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. Substack
At a glance
At a glance
Best for
Best for writers, podcasters and small newsrooms who want to earn from paid subscriptions without running their own publishing platform.
Cataleo does not name a winner. Both statements come from the vendors themselves.
Full Comparison
| Criterion | Amazon SES | Substack |
|---|---|---|
| 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. | Free to publish Substack keeps 10% of paid subscription revenue, and credit card fees are deducted from the remaining 90%. Substack states there are no platform fees, no tiers and no contracts. |
| Free trial | New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months | Not stated |
| API | Yes, the SES v2 API and an SMTP interface, called from the AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI | Not stated |
| Hosting | Cloud (SaaS), run as an AWS service per region | Cloud, hosted by Substack |
| 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 | Posts published to the web and sent by email at the same time, each set as free for everyone or for paying subscribers only, alongside podcasts, live video and a subscriber chat |
| 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. | An automatic welcome email goes to every new subscriber, written by the publisher, for example to point paid subscribers to their benefits and give free readers a reason to upgrade |
| 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 | Tags and segments, with a post targeted to a segment such as readers in one state; audience-specific content blocks show parts of a post by subscription status (free, paid or founding subscribers); the subscriber dashboard filters the list and can email a subset without creating a post |
| 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. | Post editor with saved templates for longform posts, callout blocks and drop caps |
| 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. | Not stated |
| 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. | Paid subscriptions, with Substack keeping 10% of the revenue and credit card fees deducted from the rest |
| 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. | Not stated |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based | Cloud (SaaS), Browser-based |
| Support | Email helpdesk, Phone, Chat, 24/7, Community forum | Not stated |
| Onboarding | Documentation and knowledge base | Not stated |
| Company size | Freelancers, Small and mid-sized, Enterprise | Not stated |
| 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 | Not stated |
Add a tool
Adds a column to the table, from the tools in this category.
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
- Starting price Amazon SES From $0.10 / 1,000 emails Substack Free to publish
- Hosting Amazon SES Cloud (SaaS), run as an AWS service per region Substack Cloud, hosted by Substack
- Campaign types Amazon SES 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 Substack Posts published to the web and sent by email at the same time, each set as free for everyone or for paying subscribers only, alongside podcasts, live video and a subscriber chat
- Automation and journeys Amazon SES 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. Substack An automatic welcome email goes to every new subscriber, written by the publisher, for example to point paid subscribers to their benefits and give free readers a reason to upgrade
- Segmentation and personalisation Amazon SES 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 Substack Tags and segments, with a post targeted to a segment such as readers in one state; audience-specific content blocks show parts of a post by subscription status (free, paid or founding subscribers); the subscriber dashboard filters the list and can email a subset without creating a post
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
Substack
Strengths
- Free to start, with Substack stating no platform fees, no tiers and no contracts
- Each post can be free for everyone or for paying subscribers only
- Written posts, podcasts, live video and subscriber chat in one place
- Imports from Mailchimp, beehiiv, Ghost, WordPress, Medium and Tumblr
- Notes and publication recommendations as built-in growth tools
Limitations
- Substack keeps 10% of paid subscription revenue, so the cost rises with income
- The official pages describe one automatic welcome email rather than multi-step automation journeys
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.
Substack
- Free publication $0 Free to start and free to leave, with free posts sent to any number of subscribers.
- Paid subscriptions 10% of revenue Substack keeps 10% of paid subscription revenue; credit card fees are deducted from the remaining 90%.
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. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
Substack
- 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. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
How we check reviews
Before sending, the author has to confirm three things: that they have used the product themselves, that they work neither for the vendor nor for a competitor, and that nobody is paying them for the review. We also ask whether the vendor invited them to write it. That answer is required, either answer is accepted, and it stays with the review.
Every review is read by a person before it appears. An email address is required and is confirmed: we send a link to it, and a review does not reach us until the author opens that link, so a review has a sender who was reachable at least once rather than being anonymous. Where what somebody writes needs backing, we ask them for evidence that they used the product, and a review that does not get it is not published. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.
What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on their own declaration, on whatever we ask them for, and on the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.
A vendor cannot buy a review, and cannot have one removed or changed because they dislike it. We remove or edit a review only if it breaks our rules or the law, for example a false statement of fact. Paid placement has no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.
Where this comes from
Where this comes from
Amazon SES https://aws.amazon.com/ses/ · checked against the official source on 2026-09-09
Substack https://substack.com · no check date recorded yet
This table lists factual criteria taken from information the vendors publish themselves. For how we put it together, see the methodology.