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site.aws.amazon.com SES pricing: $0.10 per 1,000 emails, and what comes with it

Amazon SES's prices, free tier and sandbox as AWS documents them, what SES receiving does and does not do, and what the same volume costs on Cloudflare and MarkRelay.

Published by
MarkRelay Research
Updated
Sources
6 primary sources, linked below

Summary

Amazon SES costs $0.10 per 1,000 outbound emails plus $0.12 per GB of attachments, and $0.10 per 1,000 inbound emails plus $0.09 per 1,000 incoming 256 KB chunks. There is no separate monthly free allowance: new AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits they can spend on SES. New accounts start in a sandbox, sending only to verified addresses, 200 messages a day and 1 per second, until AWS approves production access. SES can receive mail into S3, SNS or Lambda, but it has no IMAP or POP and no inbox. At volume it is the cheapest sender here; MarkRelay trades a higher per-email price for mailboxes, a webmail and receiving in your own Cloudflare account.

Key findings

  1. 1Outbound: $0.10 per 1,000 emails, plus $0.12 per GB of attachments.
  2. 2Inbound: $0.10 per 1,000 emails plus $0.09 per 1,000 incoming 256 KB chunks.
  3. 3Free: no monthly SES allowance; new AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits usable on SES.
  4. 4Sandbox: verified recipients only, 200 messages per 24 hours, 1 per second; AWS responds to production-access requests within 96 hours.
  5. 5Receiving: receipt rules deliver raw MIME to S3 (up to 40 MB) or SNS (up to 150 KB), or invoke Lambda; SES includes no POP or IMAP server.

Questions this report answers

Asked by real people, quoted as they wrote them.

“Which SMTP provider do you use for your self-hosted projects? (Amazon SES vs. Mailgun vs. Self-hosted)”

r/selfhosted, 142 comments

On price per email SES wins: $0.10 per 1,000 against Mailgun Basic's $15 for 10,000. The trade-offs are the sandbox and AWS's console. If your domains are on Cloudflare, Email Sending is $5 a month with 3,000 emails included.

“is amazon ses free”

Google and Bing search suggestion

Not on its own. New AWS customers get up to $200 in Free Tier credits that can pay for SES; after that, $0.10 per 1,000 emails.

“amazon ses cost”

Google and Bing search suggestion

$0.10 per 1,000 emails sent, $0.10 per 1,000 received, plus attachment data and incoming chunks. 100,000 emails a month is about $10.

“alternatives to amazon ses”

Google and Bing search suggestion

Hosted: Resend, Postmark, Mailgun, Brevo, SMTP2GO. On Cloudflare: Email Sending, with MarkRelay for mailboxes, webmail and receiving in the same account.

Amazon SES pricing and limits

Outbound

Value
$0.10 per 1,000 + $0.12/GB attachments

Inbound

Value
$0.10 per 1,000 + $0.09 per 1,000 chunks

Free

Value
Up to $200 AWS Free Tier credits for new customers

Sandbox

Value
Verified recipients only; 200/day; 1/second

Receiving

Value
To S3 (40 MB), SNS (150 KB) or Lambda; no POP or IMAP

Source: SES pricing, SES sandbox, SES receiving.

Monthly cost at the same volume

10,000

Amazon SES
$1
Cloudflare Email Sending
$7.45
Resend
$20
MarkRelay
$15.70

50,000

Amazon SES
$5
Cloudflare Email Sending
$21.45
Resend
$20
MarkRelay
$29.70

100,000

Amazon SES
$10
Cloudflare Email Sending
$38.95
Resend
$35
MarkRelay
$47.20

SES at the à-la-carte rate, without attachments. MarkRelay is Cloudflare Workers Paid and per-email sending plus the $99 license spread over twelve months, with receiving into mailboxes included. Source: Cloudflare Email Service pricing, Resend pricing.

Sending is cheap; the inbox is yours to build

SES receives mail by running receipt rules: store the raw MIME in S3, publish it to SNS, or call a Lambda function. AWS says plainly that SES has no POP or IMAP server, so reading and answering mail means building an inbox, or using Amazon WorkMail.

MarkRelay is that inbox already built, on Cloudflare instead of AWS: Email Routing receives into mailboxes stored in your D1 and R2, the webmail and HTTP API read and reply, and signed webhooks hand new mail to your app. It costs more per email than SES; it saves the work of building and running the receiving side.

Where MarkRelay fits

A good fit when

  • Apps that send and receive and need mailboxes people can read, without building them on S3 and Lambda.
  • Domains already on Cloudflare.

Look elsewhere when

  • Very high volume where cost per email decides: SES is cheaper.
  • Teams standardised on AWS tooling.

Common questions

How much does Amazon SES cost?

$0.10 per 1,000 emails sent and $0.10 per 1,000 received, plus data charges.

How do I get out of the SES sandbox?

Request production access in the SES console or with the AWS CLI; AWS gives an initial response within 96 hours.

Sources and method

  1. SES pricing (aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/)
  2. SES sandbox (docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/request-production-access.html)
  3. SES receiving (docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/receiving-email-concepts.html)
  4. Mailgun pricing (www.mailgun.com/pricing/)
  5. Cloudflare Email Service pricing (developers.cloudflare.com/email-service/platform/pricing/)
  6. Resend pricing (resend.com/pricing)

Facts are taken from each vendor's own pricing pages, documentation or terms as of the updated date above; prices are in US dollars per month unless stated. Cost comparisons apply each vendor's published rates to the same volume. MarkRelay is not affiliated with Amazon Web Services;"site.aws.amazon.com" in the title names the site these facts come from. MarkRelay sells a self-hosted email app, which this page mentions where it fits. Spotted something outdated? Tell us.

Revisions

  • : First published; every fact checked on the vendor's own pages.

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