Amazon SES Pricing Calculator

Updated September 2026. Amazon SES pricing is simple on paper: you pay per email sent. The total cost of a real sending program is less obvious. This guide explains how SES pricing works, what it costs at common volumes, what SES leaves out, and how it compares to bundled platforms like Klaviyo, Mailchimp and Customer.io.

How Amazon SES pricing works

SES charges for what you send, not for how many people are on your list. There is no monthly minimum on the base service and no per-contact fee. The three components that matter for marketing email are:

That is the whole bill for the delivery layer. A list of 50,000 people costs the same to store in SES as a list of 500: nothing. You only pay when you send.

SES pricing has changed over time and can vary by region. The figures on this page reflect mid-2026 pricing in us-east-1. Always confirm on the official AWS SES pricing page before making decisions on specific numbers.

What SES costs at 10k, 50k, 100k and 1M emails

The examples below use a typical marketing pattern and exclude attachments. Bundled platform prices come from the same publicly listed rates the calculator above uses. The SES figures cover infrastructure only. You add a platform on top (see Aledamail pricing), and the calculator includes that in its totals.

Two patterns stand out. First, SES cost grows with how often you send, while bundled cost grows with how many contacts you store, including inactive ones. Second, the gap widens as you grow. At 10k contacts you save tens of dollars a month. At 100k you save hundreds.

One honest exception: per-email platforms like Brevo and SendGrid price closer to SES, so at smaller volumes they can come out slightly cheaper than SES plus a platform subscription, as the comparison table above may show. The trade-off is that you are still on their shared infrastructure, building reputation on their platform rather than your own account. As volume grows, owning the delivery layer usually wins on both cost and control.

Why SES is so much cheaper than bundled platforms

Every email platform has two layers:

• The software: the editor, lists, segments, automations, forms and reporting you work in every day.
• The sending infrastructure: the servers, IP addresses and delivery pipeline that actually hand your email to Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo.

Klaviyo, Mailchimp and Customer.io bundle both layers into one price, and that price is tied to your contact count. You pay for the infrastructure whether you see it or not, and you pay for every stored contact whether you email them or not.

Amazon SES is only the infrastructure layer, priced at cost-level rates per email. Aledamail is only the software layer, and it runs on top of your own SES account. Split the two and you stop paying a markup on delivery. That is where the difference in the calculator comes from. It is not a trick or a lower-quality pipe. It is the same kind of infrastructure, bought directly. Email platform vs email infrastructure, explained.

What SES does not include

SES is excellent at one job: delivering email reliably at high volume. It deliberately does nothing else. On its own, SES has:

• No campaign editor or templates
• No subscriber lists, segments or signup forms
• No automations, journeys or event triggers
• No unsubscribe handling or preference management
• No campaign reporting beyond raw sending metrics

If you are sending marketing email, you need a platform above SES, and that platform has its own cost. A fair comparison always adds both numbers, which is exactly what the calculator does. Even with the platform included, SES plus a platform is usually far cheaper than a bundled tool at meaningful volume.

Getting out of the sandbox

New SES accounts start in a sandbox that only allows sending to verified addresses, with a low daily limit. To send campaigns, you request production access from AWS. The request covers your use case, how contacts opted in, how you handle bounces and complaints, and your expected volume. Straightforward, permission-based senders are usually approved within a day or two.

Bounce and complaint handling

SES reports bounces and complaints through Amazon SNS notifications. Someone has to receive those, suppress hard bounces, and keep complaint rates under control. If nothing processes them, bad addresses pile up and your reputation drops, no matter which platform you use. Aledamail connects to these notifications and handles suppression automatically.

Dedicated IPs: when they help and when they do not

A dedicated IP builds a reputation that belongs to you alone. That helps when your program is healthy and consistent. But an IP needs steady volume for inbox providers to judge it. Below roughly 50,000 to 100,000 emails a month, a dedicated IP often performs worse than SES's well-managed shared pool. Do not pay for one until your volume justifies it. Dedicated vs shared IP, in detail.

Is sending through SES or SMTP risky?

This is the most common worry we hear, and the short answer is no. It helps to separate the myths from what actually matters.

"SMTP sounds technical and old-fashioned"

SMTP is simply the standard protocol for handing email from one server to another. Every email platform uses it, including Klaviyo and Mailchimp. They just do not show it to you. Connecting your own SES account or SMTP server is not a downgrade. It is the same mechanism with the lid off.

"Big platforms get better inbox placement"

Inbox providers judge the sender, not the software brand. They look at your domain authentication, your sending history, how many recipients engage, and how many bounce or complain. A clean list sent through SES with proper authentication will outperform a messy list sent through any big-name platform. On shared bundled infrastructure, your placement can even be affected by other customers' behavior. On your own SES account, the reputation you build is yours.

What actually decides deliverability

• Authentication: SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up correctly on your sending domain.
• List quality: people who opted in and still want your email.
• Bounce and complaint handling: removing bad addresses fast and keeping complaints low.
• Consistent, gradual sending: warming up new domains instead of blasting a full list on day one.

Aledamail handles the mechanics of all four: authentication setup on your domain, automatic bounce and complaint processing from SES, suppression lists shared across campaigns and automations, and throttled list entry so migrations and new domains warm up safely. How deliverability works in Aledamail.

Aledamail vs Klaviyo and Customer.io, in plain terms

For the toolkit most teams actually use, you get the same capabilities: campaigns, visual automations with branching, deep segmentation, custom event triggers, transactional email, landing pages, analytics and a full API. The differences are in who owns what, and in how you pay.

To be fair about where they still win: Klaviyo has very deep native e-commerce data if you run heavily on Shopify, and Customer.io is strong for multi-channel messaging across push, in-app and SMS. If one of those is central to your business, the bundle may be worth it. If your core need is email, you are mostly paying for infrastructure you could own directly. Aledamail vs Klaviyo · Aledamail vs Customer.io.

A deliverability expert on your side

Is SES worth it at lower volumes?

At low volume, for example under 20,000 subscribers sending monthly, the dollar savings are real but modest. The stronger reason to start on SES early is ownership. When you build your sending program on your own account from day one, the reputation you earn stays with you. By the time you reach the volumes where savings matter, your infrastructure is already established and warmed up, with no painful migration later.

Getting started with SES and Aledamail

1. Create or open your AWS account and enable Amazon SES in your preferred region.
2. Verify your sending domain and publish the SPF, DKIM and DMARC records.
3. Request production access to leave the sandbox, describing your opt-in process and bounce handling.
4. Connect SES to Aledamail, import your list, and start with a throttled send to warm up.

Step-by-step instructions: Connect Amazon SES to Aledamail. Comparing providers? See SES vs SendGrid, SES vs Mailgun and SES vs Postmark.