure. AledaMail provides the marketing platform above it — campaigns, automations, subscriber management, analytics, and a transactional email API — all routed through your existing SES account.
Amazon SES is not a marketing platform — it is a delivery API. The two work at different layers of the stack and complement each other without competing.
Amazon SES is excellent at what it does. Very low per-email cost, strong deliverability when configured correctly, dedicated IP options, and deep integration with the AWS ecosystem. This page is not a criticism of SES — it is an explanation of what AledaMail adds on top of it.
| Capability | Amazon SES | AledaMail on top of SES |
|---|---|---|
| Message delivery | ✓ SES handles this | Routes sends through SES |
| Bounce and complaint feedback | ✓ Via SNS notifications | ✓ Processes and suppresses automatically |
| Subscriber list management | Not included | ✓ Import, segment, tag contacts |
| Campaign builder | Not included | ✓ Drag-and-drop and HTML editor |
| Marketing automations | Not included | ✓ Visual journey builder |
| Segmentation | Not included | ✓ Properties, events, engagement |
| Unsubscribe management | Not included | ✓ Automatic link injection and processing |
| Suppression list | Account-level only | ✓ Per-list and campaign suppression |
| Open and click tracking | Basic only | ✓ Per-campaign analytics dashboard |
| Transactional email API | Raw send API | ✓ Template-driven REST API |
| Landing pages | Not included | ✓ Visual builder with list connection |
| Dedicated IPs | ✓ Available as add-on | Configured on your SES account |
Drag-and-drop email builder, HTML editor, and a template library. Schedule campaigns or send immediately. AledaMail routes every send through your SES account.
Import contacts via CSV or API. Manage lists, custom fields, tags, and subscription preferences. Double opt-in flows built in.
Visual automation builder with conditional branching, event triggers, wait steps, and multi-branch logic. Trigger sequences from subscriber actions, custom events, or API calls.
Segment contacts by any combination of subscriber properties, engagement history, custom events, and journey state. Use segments as automation entry conditions or campaign audiences.
AledaMail processes SES bounce and complaint notifications via SNS. Hard bounces are suppressed automatically. Complaint rates are tracked per campaign.
Open rates, click rates, bounces, unsubscribes, and conversion tracking per campaign. Automation performance dashboards. All data is correlated against your SES sends.
A separate REST API for sending transactional messages — password resets, receipts, account alerts — with template management, event webhooks, and per-stream suppression.
Visual landing page builder for opt-in forms and lead capture pages. Connect directly to subscriber lists. Publish instantly without a separate tool.
Amazon SES charges around $0.10 per 1,000 emails sent from EC2, or $0.10 per 1,000 emails from outside AWS. At significant volume, this is substantially cheaper than the per-contact or per-send pricing on bundled marketing platforms.
The trade-off is that SES requires more setup and operational management — getting out of sandbox mode, configuring feedback loops, setting up SNS notifications, and managing sending domain authentication.
Teams already running infrastructure on AWS benefit from SES fitting naturally into their existing IAM, SNS, and CloudWatch setup. SES integrates with Lambda for processing feedback events and with S3 for email storage if needed.
SES offers dedicated IP addresses as an optional add-on. With dedicated IPs, your sending reputation is not influenced by other SES senders. You build reputation on your own IPs over time.
Dedicated IPs require volume to maintain — Dedicated IPs generally require consistent, substantial volume to maintain reputation — warming a dedicated IP on low volume can hurt deliverability rather than help it. Check current AWS documentation for specific guidance on dedicated IP requirements.
SES gives you full control over which domains you send from. You configure DKIM signing, SPF alignment, and DMARC policy on your own domains. AledaMail works with whatever domain authentication you have configured on your SES account.
AledaMail includes a separate transactional email API alongside the marketing platform. Both marketing campaigns and transactional messages route through your SES account, but they can use separate sending identities, suppression lists, and tracking configurations.
Send password resets, receipts, account notifications, and system alerts via the AledaMail transactional API. Template-driven with variable substitution.
Configure separate sending identities for marketing and transactional email. Keep transactional deliverability insulated from marketing campaign reputation.
Receive delivery, bounce, complaint, and open events for transactional messages via webhooks. Build your own downstream logic on top of these events.
Amazon SES can deliver marketing email but it does not include a marketing platform. It has no subscriber list management, campaign builder, automation workflows, unsubscribe handling, or analytics beyond basic delivery metrics. You need software above SES to run email marketing. AledaMail provides that software while keeping your SES account under your control.
No. SES is a delivery API. It accepts email and delivers it. Automation logic — triggers, conditions, wait steps, journey branching — lives in the platform layer above SES. AledaMail provides a full visual automation builder that routes sends through your SES account.
AledaMail connects to SES via SMTP credentials or IAM access keys. Once connected, all campaign sends, automation emails, and transactional messages route through your SES account. AledaMail handles everything above delivery — subscriber management, templates, scheduling, analytics, and compliance.
No. AledaMail is a complete email marketing interface — campaign builder, subscriber management, automation editor, analytics, landing pages, and transactional API. No custom development is required. You configure your SES credentials once and AledaMail handles the rest.
Yes. You connect your existing SES account using SMTP credentials or AWS IAM access keys. AledaMail routes sends through your account. Your SES sending limits, reputation, dedicated IPs, and sending domain configuration remain on your account.
Yes. AledaMail processes bounce and complaint events from SES via Amazon SNS. Hard bounces are automatically suppressed. Complaint rates are tracked at the campaign level. You configure the SNS topic in SES to point at AledaMail's notification endpoint.
Yes. Dedicated IPs are configured on your SES account. AledaMail sends through whatever IP configuration your SES account has set up. If you have dedicated IPs provisioned on SES, AledaMail will use them.
Full email marketing platform on top of your SES infrastructure. Free to start.
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