How is Amazon SES priced?

By volume sent, not by seat. 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 with no fixed fee, Pro at $105 per month plus $0.22 per 1,000, and Enterprise at $500 per month plus $0.23 per 1,000. The fixed fees apply per account and per region, and per-message rates fall above 10 million and 100 million emails. Attachment data costs $0.12 per GB.

Can Amazon SES receive email?

Yes. Received mail can be stored in Amazon S3, published to Amazon SNS topics, encrypted with AWS KMS, or used to trigger AWS Lambda functions. That is the basis on which email autoresponders, unsubscribe systems and applications that raise support tickets from incoming mail are built.

Does Amazon SES have a campaign builder?

No. There is no drag-and-drop designer and no journey builder. Emails are composed as stored or inline templates with placeholder tags, and sending is driven by your own application through the SES v2 API or the SMTP interface.

How do templates work in Amazon SES?

In two forms. Stored templates are created with CreateEmailTemplate and referenced by name at send time, limited to 20,000 per AWS region and 500 KB each. Inline templates carry their subject and body in the request itself, which avoids managing template resources and does not count against that limit. Both substitute placeholder tags in the subject, HTML and text parts, with no limit on the number of variables.

Is there a free tier for Amazon SES?

New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months and valid for twelve months in total. That is a credit against usage rather than a standing monthly allowance of free emails.

Amazon SES

AWS service for sending and receiving email at high volume, billed per thousand messages.

Starting price: From $0.10 / 1,000 emails
Free trial: New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months
API: Yes, the SES v2 API and an SMTP interface, called from the AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI

Visit Amazon SES

Overview

Amazon Simple Email Service is the email platform inside AWS, and it receives mail as well as sending it. Messages go out through the console, the SMTP interface, or the SES v2 API called from the AWS SDKs and the CLI. Incoming mail can be stored in Amazon S3, published to Amazon SNS topics or used to trigger AWS Lambda functions, which is how autoresponders get built on top of it. The rest is AWS wiring, and billing is per thousand emails with no seat licence.

Our take

Amazon SES is the cheapest way to move large volumes of mail and the most assembly required, and that is the entire trade: the per-thousand rate undercuts every dedicated provider, and in exchange you build the surrounding product yourself. The calculation only works for a team already living in AWS, because IAM, SNS, Lambda and CloudWatch are not optional background here, they are how the service is actually operated day to day. Look closely at the fixed monthly fees before treating the per-message rate as the price, since they are charged per account and per region, so a multi-region deployment quietly multiplies a charge that reads like one line item. Anyone hoping to hand a send to a marketer without a developer in the loop should pick a dedicated email platform instead.

Key Facts

Category	Email Marketing
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 trial	New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months
API	Yes, the SES v2 API and an SMTP interface, called from the AWS SDKs and the AWS CLI
Hosting	Cloud (SaaS), run as an AWS service per region

Features

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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.

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

Deployment and Support

Deployment: Cloud (SaaS)
Browser-based
Support: Email helpdesk
Phone
Chat, 24/7
Community forum
Onboarding: Documentation and knowledge base
Company size: Freelancers
Small and mid-sized
Enterprise

Suitability

Industry	Freelancers	Small and mid-sized	Enterprise
Agencies	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated
Architecture & Engineering	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated
Consulting	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated
Media & Creative	Not stated	Not stated	Not stated
Technology	Stated as a fit	Stated as a fit	Stated as a fit

The table combines the industries the vendor addresses with the company sizes the tool is aimed at. An empty cell means the combination is not stated, not that it is ruled out.

Pros and Cons

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

Pricing

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.

Best For

Technology

Alternatives and Comparisons

FAQ

How is Amazon SES priced?: By volume sent, not by seat. 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 with no fixed fee, Pro at $105 per month plus $0.22 per 1,000, and Enterprise at $500 per month plus $0.23 per 1,000. The fixed fees apply per account and per region, and per-message rates fall above 10 million and 100 million emails. Attachment data costs $0.12 per GB.
Can Amazon SES receive email?: Yes. Received mail can be stored in Amazon S3, published to Amazon SNS topics, encrypted with AWS KMS, or used to trigger AWS Lambda functions. That is the basis on which email autoresponders, unsubscribe systems and applications that raise support tickets from incoming mail are built.
Does Amazon SES have a campaign builder?: No. There is no drag-and-drop designer and no journey builder. Emails are composed as stored or inline templates with placeholder tags, and sending is driven by your own application through the SES v2 API or the SMTP interface.
How do templates work in Amazon SES?: In two forms. Stored templates are created with CreateEmailTemplate and referenced by name at send time, limited to 20,000 per AWS region and 500 KB each. Inline templates carry their subject and body in the request itself, which avoids managing template resources and does not count against that limit. Both substitute placeholder tags in the subject, HTML and text parts, with no limit on the number of variables.
Is there a free tier for Amazon SES?: New AWS customers receive up to $200 in AWS Free Tier credits, usable over six months and valid for twelve months in total. That is a credit against usage rather than a standing monthly allowance of free emails.

Last verified: 2026-09-09

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