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
Email Marketing Comparison
Amazon SES vs. Braze
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for consumer brands running email as part of an app-led lifecycle across push, in-app, SMS and messaging apps.
- Small and mid-sized
- Enterprise
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Amazon SES | Braze |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | 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. | Not stated |
| Free trial | New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months | Free trial offered on the pricing page |
| API | Yes, the SES v2 API and an SMTP interface, called from the AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI | Yes, REST APIs and SDKs with more than 170 prebuilt partner integrations |
| Hosting | Cloud (SaaS), run as an AWS service per region | Cloud (SaaS), on regional instances in the United States, Europe (Frankfurt), Australia, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia |
| Campaign types | 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 | Yes, email, mobile and web push, in-app messages, SMS and RCS, WhatsApp, LINE and KakaoTalk, plus paid-media audiences |
| Automation and journeys | 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. | Yes, Canvas drag-and-drop journey orchestration for multi-step cross-channel campaigns with A/B/n testing |
| Segmentation and personalisation | 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 | Yes, more than 100 prebuilt filters plus SQL composition, with BrazeAI predictions and personalised recommendations |
| Templates and editor | 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. | Yes, a drag-and-drop email editor with blank, prebuilt and saved templates, basic, media and advanced content blocks and Liquid personalisation |
| Deliverability and testing | 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. | Yes, previews for random, specific or custom user profiles and Inbox Vision rendering checks across email clients |
| Ecommerce and CRM data | 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. | Yes, the Braze Data Platform builds first-party profiles from SDKs, APIs and cloud data ingestion across more than 170 partner integrations |
| Integrations and API | 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. | Yes, REST APIs and SDKs with more than 170 prebuilt partner integrations |
| AI features | No | stated Yes |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | more entries Email helpdesk, Phone, Chat, 24/7, Community forum | Email helpdesk, Community forum |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | more entries Documentation and knowledge base, Guided onboarding, Personal consulting, On-site training |
| Company size | more entries Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | Small and mid-sized, Enterprise |
| Integrations | 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 | more entries Segment, mParticle, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Adobe, Tealium, Shopify, Stripe, Algolia, AppsFlyer, Branch, Adjust, Kochava, Movable Ink, Dynamic Yield, Amazon Personalize, Looker, Datadog, Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Talon.One, Canva, Figma |
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 Amazon SES New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months Braze Free trial offered on the pricing page
- Company size Amazon SES Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise Braze Small and mid-sized, Enterprise
- Hosting Amazon SES Cloud (SaaS), run as an AWS service per region Braze Cloud (SaaS), on regional instances in the United States, Europe (Frankfurt), Australia, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia
- Support Amazon SES Email helpdesk, Phone, Chat, 24/7, Community forum Braze Email helpdesk, Community forum
- AI features Amazon SES No Braze Yes
Every line is one datapoint from the table above, picked automatically. Nothing here is written text.
The trade-offs
Strengths and Limitations
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
Braze
Strengths
- Email, push, in-app, SMS, WhatsApp, LINE, KakaoTalk and paid media orchestrated from one journey builder
- More than 100 prebuilt segmentation filters plus SQL composition
- Regional instances in the United States, Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Indonesia
- Braze Data Platform unifies first-party data across more than 170 partner integrations
Limitations
- No public rate card, pricing is quoted by sales
- Predictive AI arrives at the Pro edition and advanced experimentation only at Enterprise
- Licensing by monthly active users rather than list size
- Existing HTML email templates have to be rebuilt to use the drag-and-drop editor
Plans
Pricing
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.
Braze
- Braze Go Not stated For early-stage growth teams activating customer data and launching cross-channel messaging. Core features and functionality.
- Braze Select Not stated Adds increased orchestration capability plus enhanced security features and user provisioning.
- Braze Pro Not stated Adds predictive AI, AI personalised recommendations and expanded dashboard administration.
- Braze Enterprise Not stated Enterprise-grade orchestration, infrastructure and governance, plus advanced experimentation.
What users say
Review Scores · opens after launch
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.
Braze
- 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
Amazon SES https://aws.amazon.com/ses/ · checked against the official source on 2026-09-09
Braze https://www.braze.com · checked against the official source on 2026-09-03
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.