Amazon SES alternative
Sendpository vs Amazon SES
An Amazon SES alternative for developers who want to send and receive email through one API - with Amazon SES's own published pricing worked out at the volumes people actually send, and the other Amazon SES competitors worth a look.
In short
Amazon SES is the lowest-cost raw sending infrastructure at scale, but you assemble logs, webhooks, bounce handling and a dashboard yourself on top of AWS. Sendpository gives you those out of the box. Choose SES for very high volume on AWS; choose Sendpository to ship email this afternoon. Sendpository has a permanent free plan (6,000 emails a month); Amazon SES does not.Side by side
| Sendpository | Amazon SES | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 6,000 emails a month (up to 200 a day), free forever | $0.10 per 1,000 emails sent, and $0.10 per 1,000 received plus charges per 256 KB chunk. New AWS accounts get free-tier credits. |
| Setup | Verify a domain, create a key, send. Logs, webhooks and suppression are on by default. | Verify identities, request production access, then configure SNS/Event Destinations for bounces and events. |
| Receiving email | Inbound addresses on your own domain, delivered to your inbox, API and an email.received webhook - with an SPF, DKIM and DMARC verdict on every message. | Receipt rules deliver to S3, SNS or Lambda, billed per message and per chunk. |
| Domain signing | A 2048-bit DKIM key generated per domain, signed as your own domain so it passes strict DMARC alignment. | Easy DKIM generates and rotates the key for you from three CNAMEs, or you bring your own with BYODKIM if you need to hold the private key. Both sign as your domain. |
| Developer tooling | REST API, a typed Node.js/TypeScript SDK with no dependencies, idempotency keys, scheduled sends, signed webhooks and searchable delivery logs. | API v2 and SMTP, reachable from every AWS SDK. Authentication is IAM and SigV4 rather than a bearer token, so access is managed with policies and roles. There is no first-party log UI: Configuration Sets route events to SNS, Kinesis Firehose or CloudWatch and you build the view yourself. |
Amazon SES details are from their published pages, checked 2026-09-23. Sendpository’s free tier is read from our live plans.
What Amazon SES costs at real volumes
A headline price per month means little until you put your own volume against it. These are Amazon SES’s own published figures, worked through at three common monthly volumes. Sendpository’s side is on the pricing page, read from the same live plans this page reads.
| Emails a month | Amazon SES, as published |
|---|---|
| 10,000 | $1 a month in sending charges, at $0.10 per 1,000 - plus whatever SNS, SQS, Lambda and storage you add around it. |
| 50,000 | $5 a month in sending charges, plus the AWS services you build on. |
| 100,000 | $10 a month in sending charges, plus the AWS services you build on. |
Worked out from Amazon SES’s published pricing on 2026-09-23 (source). Prices change; check their site before you decide.
Deliverability
SES is the same infrastructure Amazon sends its own mail on, and at scale nothing beats it on price. What it does not hand you is the layer above: bounce and complaint handling, suppression, a searchable log and a dashboard are yours to build on SNS, SQS and CloudWatch. Sendpository ships that layer as the product.
Choose Amazon SES if
High-volume senders already on AWS with engineers to build bounce handling, event pipelines and logging on SNS, SQS and CloudWatch.
Choose Sendpository if
Teams that want delivery logs, signed webhooks, suppression lists, receiving and a dashboard without wiring AWS services together. Sendpository has a permanent free plan (6,000 emails a month); Amazon SES does not.
Switching from Amazon SES
Verify your sending domain, create an API key, and replace your Amazon SES send call with a POST to /v1/emails carrying from, to, subject and html. Update your webhook handler for Sendpository’s event names. The quickstart takes about ten minutes, and the Amazon SES migration guide maps every field, header, webhook event and error.
curl https://api.sendpository.com/v1/emails \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $SENDPOSITORY_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"from": "you@yourdomain.com",
"to": "customer@example.com",
"subject": "Your receipt",
"html": "<p>Thanks for your order.</p>"
}'Other Amazon SES alternatives worth shortlisting
Sendpository is not the only answer, and a comparison that pretends otherwise is an advertisement. If the fit above is wrong, these are the providers most people weigh against Amazon SES - each one better than us at something.
| Provider | Why it makes the shortlist |
|---|---|
| Postmark | If you would rather buy deliverability expertise than operate it. |
| Resend | A developer API with none of the AWS console surface. |
| Mailgun | A managed platform with validation and inbound routing built in. |
All five, with free tiers side by side, are on the email API alternatives page, and Resend vs SendGrid vs Postmark sends the same email through each.
Questions
Is Sendpository cheaper than Amazon SES?
Not at very high volume - SES's per-email price is hard to beat. Sendpository costs less in engineering time: logs, webhooks, suppression and receiving work without building on SNS, SQS and Lambda.
Do I need AWS knowledge to use Sendpository?
No. It is one HTTPS API with a dashboard; there are no IAM policies, sandbox requests or event destinations to configure.
Other comparisons
Sendpository vs Resend
Apps that need to send and receive email through one API, and teams that want strict-DMARC-ready DKIM by default.
Sendpository vs SendGrid
Developers who want one small API to learn, and receiving email on the same account without a separate setup.
Sendpository vs Postmark
Apps that also need to receive email with sender verdicts, through the same API they send with.
Sendpository vs Mailgun
Developers who want the sending and receiving they need without a large console to learn.
Send your first email in minutes
6,000 emails a month (up to 200 a day), free forever. No card needed.