Best for
Best for teams that want email marketing with deep marketing automation and a built-in CRM, and that will grow into advanced segmentation and predictive sending.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Email Marketing Comparison
ActiveCampaign vs. Amazon SES
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for engineering teams already running on AWS that want high-volume email billed per message and are willing to build the surrounding tooling themselves.
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | ActiveCampaign | Amazon SES |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | Not stated | From $0.10 / 1,000 emails À la carte sending is $0.10 per 1,000 emails with no monthly fee. The tiered plans are Essentials at $0.16 per 1,000 and no fixed fee, Pro at $105 per month per account and region plus $0.22 per 1,000, and Enterprise at $500 per month plus $0.23 per 1,000. Rates fall above 10 million and again above 100 million emails. Attachment data is charged at $0.12 per GB. |
| Free trial | 14-day free trial, no credit card required | New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months |
| API | Yes, an API with webhooks, plus more than 1,000 integrations | Yes, the SES v2 API and an SMTP interface, called from the AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI |
| Hosting | Cloud (SaaS) | Cloud (SaaS), run as an AWS service per region |
| Campaign types | Yes, email campaigns with a drag-and-drop designer and more than 250 templates | Marketing, transactional and newsletter sending through the console, the SMTP interface or the SES v2 API, plus inbound receiving that can store mail in Amazon S3, publish it to Amazon SNS or trigger AWS Lambda |
| Automation and journeys | Yes, marketing automation, 5 actions per automation on Starter and unlimited on Plus, Pro and Enterprise | No journey builder. Sending is driven by your own application or by other AWS services, and received mail can trigger Lambda functions, which is how autoresponders and unsubscribe systems are built on it. |
| Segmentation and personalisation | Yes, segmentation from limited on Starter to advanced and premium on the higher plans, with predictive sending | Per-recipient personalisation through template replacement data, with SendBulkEmail taking up to 50 destination objects per call, each carrying its own values and falling back to defaults where none are supplied |
| Templates and editor | Yes, a drag-and-drop email designer for plain text and HTML with more than 250 pre-built templates | Stored templates created through the API, up to 20,000 per region and 500 KB each, or inline templates supplied with the request; both substitute placeholder tags in the subject, HTML and text parts. There is no drag-and-drop builder. |
| Deliverability and testing | Yes, a spam check across plans and predictive sending | Easy DKIM authentication, bounce and complaint notifications through Amazon SNS, rendering failure notifications, and event publishing to CloudWatch or Amazon Data Firehose. Virtual Deliverability Manager is priced separately, from $0.02 to $0.07 per 1,000 emails, with global deliverability at $1,250 per month. IPs can be shared, managed dedicated, or brought from your own range at $24.95 per month per IP. |
| Ecommerce and CRM data | Yes, contact profiles with custom fields, tags and lists, plus premium CRM integrations such as Salesforce on the higher plans | No ecommerce or CRM connectors. SES keeps one contact list per AWS account, with up to 20 topics, a subscription status per topic and a free-form attributes field on each contact; contacts are imported from an Amazon S3 object in CSV or JSON, up to one million per import job. Order and customer data stay in your own systems and travel with the send request. |
| Integrations and API | Yes, an API with webhooks plus more than 1,000 integrations | Yes, the SES v2 API and an SMTP interface, called from the AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI, with IAM for access control and CloudTrail for API call logging. Integrates with S3, SNS, Lambda, CloudWatch, Data Firehose, KMS, Route 53 and Elastic Beanstalk. |
| AI features | stated Yes | No |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | Email helpdesk, Chat, Community forum | more entries Email helpdesk, Phone, Chat, 24/7, Community forum |
| Onboarding | more entries Documentation and knowledge base, Video tutorials, Guided onboarding, Live online demos and webinars | Documentation and knowledge base |
| Company size | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | more entries Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | Shopify, Salesforce, Zendesk, Wix, Facebook, Google Sheets, Google Ads, ChatGPT, Claude | more entries Amazon S3, Amazon SNS, AWS Lambda, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Data Firehose, AWS KMS, AWS IAM, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon Route 53, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon EC2 |
Add a tool
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Row where the values differ The small markers point at the lower number, the longer list or the stated feature. They describe the data, they are not a verdict.
The short version
Key Differences
- Free trial ActiveCampaign 14-day free trial, no credit card required Amazon SES New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months
- Company size ActiveCampaign Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Amazon SES Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
- Hosting ActiveCampaign Cloud (SaaS) Amazon SES Cloud (SaaS), run as an AWS service per region
- Support ActiveCampaign Email helpdesk, Chat, Community forum Amazon SES Email helpdesk, Phone, Chat, 24/7, Community forum
- AI features ActiveCampaign Yes Amazon SES No
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
ActiveCampaign
Strengths
- Marketing automation with unlimited automation actions on Plus, Pro and Enterprise
- More than 1,000 integrations plus an API with webhooks
- Active Intelligence AI features across all plans
- Built-in CRM with contact profiles, custom fields, tags and lists
Limitations
- Starter caps automations at 5 actions each and offers only limited segmentation
- Prices scale with the number of contacts
Amazon SES
Strengths
- Per-message pricing with no seat licence and no monthly fee on the à la carte rate
- SMTP interface and SES v2 API, callable from the AWS SDKs and the CLI
- Inbound mail can land in S3, publish to SNS or trigger Lambda functions
- Up to 20,000 stored templates per region, or inline templates supplied per request
- Shared, managed dedicated or bring-your-own IP addresses
- Sending rates fall at 10 million and 100 million emails per month
Limitations
- No campaign editor, journey builder or drag-and-drop template designer
- The Pro and Enterprise fixed fees are charged per account and per region
- Deliverability tooling is a separately priced add-on, Virtual Deliverability Manager
- Running it in practice means operating SNS, Lambda, CloudWatch and IAM alongside it
- A failed call to a multi-recipient message rejects the whole email, so AWS recommends one recipient per call
- Attachment data is billed separately at $0.12 per GB
Plans
Pricing
ActiveCampaign
- Starter Not stated Entry plan with the email designer, templates and up to 5 actions per automation. Scales with contacts.
- Plus Not stated Adds unlimited automation actions and standard segmentation. Scales with contacts.
- Pro Not stated Adds advanced segmentation and predictive sending. Scales with contacts.
- Enterprise Not stated Adds premium segmentation and premium integrations such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.
Amazon SES
- À la carte $0.10 Per 1,000 emails sent, with no fixed monthly fee.
- Essentials $0.16 Per 1,000 emails up to 10 million per month and no fixed fee. $0.14 per 1,000 from 10 to 100 million, $0.11 above 100 million.
- Pro $105 Per month per account and region, plus $0.22 per 1,000 emails up to 10 million, $0.17 from 10 to 100 million and $0.12 above.
- Enterprise $500 Per month per account and region, plus $0.23 per 1,000 emails up to 10 million, $0.18 from 10 to 100 million and $0.13 above.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
ActiveCampaign
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Amazon SES
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Be the first to review this tool. Every review is checked for fairness before it appears, and the vendor cannot have one removed.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
ActiveCampaign https://www.activecampaign.com · checked against the official source on 2026-08-19
Amazon SES https://aws.amazon.com/ses/ · checked against the official source on 2026-09-09
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.